AMERICAN
LITERATURE
EDITED BY
ROBERT SHAFER
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JULIET ACCAU AMSCN
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Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2010
http://www.archive.org/details/americanliteratuOOshaf
AMERICAN LITERATURE
AMl^KICAN LIPKRATURK
{(U) m [>l et e E d i I i o n )
TEXTS SKLECTKO AND EDITED
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1027
COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE
& COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE
COUNTRY LIKE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Yo
TO
ELIZABETH FAHRNEY SHAFER
AND
SAMUEL McCAULEY SHAFER
MY PARENTS
PREFACE
This work was planned, at the Invitation of the pubHshers, immediately
after the appearance of my From Beowulf to Thomas Hardy (2 volumes, 1924),
and my aim has been to follow, so far as different material and conditions should
permit, the plan upon which those volumes were based. In the Preface to From
Beowulf to Thomas Hardy I stated my conviction, gained from my own experience
and that of many other teachers, *'that anthologies and collections of extracts
are more useful to those who know literature than to those who are just learning
to know it." The student who does not already know a writer's works can gain
neither a correct nor a lasting impression from reading a few pages of brief poems
or of fragments. On the contrary, he inevitably becomes confused, and in the
end retains only the perniciously mistaken notion that he has sufficiently explored
the riches of a literature w^hen, in reality, he has no immediate acquaintance
with it which deserves the name. This is the more true because the almost
unavoidable tendency of anthologies and collections of extracts is to stress the
minor phases of literature at the expense of its great masterpieces. Indeed, to
speak frankly, Instruction based on such books is scarcely better than a sham —
teacher and students tacitly agreeing to cover the ground In a manner which
merely ** saves the appearances." This is generally realized, and deplored, yet
the alternative plan of making acquaintance with a relatively small number of
complete books the basis of a survey of a nation's literature is neither satisfactory
nor. Indeed, actually practicable. Even though the number of books used be small,
the expense of this plan Is likely to be prohibitive; and, in any event, the resultant
"survey" is not only fragmentary, but gravely misleading, and can afford no
sufficient foundation either for later academic w^ork or for the student's inde-
pendent reading.
The only real alternative is a collection of texts which, omitting writers of
minor Importance and those who could lend merely their names and a few Inade-
quate fragments to the work, Includes a genuinely representative body of selections
adequate in the case of each writer to make a marked and lasting impression
upon the learner. The appearance — It can only be an "appearance," and a
ridiculous one — of "including everything" no matter how thinly the ground is
covered, must deliberately be sacrificed In order that the writers who are repre-
sented may be adequately represented, hot for one who has read widely and
knows how to place a brief selection, but for the learner, and in order also that the
greater and more significant elements of a literature may be represented no less
than its minor and relatively Insignificant elements. And though I use the word
vii
viii PREFACE
"sacrificed," tins is really no sacrifice, Inir an invaluable aid to every teacher who
regards Ins work seriously and aims at solid and lasting results.
It has heen my effort m the present work to furnish siirh a body of selections
from yXmericaii literature, primarily for students in colleges and universities.
So far as I am aware, no existing compilation does this. Ehe editor of a volume
published while the present work was in preparation admits that he has included
in his book ** approximately eighty-five minor writers." This is to confuse the
needs of the advanced student with those of the student in the general, intro-
ductory course, and to serve the needs of neither. It is possible, as I hope the
present compilation shows, to exhibit the important elements entering into
American literature, and also the major characteristics of the literature in its
historical development, without drawing upon writers or books of merely anti-
quarian interest, and without including writers, the quality and real character of
whose work could not be, for one reason or another, satisfactorily displayed within
the space that could be accorded to them.
In making selections I have endeavored to govern myself, not by criteria
derived from other national literatures, but by the actual development of our
own. This is a matter of greater difficulty than may at first sight appear. Still
a young nation, we are nevertheless sharers in an old culture, and our own elder
literature is that of England. Our writers have been, as writers, from the begin-
ning, citizens of the Western world, drawing inspiration and instruction from
the literature which we share with England and from the literatures of Europe.
This has been, and continues to be, at once unescapable and desirable, though it has
often been made, both at home and abroad, the subject of ignorant or undiscerning
reproach. Contemporary writers who superciliously refer to the first half of the
nineteenth century as **the New England or imitative period" of our literature
are themselves the products of cultural influences not exclusively American — as
are all of us — and need only a little more knowledge and a little less complacency
to be self-convicted of absurdity. On the other hand, of course, mere imitation
can at best result only in second-rate literature, and it cannot be denied that our
writers have produced much of doubtful value because of its predominantly
derivative character. Critics of American letters have not always avoided two
dangers which these remarks suggest. There has been in some quarters a tend-
ency to understand the word literature narrowly, in obedience to recent and
questionable European criticism which would restrict it to belles lettres, and to
search the native field for matter which will fit the imported conception. It is
not surprising that such critics have failed to discover the spirit of American
literature, have fixed their attention upon some of our productions which are of
little or no worth, have neglected other matter of high importance and value,
and have ended on a note of general depreciation. In point of fact there are
distinctively American strains running through our literature from its beginnings
to the present time, but discovery of these has equally been retarded by another
tendency — a tendency to celebrate whatever eccentricity has begotten upon
ignorance in this new land as, at last, the authentic American achievement.
The prevalence of such mistaken points of departure in the criticism of
PREFACE
IX
American literature may help to account for the fact that native letters have been,
until recently, almost neglected in our colleges and universities. It is more
than time that this condition should change, and it will be an event of happy
augury for our future as a nation when it can be said confidently that it has
changed. Some college professors have been heard to say that they would con-
sider their lives wasted if spent in the teaching of our literature, but such an
attitude can be only the result of ignorance, bred by a vicious specialism. Our
little specialists, indeed, have tended to rob all literary studies of breadth and
substance and deep human value by their acceptance of ^'current finical and
transitory definitions of literature" which divorce the subject from intellectual,
social, and political history; but the ignorance and narrowness encouraged by
specialism cannot indefinitely delay the realization that neglect of American
letters is disgraceful. For in reality there are "admirable riches of human nature"
stored in our literature whose discovery should not be left to unlikely accident
and the chance recommendations of journalists; and, in addition, it requires but
little thought to recognize the extraordinary nature, after all, of the fact that we
should pretend to give our youth a liberal education, and yet should omit their
own literature from their courses of instruction. This may have been well once;
it is w^ell no longer when — as any candid review of such matter as is gathered in the
present work must show — we incontestably have produced a national literature
of high value from any point of view, and one which must be known and studied
by all who seek to learn what it means to be an American.
In the preparation of this collection of texts, I have endeavored to reduce
explanatory matter to its minimum, but, at the same time, I have aimed to provide
such help as may be needed for fairly rapid yet accurate reading, and also to pro-
vide information sufficient for the personal approach to the various writers repre-
sented w^hich is an indispensable element in the study of literature. Wherever
it has been possible, only pieces complete in themselves have been selected for
use. Omissions have been permitted solely because of considerations of space;
and all editorial omissions in the texts are indicated by asterisks, so as to dis-
tinguish them plainly from the cases where authors themselves have, for one
purpose or another, made use of extra periods. In general, modern usage has
been followed in the matters of spelling and punctuation, though to this rule a
few exceptions have been made in cases where (as in Bacon s Epitaph) this has
seemed advantageous.
Such a work as the present one involves many debts, not all of which can
even be acknowledged, much less repaid. The help afforded by the Cambridge
History of American Literature has been indispensable, and I also owe much to
earlier editors. I am indebted, in common with all students of our literature, to
the important historical studies of Professor Fred Lewis Pattee and to his scholarly
edition of the more important poems of Freneau. Other obligations there are, too
numerous for any save this general acknowledgment, but I must at least express my
gratitude to several persons without whose help or encouragement my work would
have been far more difficult: — Mr. Edwin Arlington Robinson, Mrs. William
Vaughn Moody, Mr. Paul Elmer More, Mr. John Jay Chapman, Mr. and Mrs.
PREFACE
Vachel Lindsay, Mr. Wilson Follctt, Mr. Horace Livcright, Mrs. Alfred A. Knopf,
Professor J. Penrose Harland of the University of Cincinnati, Mrs. O. T. Wilson
of the Cincinnati Public Library, Mr. E. D. Hellweg and Mr. W. E, Thomas of
the staff of Messrs. Doubleday, Page and Company, and, finally, my wife, whose
aid in the preparation of the manuscript, in the reading of proofs, and indeed in
every phase of the work, has been constant and invaluable. My obligations to
several publishing houses are recorded in each case on the pages where they occur.
No pains have been spared to secure accuracy in both texts and notes, but
in such a compilation as this errors are almost inevitable. I hope that at least
no serious ones remain to be discovered, but I shall be grateful to any who use
the work for pointing out to me any errors they find, of whatever sort, so that
they may be promptly corrected.
Robert Shafek
10 May, 1926.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PART I : FROM THE BEGINNINGS TO LINCOLN AND MOTLEY
Bacon's Epitaph I
Cotton Mather
Magnalia Christ! Americana:
Book II, Chap. IV, Life of John Winthrop .......... 4
Book VI, Chap. VII, Preternatural Occurrences: The Ninth Example .... 14
John Wise
A Vindication of the Government of New England Churches:
Second Demonstration, from the Light of Nature ........ 22
Passage on Mixed Governments • • 34
Jonathan Edwards
The Mind: Excellency .............. 37
Notes on Natural Science: Of the Prejudices of the Imagination 41
Of Being ........... 42
Things to be Considered, Second Series, 47 45
Sarah Pierrepont 45
Personal Narrative .............. 45
The Christian Pilgrim 53
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God 60
Benjamin Franklin
Autobiography (With omissions) ............ 70
The Way to Wealth 114
John Dickinson
Letters from a Farmer In Pennsylvania: Letter I 119
Letter XI ........ 121
St. John de Cr^vecceur
Letters from an American Farmer:
Letter III, What is an American.? 128
Thomas Paine
Common Sense:
I. On the Origin and Design of Government In General, with Concise Remarks on the
English Constitution ........... 142
II. Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession ........ 145
III. Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs 149
Thomas Jefferson
The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America ..... 159
First Inaugural Address ............. 162
Character of Washington ............. 164
Alexander Hamilton
The Federalist:
XV. The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union . , , 168
XVI. The Same Subject Continued 172
XXIII. The Necessity of a Government as Energetic as the One Proposed to the Pres-
ervation of the Union .......... 175
LXX. The Executive Department Further Considered 177
Joel Barlow
The Hasty Pudding , . . . . 1S2
xi
xii CONTENTS
Phii.ip Kri-ni-au page
On the Memorable Victory of Paul Jones 189
To the Memory of the Brave Americans .......... 191
The Political Balance 191
On Captain liarney's Victory over the Ship G^w^rrrt/ A/on^ 196
The Wild Honey Suckle 197
To an Author 197
The Indian i^urying Ground 198
Ode (God save the Rights of Man) 198
On a Honey Bee 199
On the Anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille 199
The Republican Genius of Europe 200
To a Caty-Did 200
Washington Irving
The Sketch-Book: The Author's Account of Himself 202
Knglish Writers on America ......... 204
Rural Life in England 208
John Bull 211
TheAlhambra: Palace of the Alhambra 216
Important Negotiations. — The Author Succeeds to the Throne of Boabdil
(A portion omitted) . . . . 222
The Hall of Ambassadors .......... 223
The Court of Lions (A portion omitted) ....... 225
Legend of the Arabian Astrologer 227
Legend of the Two Discreet Statues 235
William Cullen Bryant
Thanatopsis 245
The Yellow Violet 246
Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood ........... 246
To a Waterfowl 247
A Forest Hymn 248
I Broke the Spell 249
I Cannot Eorget 249
The Conjunction of Jupiter and Venus ........... 250
To the Fringed Gentian .............. 251
The Prairies ................ 251
The Poet 253
William Hickling Prescott
History of the Conquest of Peru, Book III: Chap. Ill (A portion omitted) .... 256
Chap. IV 258
Chap. V (A portion omitted) .... 266
John Caldwell Calhoun
A Disquisition on Government (With omissions) ......... 275
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Rhodora ................ 292
Each and All 292
The Apology ................ 293
Concord Hymn ............... 293
The Humble-Bee 294
The Problem 294
The Sphinx ................ 295
The Snow-Storm ............... 297
Fable 297
Forbearance . 297
To J. W 297
Destiny 298
Ode, Inscribed to W. H. Channing 298
Give All to Love 299
Musketaquid 300
CONTENTS xiii
PAGE
Days 301
Two Rivers ................ 301
Brahma ................. 301
Ode, Sung in the Town Hall, Concord, July 4, 1857 301
Waldeinsamkeit ............... 302
Nature: Introduction .............. 303
I. Nature 303
II, Commodity .............. 304
III. Beauty 305
IV. Language .............. 308
V. Discipline . . . . . . . . . . . . . '311
VI. Idealism 314
VII. Spirit 317
VIII. Prospects 319
The American Scholar .............. 322
Essays, First Series: II. Self-Reliance . . . . . . . . . . -331
IX. The Over-Soul 344
Essays, Second Series: VII. Politics ........... 352
Representative Men: VI. Napoleon; or, The Man of the World ..... . 358
The Conduct of Life: VII. Considerations by the Way .... ... 368
Henry David Thoreau
Sympathy ................ 379
Sic Vita 380
Independence ................ 380
Walden: II. Where I Lived, and What I Lived For ........ 380
IIL Reading 388
IV. Sounds .............. 393
V. Solitude 400
VII. The Bean-Field 404
XI. Higher Laws 409
XII. Brute Neighbors 410
Life without Principle .............. 424
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter ............... 433
Edgar Allan Poe
A Dream within a Dream ............. 523
Sonnet — To Science .............. 524
Romance ................ 524
To (The bowers whereat, in dream, I see) ......... 524
To (I heed not that my earthly lot) .......... 524
To Helen ................ 524
Israfel 525
The City in the Sea .............. 525
The Sleeper ................ 526
The Raven ................ 527
Ulalume ................. 529
The Bells ................ 530
Eldorado ................ 531
For Annie ................ 532
Annabel Lee ................ 533
The Assignation ............... 533
To One in Paradise .............. 538
Ligeia 539
The Conqueror Worm .............. 542
The Fall of the House of Usher ............ 547
The Haunted Palace .............. 552
The Mask of the Red Death 557
The Purloined Letter 560
xiv CONTENTS
PAGE
The Cask ot AinontilhuK) ............. 569
Hawthorne's T:cici-Told Talcs ............ 572
The Poetic Principle 576
Henry Wadsworth Longfkllow
The Spirit of Poetry 588
A Psahn of Life 5S9
Hymn to the Night 5S9
Footsteps of Angels .............. 589
The Slave's Dream .............. 590
The Arsenal at Springfield ............. 591
Nuremberg ................ 591
Children ................ 593
The Warden of the Cincjue Ports ............ 593
Catawba Wine ............... 594
My Lost Youth 595
Weariness ................ 596
Divina Commedia ............... 596
Giotto's Tower ............... 597
John Greenleaf Whittier
The Moral Warfare .............. 599
Forgiveness ................ 599
Proem ................. 599
The Wish of To-day .............. 600
Ichabod ..... ...... 600
First-Day Thoughts 601
Trust 601
Burns ................. 601
Maud Muller 603
The Barefoot Boy ............... 604
Skipper Ireson's Ride .............. 605
Telling the Bees 606
Laus Deo ................ 607
Snow-Bound ................ 608
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The Height of the Ridiculous ............ 617
Old Ironsides ................ 617
The Ballad of the Oysterman 617
My Aunt 618
The Last Leaf 619
The Poet's Lot 619
On Lending a Punch-Bowl ............. 620
The Stethoscope Song .............. 621
The Chambered Nautilus 622
The Voiceless ................ 622
Hymn of Trust ............... 623
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table:
I 623
Album Verses 629
Latter-Day Warnings 632
A Parting Health (To J. L. Motley) 632
II 633
Sun and Shadow 638
Prologue (This is It) 640
Ode for a Social Meeting ............ 641
XI ... 642
The Deacon's Masterpiece 643
iEstivation 647
Contentment 649
CONTENTS XV
James Russell Lowell page
Sonnets: III (I would not have this perfect love) 651
VI (Great Truths are portions of the soul) ........ 651
XXV (I grieve not that ripe Knowledge) . . . . . . . . .651
The Sower 652
Freedom ................ 652
The Biglow Papers, First Series:
I. A Letter from Mr. Ezekiel Biglow 653
III. What Mr. Robinson Thinks 656
VI. The Pious Editor's Creed 658
A Fable for Critics (With omissions) 660
The Washers of the Shroud 676
The Biglow Papers, Second Series:
The Courtin' 678
VI. Sunthin* in the Pastoral Line 679
Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration . . 684
An Ember Picture 689
Leaves from my Journal in Italy and Elsewhere:
IV. A Few Bits of Roman Mosaic 690
Thoreau ................. 700
On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners 707
Abraham Lincoln
Cooper Union Speech (A portion omitted) . . . . . . , . . .721
Alessage to Congress in Special Session (4 July, 1861) ........ 728
The Gettysburg Address ............. 736
Letter to Mrs. Bixby 736
Second Inaugural Address ............. 737
John Lothrop Motley
The Rise of the Dutch Republic:
Part II, Administration of the Duchess Margaret, Chap. I ..... , 740
PART II : FROM MELVILLE AND WHITMAN TO THE PRESENT TIME
Herman Melville
Moby Dick; or, The White Whale:
Chap. XXXVI. The Quarter-Deck 3
Chap. XXXVII. Sunset 7
Chap. XXXVIII. Dusk . 7
Chap. XXXIX. First Night-Watch 8
Chap. XL. Midnight. — Forecastle 8
Chap. XLI. MobvDick 11
Chap. LXXXV. The Fountain 16
Chap. XCVI. The Try-Works 19
Chap. CXXXII. The Symphony .......... 21
Chap. CXXXIII. The Chase — First Day 23
Chap. CXXXIV. The Chase — Second Day ......... 27
Chap. CXXXV. The Chase — Third Day 32
Epilogue ................ 37
Walt Whitman
Shut Not Your Doors 41
Poets to Come 41
Starting from Paumanok 41
Song of Myself 48
One Hour to Madness and Joy 82
Whoever You are Holding Me now in Hand 83
Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances ........... 84
The Base of All Metaphysics ,,....,. 84
XVI
CONTENTS
FACE .
RccorcliTS A);cs I Icnce 85
I Hear it was Charged against Me 85
Wlu'ii I Peruse the Conquered Fame ....*....,. S5;
No Labor-Saving Machine 86.
Song of the Open Road 86
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry ga
Pioneers! O Pioneers! .............. 95;
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking 98;
Tears ................. 102:
On the Beach at Night . . . . . . . . . . . . . .102:
When I Heard the Learn 'd Astronomer 103;
Thought (Of obedience) .............. 103;
Come up from the Fields Father ............ 103;
As I Lay with my Head in your Lap Camerado ......... 104;.
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed .......... 105:
0 Captain! My Captain! . . . . . . . . . . . . . iiO'
There was a Child Went Forth . . . . . . . . . . , .110
Who Learns my Lesson Complete? . . . . . . . . . . .111
Whispers of Heavenly Death . . . . . . . . . . . . .112
Frchce to Leaves of Grass, 1855 ............ 113
A Backward Glance o'er Traveled Roads .......... 120
Francis Parkman
The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century:
Chap. XVL Isaac Jogues ............ 130
Chap. XVn. The Iroquois (A portion omitted) ........ 139
Chap. XXII. Priest and Puritan (A portion omitted) ....... 143
Chap. XXIV. The Huron Church 147
Emily Dickinson
This is my Letter 153
I'm Nobody 153
1 Meant to Have but Modest Needs 153
I Like to See It Lap the Miles 153
He Preached 154
There is no Frigate like a Book ............ 154
It Dropped so Low in my Regard ............ 154
The Bone that has no Marrow ............ 154
Doubt Me, my Dim Companion ............ 154
If You were Coming in the Fall ............ 154
She Rose to his Requirement ............. 155
Of All the Souls that Stand Create 155
I Like a Look of Agony .............. 155
I've Seen a Dying Eye 155
The Bustle in a House 155
Bret Harte ' ^
Mliss , .
Mark Twain
Life on the Mississippi:
Chap. IV. The Boys' Ambition
Chap. XVIII. I Take a Few Extra Lessons ....
Chap. XIX. Brown and I Exchange Compliments
Chap. XX. A Catastrophe ......
Chap. XXI. A Section in my Biography (A sentence omitted)
Chap. L. The "Original Jacobs" (Portions omitted)
Chap. LX. Speculations and Corjelijisioijs (Portions omitted)
John Muir
The Mountains of California: Chap. III. The Snow ....
Chap.. ly, A Near View of the High Sierra
)'■■
157
172
174
177
179
181
182
183
186
190
CONTENTS xvii
William Dkan Howells page
Criticism and Fiction:
II. (A portion omitted) 201
IV 204
XV 205
XVIII 206
XIX 209
XXII. (A portion omitted) 211
Henry James
The Death of the Lion 214
The Special Type 233
Henry Adams
History of the United States, Vol. I: Chap. II. Popular Characteristics .... 244
Chap. VI. American Ideals ..... 255
Sidney Lanier
The Marshes of Glynn 267
Song of the Chattahoochee ............. 269
From the Flats 269
The Symphony ............... 270
Struggle 274
Song for The Jacquerie (May the maiden) ........ . . 274
John Banister Tabb
Compensation ............... 275
To an Old Wassail-Cup 275
Autumn Song ................ 275
Angels of Pain ............... 275
Baby ................. 276
A Bunch of Roses ............... 276
Shadows ................ 276
At Last 276
The Pilgrim ................ 276
An Interview ................ 276
Anticipation ................ 276
Deus Absconditus ............... 276
Fancy 276
The Voyager ................ 276
Adrift ................. 277
My Secret . 277
George Washington Cable
Belles Demoiselles Plantation , . 279
Lafcadio Hearn
Fuji-no-Yama ............... 289
A Question in the Zen Texts , 298
Of Moon-Desire 300
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
Louisa .................. 303
Clyde Fitch
The Girl with the Green Eyes . . . , 315
Stephen Crane
The Black Riders and Other Lines:
1 350
ni 350
VII 350
IX. 350
XI. 350
XVII 350
XX. 350
XXIV 350
xvi.i CONTENTS
PAGE
XXX. 351
XLIV 351
XI>V 351
xmii 351
War is Kind:
^ 3SI
IV ,51
XIII 351
XIV 352
XV 352
XXII. ................ 352
A Mystery of Heroism .............. 352
Passage from A Gray Sleeve • 357
William Crary Brownell
Cooper 360
William Vaughn Moody
I am the Woman ............... 381
The Death of Eve 382
O. Henry
A Lickpenny Lover 387
The Roads we Take 390
The Furnished Room 392
Edith Wharton
The Pelican 396
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Flammonde 408
Cassandra 409
Old King Cole 410
The Man against the Sky . . . . . . . . . . . . .411
Richard Cory 414
Isaac and Archibald .............. 414
The Growth of "Lorraine" 419
Miniver Cheevy ............... 419
Firelight 420
Inferential ................ 420
Mr. Flood's Party 420
Vain Gratuities . , 421
John Jay Chapman
Emerson 422
George Santayana
Sonnet III (0 world, thou choosest not) 453
Sonnet XLII (As when the scepter dangles) .......... 453
Ode II (My heart rebels) 454
The Poetry of Barbarism 454
Paul Elmer More
Lafcadio Hearn ............... 47^
The New Morality 479
The Spirit and Poetry of Early New England 487
Theodore Dreiser
The Second Choice 49^
Amy Lowell
Guns as Keys: and the Great Gate Swings . .510
Robert Frost
In Neglect 522
Revelation 5^2
The Demiurge's Laugh 522
CONTENTS xix
PAGE
Mending Wall 522
The Death of the Hired Man 523
A Servant to Servants 525
The Code 528
The Road not Taken 529
An Old Man's Winter Night 530
The Hill Wife:
I. Loneliness — Her Word 530
II. House Fear .............. 530
III. The Smile — Her Word 530
IV. The Ott Repeated Dream 530
V. The Impulse . . . . . . . . . . . . . ♦ 53^
The Sound of the Trees .............. 531
Fire and Ice ................ 53 1
The Runaway. ............... 531
The Onset 532
Vachel Lindsay
I Know All This When Gypsy Fiddles Cry 534
Incense 536
Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight 536
Springfield Magical .............. 537
A Gospel of Beauty:
I. The Proud Farmer ............. 537
II. The Illinois Village 538
III. On the Building of Springfield 538
John L. Sullivan, the Strong Boy of Boston 539
Simon Legree — A Negro Sermon ............ 540
John Brown ................ 541
How Samson Bore away the Gates of Gaza .......... 542
Queen Mab in the Village 543
My Fathers Came from Kentucky 544
Edgar Lee Masters
Spoon River Anthology:
The Hill 546
Robert Fulton Tanner 547
Benjamin Pantier .............. 547
Mrs, Benjamin Pantier 547
Daisy Fraser 548
Doctor Meyers 548
Mrs. Meyers 548
Knowit Hoheimer 548
Doc Hill 548
Fiddler Jones 549
Petit, the Poet 549
Washington McNeely 549
Thomas Rhodes .............. 549
Editor Whedon 550
Seth Compton 550
Perry Zoll 550
Archibald Higbie 550
Father Malloy 551
Anne Rutledge 551
Rutherford McDowell 551
Lucinda Matlock 551
Slip-Shoe Lovey 552
Christmas at Indian Point 552
Mournin' for Religion 553
XX
CONTENTS
The New Spoon River:
Kzra Fink
Dick S.ii>|HT .
Thomas MacCrackcn
Henry Raheneau
Sarah Dewitt .
On a Death Mask (Four Sonnets)
Sherwood ANorRSON
A Man of Ideas
"Queer" ....
brink
Eugene O'Neill
"The Hairy Ape" .......
Index of Authors, Titles, and First Lines of Poems
554
554
555
555
555
555
558
562
566
572
597
CONTENTS
Arranged according to Types
It need scarcely be said that the classification of literature by types is always and of necessity
a fluid and approximate matter. Many methods are equally possible, and for various purposes dif-
ferent methods are best. No classification by types is likely to suit two teachers equally well; for,
even when there is agreement as to the best or most useful method for a specific purpose, there is still
room for many differences of opinion as to the place within a system of classification where a given
work is to be put. Probably no one has ever looked through a classified list without at once seeing
what he considered mistakes of judgment. The texts in the present collection are arranged chrono-
logically to illustrate the course of American literature from its beginning to the present day, in order
that students may be enabled to form a sound conception of our literature as a whole and in its his-
torical development. But it is believed that this arrangement of the texts is also the most satisfac-
tory one for the purpose of studying types of literature. For it not only insures something, at least,
of the historical perspective essential in any study of literature, but also enables teachers to make
their own classifications in accordance with their own judgment and in accordance with the needs of
their own students.
►/. The following arrangement by types is intended as a suggestion for this purpose. It is hoped
that it may be practically useful, and to this end strict consistency has been sacrificed. Some types
of literature are important and significant for their form, others for their method, and others for their
content. The effort has been to distinguish important types, regardless of the system of classifica-
tion which any one taken by itself might suggest as appropriate for the whole body of literature.
Moreover, in several of the groups of lyrical poems pieces have been included which, though not
properly lyrics, nevertheless belong, either by virtue of content or by virtue of form, to a distinct
and predominantly lyrical type. Some duplication in a classification according to types is in any
event unavoidable, but this procedure in the present instance has materially lessened duplication,
and at the same time it should, in fact, increase the practical usefulness of the following lists.
I. EPIC
Burlesque-Epic part page
Joel Barlow
The Hasty Pudding I 182
II. NARRATIVE IN VERSE .-''''J
John Greenleaf Whittier
Snow-Bound ^^l^tA .XT"^-" 'I 608
James Russell Lowell • .^ih^^^n-i?.
Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line } iS. .^.^}.V.V^} . .^."^'^ I 679
William Vaughn Moody noii);?fi.)f|fri(0
The Death of Eve ^}9r}V:^^^^7! M} .^h ."J II 382
Edwin Arlington Robinson -^no?. rurimuA
Isaac and Archibald ...■.•.•.•..•..■..; Pi^7.V. ?vW.^ II
Amy Lowell ydnH
Guns as Keys: And the Great Gate Swings .-.■. t?.nJ iA n
xxi ^ ^"'^2 '-^^ .
414
510
xxu
CONTENTS BY TYPES
III. BALLAD
Phii.ip Freneau part page
On the Memorable Victory of Paul Jones I 189
On Captain Barney's Victory over the Ship General Monk I 196
John Greenleaf Whittier
Maud Mullcr I 603 Skipper Ireson's Ride I 605
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The Ballad of the Oysterman I 617 The Stethoscope Song I 621
The Deacon's Masterpiece I 643
James Russell Lowell
The Courtin' I 678
IV. DRAMA
Clyde Fitch
The Girl with the Green Eyes II 315
Eugene O'Neill
"The Hairy Ape" II 572
I. Meditative
Philip Freneau
To an Author
William Cullen Bryant
To a Waterfowl
A Forest Hymn
V. LYRIC
I 197 On a Honey Bee I 199
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Each and All
The Sphinx
Henry David Thoreau
Sic Vita
Edgar Allan Poe
A Dream within a Dream
Sonnet — To Science
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Children
Weariness
John Greenleaf Whittier
Proem
The Barefoot Boy. . . .
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The Chambered Nautilus
James Russell Lowell
' The Sower
Emily Dickinson
He Preached
There is no Frigate like a Book. . . ,
The Bustle in a House.
^Sidney Lanier
Struggle
(John Banister Tabb
Compensation
I To an Old Wassail-Cup
Autumn Song
- Angels of Pain
Baby^^ .....^■.
] V At Last
My Secret
I 247 I Cannot Forget I 249
I 248 The Conjunction of Jupiter and
Venus I 250
I 292 The Problem I 294
I 29s
I 380 Independence I 380
I 523 Romance I 524
I 524 Israfel I 525
I 593 My Lost Youth I 595
I 596
I 599 Burns I 601
I 604
I
622
I
652
II
II
154
154
The Voiceless
Freedom ....
I 622
I 652
The Bone that has no Marrow. ... II 154
I Like a Look of Agony II 155
n iss
II 274
II 275 The Pilgrim II 276
II 275 Anticipation II 276
II 275 Deus Absconditus II 276
II 275 Fancy II 276
II 276 The Voyager II 276
II 276 Adrift II 277
II 277
CONTENTS BY TYPES xxiii
Stephen Crane part page
The Black Riders and Other Lines:
VII II 350 XXX II 351
IX II 350 XLV II 351
War is Kind:
I II 351 XIII II 351
IV 11 351 XV II 352
Edwin Arlington Robinson
The Man against the Sky II 411
Robert Frost
Revelation II 522 The Sound of the Trees II 531
The Demiurge's Laugh II 522 Fire and Ice II 531
The Road not Taken II 529 The Onset II 532
Vachel Lindsay
I Know All This When Gypsy Fiddles Cry II 534
Springfield Magical II 537 On the Building of Springfield II 538
The Illinois Village II 538 My Fathers Came from Kentucky. II 544
Religious
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Brahma I 301
John Greenleaf Whittier
The Wish of To-day I 600 First-Day Thoughts I 601
Trust I 601
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Hymn of Trust I 623
Vachel Lindsay
Incense II 536
Love
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Give All to Love I 299
Henry David Thoreau
Sympathy I 379
Edgar Allan Poe
To (The bowers whereat) I 524
To (I heed not that my earthly lot) I 524
For Annie I 532
Edward Coate Pinkney
A Health I 582
Emily Dickinson
Doubt Me, my Dim Companion II 154
If You were Coming in the Fall II 154
She Rose to his Requirement II 155
Of All the Souls that Stand Create II 155
Sidney Lanier
Song for The Jacquerie II 274
Vachel Lindsay
Queen Mab in the Village II 543
Nature
Philip Freneau
The Wild Honey Suckle I 197 To a Caty-Did I 200
William Cullen Bryant
The Yellow Violet . I 246 A Forest Hymn I 248
Inscription for the Entrance to a I Broke the Spell I 249
Wood I 246 To the Fringed Gentian I 251
The Prairies I 251
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Rhodora I 292 The Snow-Storm I 297
The Apology I 293 Musketaquid I 300
The Humble-Bee I 294 Two Rivers I 301
Waldeinsamkeit I 302
xxiv CONTENTS BY TYPES
Hi NRY W.vDswdKin Longfellow part page
The Spirit of Pottry I 588
SiDNKY Lanier
The Marshes of (ilynn II 267 The Sonj^ of the Chattahoochee. . . II 269
From the Flats II 269
Robert Frost
The Sound of the Trees II 531 The Onset II 532
Dramalic
William Vaughn Moody
I Am the Woman II 381
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Flammonde II 40S Richard Cory II 414
Cassandra II 409 The (irowth of "Lorraine" II 419
Old King Cole II 410 Miniver Cheevy II 419
Mr. Flood's Party II 420
Robert Frost
Mending Wall II 522 The Code II 528
The Death of the Hired Man II 523 An Old Man's Winter Night II 530
A Servant to Servants II 525 The Hill Wife II 530
The Runaway II 531
Vachel Lindsay
Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight II 536
Simon Legree — A Negro Sermon II 540
John Brown II 541
How Samson Bore away the Gates of Gaza II 542
Edgar Lee Masters
Spoon River Anthology:
Robert Fulton Tanner.
Benjamin Pantier
Mrs. Benjamin Pantier.
Daisy Fraser
Doctor Meyers
I Mrs. Meyers
I Knowlt Hoheimer
J Doc Hill
547 Petit, the Poet II 549
547 Washington McNeely II 549
547 Thomas Rhodes II 549
548 Editor Whedon II 550
548 Seth Compton II 550
548 Perry ZoU II 550
548 Archibald Higbie II 550
548 Anne Rutledge II 551
Fiddler Jones II 549 Rutherford McDowell II 551
Lucinda Matlock II 551
Slip Shoe Lovey II 55^
T Christmas at Indian Point II 552
Mournin' for Religion II 553
The New Spoon River:
Ezra Fink II 554 Thomas MacCracken II 555
Dick Sapper II 554 Henry Rabeneau II 555
Sarah Dewitt II 555
6. Elegy
Bacon's Epitaph I I
Philip Freneau
To the Memory of the Brave Americans I 191
The Indian Burying Ground I 198
Edgar Allan Poe
To Helen I 524 Annabel Lee I 533
The Sleeper I 526 To One in Paradise I 538
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Warden of the Cinque Ports I 593
John Greenleaf Whittier
Telling the Bees I 606
Walt Whitman
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed II 105
O Captain ! My Captain ! II no
CONTENTS BY TYPES xxv
Vachel Lindsay ^^^^ ^^^^
The Proud P\armcr II 537
Edgar Lee Masjers
The Hill 11 546 Father Malloy II 551
Son7ict
Edgar Allan Poe
Sonnet — To Science I 5^4
Henry Wadsvvorth Longfellow
Divina Commedia: I, II, III I 596 Divina Commedia: IV, V, VI I 597
Giotto's Tower I 597
James Russell Lowell
Sonnets: HI, VI, XXV I 651
John Banister Tabb
Shadows II 276
Edwin Arlington Robinson
The Growth of "Lorraine": I, II.. II 419 Inferential II 420
Firelight II 420 Vain Gratuities II 421
George Santayana
Sonnets: III, XLII II 453
Edgar Lee Masters
On a Death Mask: I II 555 On a Death Mask: II, III, IV. .. . II 556
Ode
Philip Freneau
Ode I 198
On the Anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille I 199
The Republican Genius of Europe I 200
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Concord Hymn I 293
Ode, Inscribed to W. H. Channing I 298
Ode Sung in the Town Hall, Concord I 301
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Hymn to the Night I 589
John Greenleaf Whittier
Laus Deo ! I 607
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Old Ironsides I 617
James Russell Lowell
Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration I 684
Sidney Lanier
The Symphony II 270
George Santayana
Ode II II 454
Free Verse
Walt Whitman
Shut Not Your Doors II 41
Poets to Come II 41
Starting from Paumanok II 41
Song of Myself II 48
One Hour to Madness and Joy II 82
Whoever You are Holding Me Now in Hand II 83
Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances II 84
The Base of All Metaphysics II 84
Recorders Ages Hence II 85
I Hear it was Charged against Me II 85
When I Peruse the Conquered Fame II 85
No Labor-Saving Machine II 86
Song of the Open Road II 86
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry II 92
Pioneers ! O Pioneers ! II 95
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking II 98
xxvi CONTENTS BY TYPES
PART PAGE
Tears II 102
On the Rcncli at Night II 102
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer II 103
Thought (Of obedience, faith, adhesiveness) II 103
Come up from the Fields Father H 103
As I Lay with my Head in your Lap Camerado II 104
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed II 105
O Captain! My Captain! II no
There was a Child Went Forth II no
Who Learns my Lesson Complete? II m
W' hispers of Heavenly Death II 112
Stephen Crane
The Black Riders and Other Lines:
I II 350 XX II 350
III II 350 XXIV II 350
VII II 350 XXX II 351
IX II 350 XLIV II 351
XI II 350 XLV II 35T
XVII II 350 XLVIII II 351
War is Kind:
I II 351 XIV II 352
IV II 351 XV II 352
XIII II 351 XXII II 352
Amy Lowell
Guns as Keys: And the Great Gate Swings II 510
Edgar Lee Masters
Spoon River Anthology:
The Hill II 546 Petit, the Poet II 549
Robert Fulton Tanner II 547 Washington McNeely II 549
Benjamin Pantier II 547 Thomas Rhodes II 549
Mrs. Benjamin Pantier II 547 Editor Whedon II 550
Daisy Eraser II 548 Seth Compton II 550
Doctor Meyers II 548 Perry Zoll II 550
Mrs. Meyers II 548 Archibald Higbie II 550
Knowlt Hoheimer II 548 Father Malloy II 551
Doc Hill II 548 Anne Rutledge II 551
Fiddler Jones II 549 Rutherford McDowell II 551
Lucinda Matlock II 551
The New Spoon River:
Ezra Fink II 554 Thomas MacCracken II 555
Dick Sapper II 554 Henry Rabeneau II 555
Sarah Dewitt II 555
10. Light and Humorous
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The Height of the Ridiculous I 617 Album Verses I 629
My Aunt I 618 Latter-Day Warnings I 632
The Last Leaf c I 619 Prologue (This is It) I 640
The Poet's Lot I 619 Ode for a Social Meeting I 641
On Lending a Punch-Bowl I 620 .Estivation I 647
Contentment I 649
Emily Dickinson
I'm Nobody n 153
Vachel Lindsay
John L. Sullivan, the Strong Boy of Boston II 539
1 1 . Miscellaneous
William Cullen Bryant
The Poet I 253
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fable I 297 ToJ. W I 297
Forbearance I 297 Days I 301
CONTENTS BY TYPES xxvli
Edgar Allan Poe part page
The City in the Sea I 525 The Bells I 530
The Raven I 527 Eldorado I 531
Ulalume I 529 The Conqueror Worm I 542
The Haunted Palace I 552
Nathaniel Parker Willis
Unseen Spirits I 578
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Day is Done I 580 The Arsenal at Springfield I 591
Footsteps of Angels I 589 Nuremberg I 591
The Slave's Dream I 590 Catawba Wine I 594
John Greenleaf Whittier
The Moral Warfare I 599 Forgiveness I 599
Oliver Wendell Holmes
A Parting Health (To J. L. Motley) I 632
Sun and Shadow I 638
James Russell Lowell
The Washers of j:he Shroud I (y-jG An Ember Picture I 689
Emily Dickinson
This is my Letter H 153 I Like to See it Lap the Miles II 153
I Meant to Have but Modest Needs II 153 It Dropped so Low in my Regard . . II 154
I've Seen a Dying Eye II 155
John Banister Tabb
A Bunch of Roses II 276 An Interview II 276
Robert Frost
In Neglect II 522
VI. DIDACTIC VERSE
William Cullen Bryant
Thanatopsis I 245 The Poet I 253
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fable I 297 Destiny I 298
To J. W I 297 Give All to Love I 299
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A Psalm of Life I 589
VII. SATIRE
Philip Freneau
The Political Balance I
191
John Greenleaf Whittier
Ichabod I 600
James Russell Lowell
The Biglow Papers, First Series:
No. I I 653 No. VI I 658
No. Ill I 656 A Fable for Critics I 660
Edgar Lee Masters
Spoon River Anthology II 546
VIII. PHILOSOPHICAL PROSE
John Wise
Vindication of the Government of New England Churches I 22
Jonathan Edwards
The Mind : Excellency I
Notes on Natural Science:
Of the Prejudices of the Imagination I
Of Being I
Things to be Considered, Second Series, 47 I
37
41
42
45
XXVlll
CONTENTS BY TYPES
Thomas Paine
Common Sense
Thomas Jkffkrson
The Declaration of Independence. . I 159 First Inaugural Address
Alexander Hamilton
The Federalist:
XV. The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union. .
XVI, The Same Suhject Continued
XXIII, The Necessity of a Government as Energetic as the One Proposed to
the Preservation of the Union
LXX. The Executive Department Further Considered
John Caldwell Calhoun
A Disquisition on Government ,
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature (1836) I 302 The Over-Soul
Self-Reliance I 331 Politics ,
Henry David Thoreau
Life without Principle I 420
part page
142
162
168
172
175
177
275
344
352
IX. ORATION
Thomas Jefferson
First Inaugural Address
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The American Scholar
Abraham Lincoln
Cooper Union Speech I
Second Inaugural Address.
721 The Gettysburg Address.
I 737
I 162
I 322
I 'J-J.Cy
X. SERMON
Jonathan Edwards
The Christian Pilgrim
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
I 53
I 60
I
I
572 The Poetic Principle
660 Thoreau
XL ESSAY
I, Criticism
Washington Irving
The Sketch Book: English Writers on America
Edgar Allan Poe
Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales...
Ja.mes Russell Lowell
A Fable for Critics
Walt Whitman
Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855
A Backward Glance o'er Traveled Roads
William Dean Howells
Criticism and Fiction:
II
IV
XV
William Crary Brownell
Cooper
John Jay Chap.man
Emerson
George Santayana
The Poetry of Barbarism
Paul Elmer More
Lafcadio Hearn II 471 The New Morality
The Spirit and Poetry of Early New England II 487
II
II
II
201
204
205
XVIII.
XIX..
XXII.
I 204
I 576
I 700
[I 113
[I 120
II 206
II 209
II 211
II 360
[I 422
n 454
II 479
CONTENTS BY TYPES xxlx
Miscdlaneous P-^RT page
Bknjamin Franklin
The Way to Wealth I 114
John Dickinson
Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania: Letter I
Letter XI
St. John de Crevecceur
Letters from an American Farmer:
Letter IIL What is an American?
Thomas Jefferson
Character of Washington
Washington Irving
The Sketch Book: The Author's Account of Himself
Rural Life in England
John Bull
The Alhambra: Palace of the Alhambra
Important Negotiations
The Hall of Ambassadors
The Court of Lions
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The American Scholar I 322 Politics
Self-Reliance I 331 Napoleon
The Over-Soul I 344 Considerations by the Way
Henry David Thoreau
Walden: II. Where I Lived, and What I Lived for
III. Reading
IV. Sounds
V. Solitude
VII. The Bean-Field
XI. Higher Laws
XII. Brute Neighbors
Life without Principle
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table : I
II
XI
James Russell Lowell
Leaves from my Journal in Italy and Elsewhere:
IV. A Few Bits of Roman Mosaic
On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners
Abraham Lincoln
Message to Congress in Special Session
John Muir
The Mountains of California: III. The Snow I
IV. A Near View of the High Sierra I
Lafcadio Hearn
, Fuji-no-Yama II 289 A Question in the Zen Texts II 298
Of Moon-Desire II 300
119
121
128
164
202
208
211
216
222
223
225
352
358
368
380
388
393
400
404
409
414
420
623
633
642
690
707
728
186
190
XII. LETTER
Abraham Lincoln
Letter to Mrs. Bixby I 736
XIII. HISTORY
Cotton Mather
Magnalia Christ! Americana:
Life of John Winthrop I 4
Thaumatographia Pneumatica I 14
XXX
CONTENTS BY TYPES
Wii.i.iAM Hick 1,1 Nc; Prkscott part page
History ot tlu" Conquest of Peru, Hook HI: Chap. HI I 256
<^'liap. IV I 258
Chap. V : I 266
John Lothrop Motley
The Rise of the Dutch Republic:
Part II, Administration of the Ducness Margaret: Chap. I I 740
Francis Parkman
The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeeinh Century:
Chap. XVI, Isaac Jogues II 130
Chap. XVII, The Iroquois II 139
Chap. XXII, Priest and Puritan II 143
Chap. XXIV, The Huron Church II 147
Henry Adams
History of the United States of America during the Administrations of Jefferson
and Madison, Vol. I: Chap. II, Popular Characteristics II 244
Chap. VI, American Ideals II 255
45
XIV. BIOGRAPHY
Cotton Mather
Life of John Winthrop , I
Jonathan Edwards
Sarah Pierrepont I 45 Personal Narrative I
Benjamin Franklin
Autobiography I 70
Mark Twain
Life on the Mississippi:
Chap. IV, The Boys' Ambition II 172
Chap. XVIII, I Take a Few Extra Lessons II 174
Chap. XIX, Brown and I Exchange Compliments II 177
Chap. XX, A Catastrophe II 179
Chap. XXI, A Section in my Biography II 181
Chap. L, The "Original Jacobs" II 182
Chap. LX, Speculations and Conclusions II 183
The Mask of the Red Death
The Purloined Letter
The Cask of Amontillado. . .
XV. PROSE FICTION
Washington Irving
The Alhambra: Legend of the Arabian Astrologer
Legend of the Two Discreet Statues
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter .*
Edgar Allan Poe
The Assignation I 533
Ligeia I 539
The Fall of the House of Usher I 547
Herman Melville
Moby Dick; or. The White Whale:
Chap. XXXVI, The Quarter-Deck I
Chap. XXXVII, Sunset I
Chap. XXXVIII, Dusk I
Chap. XXXIX, First Night-Watch I
Chap. XL, Midnight, Forecastle I
Chap. XLI, Moby Dick I
Chap. LXXXV, The Fountain I
Chap. XCVI, The Try-Works I
Chap. CXXXII, The Symphony I
Chap. CXXXIII, The Chase— First Day I
227
235
433
557
560
569
3
7
7
8
8
II
16
19
21
23
CONTENTS BY TYPES
XXXI
Chap. CXXXIV, The Chase-Second Day
Chap. CXXXV, The Chase-Third Day. .
Epilogue
Bret Harte
Mli
iiss
Henry James
The Death of the Lion II
George Washington Cable
Belles Demoiselles Plantation
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
Louisa
;i4 The Special Type.
Stephen Crane
A Mystery of Heroism H 352 Passage from A Gray Sleeve
O. Henry
A Lickpenny Lover H 387 The Roads We Take
The Furnished Room H 392
Edith Wharton
The Pelican
Theodore Dreiser
The Second Choice
Sherwood Anderson
A Man of Ideas II 558 "Queer"
Drink II 566
part page
27
32
37
157
233
279
303
357
390
396
498
562
AMERICAN LITERATURE
PART I
FROM THE BEGINNINGS TO LINCOLN AND MOTLEY
BACON'S EPITAPH
The governor of Virginia in the third quarter of the seventeenth century, Sir William Berkeley,
was a high-handed autocrat whose character is well illustrated in his reply to the Commissioners of
Plantations (1671) when they asked: "What course is taken about the instructing the people within
your government in the Christian religion?" Berkeley answered: "The same course that is taken in
England out of towns, every man according to his ability instructing his children. We have forty-eight
parishes, and our ministers are well paid, and by my consent should be better if they would pray ojtener
and preach less. But of all other commodities, so of this, the worst are sent us, and we had few that
we could boast of, since the persecution in Cromwell's tyranny drove divers worthy men hither. But,
I thank God, there are no free schools nor printingy and I hope we shall not have these hundred years;
for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged
them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both!" Berkeley's almost absolute
power was exerted in favor of wealthy land-owners, and justly aroused popular discontent. Nathaniel
Bacon, a young planter on the western frontier of Virginia, was in 1676 suddenly elevated by events
and the action of the governor into the position of a popular leader. In that year his plantation was
attacked by Indians, who killed one of his men. He at once led a successful expedition against the
Indians, but was at the same time practically denounced a rebel by Berkeley, for assuming military
command without authority. This was the beginning of what is usually called "Bacon's Rebellion."
(The best modern account is in H. L. Osgood's American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, III, Chap.
viii.) It provoked a popular outcry and led to important but abortive political reforms. Bacon
assumed the character of a revolutionary leader, was on the whole successful, and, possibly, began to
entertain the notion of forming Virginia, Maryland, and Carolina into an independent commonwealth.
But, before the close of 1676, he was stricken with illness which caused his death, after which the
"rebellion" quickly subsided.
The Burwell Papers, so called because the manuscript was owned by the Burwell family in the early
part of the nineteenth century, contain an account of Bacon's Rebellion by an unknown hand. The
writer probably composed his narrative not long after 1676, and he wrote in sympathy with Berkeley.
In recounting the manner of Bacon's death he quoted "a cuple" of poems written upon the event,
one of which is the Epitaph printed below. All that we know concerning its author is contained in this
introductory sentence: "After he was dead he was bemoned in these following lines (drawne by the
Man that waited upon his person, as it is said) and who attended his Corps to there Buriall place."
Whoever the author, he was a genuine poet and, probably, a discerning student of Ben Jonson. He
"produced what is perhaps the one real American poem of the seventeenth century." (S. M. Tucker,
Canib. Hist. Am. Lit., I, 150.) For other American verse written before the time of Philip Freneau,
Mr, P. E. More has said, with disarming sympathy, all that can be said, in his essay entitled The Spirit
and Poetry of Early New England (reprinted in the second part of this work). Briefly, there was no
American poet save " Bacon's Man" before the latter half of the eighteenth century.
The Epitaph was first printed in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1814.
The copy then used was inaccurate. It was again printed, from the manuscript, in the Proceedings
of the same Society in 1866, and the present reprint follows this text, save for the correction of one or
two obvious slips. Punctuation, however, has been modernized.
Death, why so crewill .? What, no other way
To manifest thy splleene but thus to slay
Our hopes of safety, liberty, our all
Which, through thy tyrany, with him must
fall
To its late Caoss? Had thy rlged force
Bin delt by retale, and not thus in gross,
Griefe had bin silent. Now, wee must com-
plaine.
Since thou in him hast more then thousand
slane,
Whose lives and safetys did so much depend
On him there^ lif, with him there lives must
end. 10
If 't be a sin to thlnke Death brlb'd can
bee,
Wee must be guilty — say twas bribery
1 Their (as also ebewhere in the poem).
I^'XCON'S KPITAPII
(iiiidicl tin- fatnll shiift. Vcrn;ini.-is foes,
10 whom for scent crimes just vengance
owes
Disarved pla Mao, Prcrf.) That
which is to be drawn from man's reason,
flowing from the true current of that faculty,
when unperverted, may be said to be the
law of nature, on which account the Holy
Scriptures declare it written on men's hearts.
For being endowed with a soul, you may
know from yourself how and what you ought
to act {Romans, 2. 14): "These having not
a law, are a law^ to themselves." So that the
meaning is, when we acknowledge the law
of nature to be the dictate of right reason,
we must mean that the understanding of
man is endowed with such a power as to be
able, from the contemplation of human con-
dition, to discover a necessity of living agree-
ably with this law, and likewise to find out
some principle by which the precepts of it
may be clearly and solidly demonstrated.
The way to discover the law of nature in our
own state is by a narrow w^atch and accurate
contemplation of our natural condition and
propensions. Others say this is the w^ay to
find out the law of nature; scil., if a man
any ways doubts w^hether what he is going
to do to another man be agreeable to the law
of nature, then let him suppose himself to
be in that other man's room, and by this
rule effectually executed. A man must be
a very dull scholar to nature not to make
proficiency in the knowledge of her laws.
But more particularly in pursuing our con-
dition for the discovery of the law of nature,
this is very obvious to view, viz.:
1. A principle of self-love and self-preser-
vation is very predominant in every man's
being.
2. A sociable disposition.
3. An affection or love to mankind in
general.
And, to give such sentiments the force of
a law, we must suppose a God w^ho takes care
of all mankind, and has thus obliged each
one, as a subject of higher principles of being
than mere instincts. For that all law,
properly considered, supposes a capable
subject and a superior power, and the law
of God which is binding, is published by the
dictates of right reason as other ways.
Therefore, says Plutarch, "to follow God and
obey reason is the same thing." But, more-
over, that (jod has established the law of
nature as the general rule of government is
further illustrable from the many sanctions
in providence, and from the peace and guilt
of conscience in them that either obey or
violate the law of nature. But, moreover,
the foundation of the law of nature with
relation to government may be thus dis-
covered, scil.: Man is a creature extremely
desirous of his own preservation; of himself
he is plainly exposed to many wants, unable
to secure his ow^n safety and maintenance
without assistance of his fellows; and he is
also able of returning kindness by the further-
ance of mutual good; but yet man is often
found to be malicious, insolent, and easily
provoked, and as powerful in effecting mis-
chief as he is ready in designing it. Now
that such a creature may be preserved, it is
necessary that he be sociable; that is, that
he be capable and disposed to unite himself
to those of his own species, and to regulate
himself towards them, that they may have
no fair reason to do him harm, but rather
incline to promote his interests and secure
his rights and concerns. This, then, is a
fundamental law of nature, that every man,
as far as in him lies, do maintain a sociable-
ness with others, agreeable with the main
end and disposition of human nature in
general. For this is very apparent, that
reason and society render man the most
potent of all creatures. And finally, from
the principles of sociableness it foUow^s as a
fundamental law of nature, that man is not
so wedded to his own interest but that he
can make the common good the mark of his
aim. And hence he becomes capacitated to
enter into a civil state by the law of nature;
for without this property in nature, ;:'{::.,
Sociableness, which is for cementing of parts,
every government would soon molder and
dissolve.
The second great immunity of man is an
original liberty instamped upon his rational
nature. He that intrudes upon this liberty
violates the law of nature. In this discourse
I shall waive the consideration of man's
moral turpitude, but shall view him physi-
cally as a creature which God has made and
furnished essentially wnth many ennobling
immunities, which render him the most
VINDICATION OF GOVERNMENT OF NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES 25
august "animal in the world; and still, what-
ever has happened since his creation, he
remains at the upper end of nature, and as
such is a creature of a very noble character.
For as to his dominion, the whole frame of
the lower part of the universe is devoted to
his use and at his command; and his liberty
under the conduct of right reason is equal
with his trust. Which liberty may be briefly
considered, internally as to his mind, and
externally as to his person.
The native liberty of man's nature implies
a faculty of doing or omitting things accord-
ing to the direction of his judgment. But
in a more special meaning this liberty does
not consist in a loose and ungovernable
freedom or in an unbounded license of acting.
Such license is disagreeing with the con-
dition and dignity of man, and would make
man of a lower and meaner constitution than
brute creatures, who in all their liberties are
kept under a better and more rational gov-
ernment by their instincts. Therefore, as
Plutarch says, "Those persons only who live
in obedience to reason are worthy to be
accounted free; they alone live as they will
who have learned what they ought to will."
So that the true natural liberty of man, such
as really and truly agrees to him, must be
understood, as he is guided and restrained
by the ties of reason and laws of nature. All
the rest is brutal, if not worse.
Man's external personal, natural liberty,
antecedent to all human parts or alliances,
must also be considered. And so every man
must be conceived to be perfectly in his own
power and disposal, and not to be controlled
by the authority of any other. And thus
every man must be acknowledged equal to
every man, since all subjection and all com-
mand are equally banished on both sides;
and, considering all men thus at liberty,
every man has a prerogative to judge for
himself, viz.y what shall be most for his
behoof, happiness, and well-being.
The third capital immunity belonging to
man's nature is an equality amongst men,
which is not to be denied by the law of
nature, till man has resigned himself with all
his rights for the sake of a civil state, and
then his personal liberty and equality is to
be cherished and preserved to the highest
degree as will consist with all just distinctions
amongst men of honor, and shall be agreeable
with the public good. For man has a high
valuation of himself, and the passion seems
to lay its first foundation, not in pride, but
really in the high and admirable frame and
constitution of human nature. The word
man, says my author, is thought to carry
somewhat of dignity in its sound; and we
commonly make use of this as the most
proper and prevailing argument against a
rude insulter, viz.y "I am not a beast or a
dog, but am a man as well as yourself."
Since, then, human nature agrees equally
with all persons, and since no one can live a
sociable life with another that does not own
or respect him as a man, it follows, as a
command of the law of nature, that every
man esteem and treat another as one who is
naturally his equal, or who is a man as well
as he. There be many popular or plausible
reasons that greatly illustrate this equality,
viz. J that we all derive our being from one
stock, the same common father of tthe]
human race. On this consideration Boethius
checks the pride of the insulting nobility.
Quid genus et proavos strepitis? Si primordia vestra
Auctoremque deum spectes, nullus degener exstaty
Ni vitiis peiora f ovens proprium deserat ortum.^
Fondly our first descent we boast;
If whence at first our breath we drew,
The common springs of life we view,
The airy notion soon is lost.
The Almighty made us equal all;
But he that slavishly complies
To do the drudgery of vice
Denies his high original.
And also that our bodies are composed of
matter, frail, brittle, and liable to be de-
stroyed by thousand accidents; we all owe
our existence to the same method of propaga-
tion. The noblest mortal in his entrance on
the stage of life is not distinguished by any
pomp, or of passage from the lowest of man-
kind, and our life hastens to the same general
mark. Death observes no ceremony, but
knocks as loud at the barriers of the court as
at the door of the cottage. This equality
being admitted bears a very great force in
maintaining peace and friendship amongst
men. For that he who would use the assist-
ance of others in promoting his own ad-
vantage ought as freely to be at their service
1 Consolat. Philosoph.y Bk. Ill, vi. Quoted inex*
actly by Wise, but corrected above.
26
JOHN wisK
wlun tliov w.iiit Ins help on tlic like occa-
sions. "Onc^ood turn re(iuires another," is
the common proverb; for otherwise he must
need esteem others ime(|iial to himself who
constantly demands their aid and as con-
stantly denies his own. And whoever is of
this insolent temper cannot hut hij^;hly dis-
please those about hnn, and soon j^ive
occasion of the breach of the common
peace. It was a manly reproof which
Caractacus' gave the Romans: Num si vos
omnibus, etc. What! because you desire to
be masters of all men, does it follow there-
fore that all men should desire to be your
slaves, for that it is a command of nature's
law that no man that has not obtained a
particular and special right shall arrogate to
himself a larger share than his fellows, but
shall admit others to equal privileges with
himself. So that the principle of equality in
a natural state is peculiarly transgressed by
pride, which is, when a man without suffi-
cient reason prefers himself to others. And
though as Hensius^ paraphrases upon Aris-
totle's Politics to this purpose, viz.:
"Nothing is more suitable to nature than
that those who excel in understanding and
prudence should rule and control those who
are less happy in those advantages," etc.
Yet we must note that there is room for an
answer, scil.y that it would be the greatest
absurdity to believe that nature actually
invests the wise with a sovereignty over the
weak, or with a right of forcing them against
their wills; for that no sovereignty can be
established, unless some human deed or
covenant precede. Nor does natural fitness
for government make a man presently
governor over another; for that, as Ulpian'
says, ''by a natural right all men are born
free.'' And nature having set all men upon
a level and made them equals, no servitude
or subjection can be conceived without
inequality; and this cannot be made without
usurpation or force in others, or voluntary
compliance in those who resign their freedom
and give away their degree of natural being.
And thus we come,
1 Flourished (in England) a.d. 50. He resisted the
Romans for about nine years, but was finally delivered
into their hands and taken to Rome.
2 Daniel Heinsius (i 580-1655). Dutch classical
philologer.
3 Roman jurist, flourished a.d. 200.
To consider man in a civil state of being,
wherein we shall observe the great difference
between a natural and political state; for
in the latter state many great dispropor-
tions appear, or at least many obvious
distinctions are soon made amongst men,
which doctrine is to be laid open under a
few heads.
Kvery man, considered in a natural state,
must be allowed to be free and at his own
dispose; yet to suit man's inclinations to
society, and in a peculiar manner to gratify
the necessity he is in of public rule and order,
he is impelled to enter into a civil com-
munity, and divests himself of his natural
freedom, and puts himself under government,
which, amongst other things, comprehends
the power of life and death over him,
together with authority to enjoin him some
things to which he has an utter aversion,
and to prohibit him other things for which he
may have as strong an inclination, so that
he may be often, under this authority,
obliged to sacrifice his private for the public
good; so that, though man is inclined to
society, yet he is driven to a combination by
great necessity. For that the true and lead-
ing cause of forming governments and yield-
ing up natural liberty, and throwing man's
equality into a common pile to be new cast
by the rules of fellowship, was really and
truly to guard themselves against the in-
juries men were liable to interchangeably;
for none so good to man as man, and yet
none a greater enemy. So that,
The first human subject and original of
civil power is the people. For as they have
a power every man over himself in a natural
state, so upon a combination they can and
do bequeath this power unto others, and
settle it according as their united discretion
shall determine. For that this is very plain,
that when the subject of sovereign power is
quite extinct, that power returns to the
people again. And when they are free, they
may set up what species of government
they please; or, if they rather incline to it,
they may subside into a state of natural
being, if it be plainly for the best. In the
Eastern country of the Mogul we have some
resemblance of the case, for upon the death
of an absolute monarch they live so many
days without a civil head; but in that
interregnum those who survive the vacancy
VINDICATION OF GOVERNMENT OF NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES 27
are glad to get into a civil state again, and
usually they are in a very bloody condition
when they return under the covert of a new
monarch. This project is to endear the
people to a tyranny, from the experience
they have so lately had of an anarchy.
The formal reason of government is the
will of a community yielded up and sur-
rendered to some other subject, either of one
particular person, or more, conveyed in the
following manner.
Let us conceive in our mind a multitude
of men, all naturally free and equal, going
about voluntarily to erect themselves into a
new commonwealth. Now their condition
being such, to bring themselves into a politic
body they must needs enter into divers
covenants.
They must interchangeably each man
covenant to join in one lasting society, that
they may be capable to concert the measures
of their safety by a public vote.
A vote or decree must then nextly pass to
set up some particular species of government
over them. And if they are joined in their
first compact upon absolute terms to stand
to the decision of the first vote concerning
the species of government, then all are bound
by the majority to acquiesce in that particu-
lar form thereby settled, though their own
private opinion incline them to some other
model.
After a decree has specified the particular
form of government, then there will be need
of a new covenant, whereby those on whom
sovereignty is conferred engage to take care
of the common peace and welfare; and the
subjects, on the other hand, to yield them
faithful obedience. In which covenant is
included that submission and union of wills
by which a state may be conceived to be but
one person. So that the most proper defi-
nition of a civil state is this, viz.: A civil
state is a compound moral person, whose will
(united by those covenants before passed) is
the will of all, to the end it may use and
apply the strength and riches of private
persons towards maintaining the common
peace, security, and well-being of all, which
may be conceived as though the whole state
was now become but one man; in which the
aforesaid covenants may be supposed under
God's providence to be the divine fiat pro-
nounced by God: "Let us make man.'*
And by way of resemblance the aforesaid
being may be thus anatomized:
1. The sovereign power is the soul infused,
giving life and motion to the whole body.
2. Subordinate oflRcers are the joints by
which the body moves.
3. Wealth and riches are the strength.
4. Equity and laws are the reason.
5. Councilors the memory.
6. Salus Populi, or the happiness of the
people, is the end of its being, or main busi-
ness to be attended and done.
7. Concord amongst the members and all
estates is the health.
8. Sedition is sickness, and civil war
death.
The parts of sovereignty may be con-
sidered so,
1. As it prescribes the rule of action, it is
rightly termed legislative power.
2. As it determines the controversies of
subjects by the standard of those rules, so
is it justly termed judiciary power.
3. As it arms the subjects against
foreigners or forbids hostility, so it's called
the power of peace and war.
4. As it takes in ministers for the discharge
of business, so it is called the right of appoint-
ing magistrates. So that all great officers
and public servants must needs owe their
original to the creating power of sovereignty;
so that those whose right it is to create may
dissolve the being of those who are created,
unless they cast them into an immortal
frame, and yet must needs be dissoluble if
they justly forfeit their being to their
creators.
5. The chief end of civil communities is
that men thus conjoined may be secured
against the injuries they are liable to from
their own kind. For, if every man could
secure himself singly, it would be great folly
for him to renounce his natural liberty, in
which every man is his own king and pro-
tector.
6. The sovereign authority, besides that
it inheres in every state as in a common and
general subject, so farther according as it
resides in some one person, or in a council
(consisting of some select persons, or of all
the members of a community) as in a proper
and particular subject, so it produceth dif-
ferent forms of commonwealths, m., such
as are either simple and regular, or mixed.
28
JOHN WISE
The forms of a regular state are three
only, which forms arise from the proper and
particular subject in which the supreme
power resides. As,
A democracy, which is when the sovereign
power is lodged in a council consisting of all
the members, and where every member has
the privilege of a vote. This form of govern-
ment appears in the greatest part of the
world to have been the most ancient. For
that reason seems to show it to be most
probable that, when men (being originally
in a condition of natural freedom and
equality) had thoughts of joining in a civil
body, would without question be inclirted to
administer their common affairs by their
common judgment, and so must necessarily,
to gratify that inclination, establish a
democracy. Neither can it be rationally
imagined that fathers of families, being yet
free and independent, should in a moment
or little time take off their long delight in
governing their own affairs, and devolve all
upon some single sovereign commander;
for that it seems to have been thought more
equitable that what belonged to all should
be managed by all, when all had entered
by compact into one community. The
original of our government, says Plato
(speaking of the Athenian commonwealth),
was taken from the equality of our race.
Other states there are composed of different
blood, and of unequal lines, the consequences
of which are disproportionable sovereignty,
tyrannical or oligarchical sway, under which
men live in such a manner as to esteem
themselves partly lords and partly slaves to
each other. But we and our countrymen,
being all born brethren of the same mother,
do not look upon ourselves to stand under
so hard a relation as that of lords and slaves;
but the parity of our descent inclines us to
keep up the like parity by our laws, and
to yield the precedency to nothing but to
superior virtue and wisdom. And, more-
over, it seems very manifest that most civil
communities arose at first from the union of
families that w^ere nearly allied in race and
blood; and though ancient story makes
frequent mention of kings, yet it appears
that most of them were such that had an
influence rather in persuading than in any
power of commanding. So Justin describes
that kind of government as the most primi-
tive, which Aristotle styles an heroical
kingdom, viz., such as is no ways inconsistent
with a democratical state. {De Princip.
Rem. I, L. I, C.)
A democracy is then erected, when a num-
ber of free persons do assemble together in
order to enter into a covenant for uniting
themselves in a body; and such a preparative
assembly hath some appearance already of a
democracy; it is a democracy in embryo,
properly in this respect, that every man hath
the privilege freely to deliver his opinion
concerning the common affairs. Yet he who
dissents from the vote of the majority is not
in the least obliged by what they determine,
till by a second covenant a popular form be
actually established; for not before then
can we call it a democratical government,
viz.y till the right of determining all matters
relating to the public safety is actually placed
in a general assembly of the whole people;
or by their own compact and mutual agree-
ment determine themselves the proper sub-
ject for the exercise of sovereign power.
And to complete this state, and render it
capable to exert its power to answer the end
of a civil state, these conditions are neces-
sary:
1. That a certain time and place be
assigned for assembling.
2. That when the assembly be orderly
met, as to time and place, that then the vote
of the majority must pass for the vote of
the whole body.
3. That magistrates be appointed to exer-
cise the authority of the whole for the better
dispatch of business of every day's occur-
rence, who also may, with more mature
diligence, search into more important affairs;
and if in case any thing happens of greater
consequence, may report it to the assembly;
and be peculiarly serviceable in putting all
public decrees into execution. Because a
large body of people is almost useless in
respect of the last service, and of many
others as to the more particular application
and exercise of power. Therefore it is most
agreeable w^ith the law of nature that they
institute their officers to act in their name
and stead.
The second species of regular government
is an aristocracy, and this is said then to be
constituted when the people or assembly,
united by a first covenant, and having
VINDICATION OF GOVERNMENT OF NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES 29
thereby cast themselves into the first rudi-
ments of a state, do then by common decree
devolve the sovereign power on a council
consisting of some select members; and
these, having accepted of the designation,
are then properly invested with sovereign
command; and then an aristocracy is
formed.
The third species of a regular government
is a monarchy, which is settled when the
sovereign power is conferred on some one
worthy person. It differs from the former,
because a monarch who is but one person in
natural, as well as in moral, account, and so
is furnished with an immediate power of
exercising sovereign command in all instances
of government; but the forenamed must
needs have particular time and place
assigned; but the power and authority is
equal m each.
Mixed governments, which are various
and of divers kinds (not now to be enumer-
ated), yet possibly the fairest in the world
is that which has a regular monarchy,
settled upon a noble democracy as its basis;
and each part of the government is so
adjusted by pacts and laws that render the
whole constitution an elysium. It is said
of the British empire that it is such a mon-
archy as that, by the necessary subordinate
concurrence of the lords and commons in the
making and repealing all statutes or acts of
parliament, it hath the main advantages of
an aristocracy and of a democracy, and yet
free from the disadvantages and evils of
either. It is such a monarchy as, by most
admirable temperament, affords very much
to the industry, liberty, and happiness of the
subject, and reserves enough for the majesty
and prerogative of any king who will own his
people as subjects, not as slaves. It is a
kingdom that, of all the kingdoms of the
world, is most like to the kingdom of Jesus
Christ, whose yoke is easy, and burden
light. [Present State of England^ 1st part,
64th p.) * * *
I shall now make some improvement of
the foregoing principles of civil knowledge,
fairly deduced from the law of nature. And
I shall peculiarly refer to ecclesiastical
affairs, whereby we may in probability dis-
cover more clearly the kind and something
of the nature of that government which
Christ has placed in and over his church.
The learned debates of men, and Divine
Writ sometimes, seem to cast such a grandeur
on the church and its officers, as though they
stood in peerage with civil empire. (Revela-
tion, I. 6, 9. / Peter, 2. 9. / CorinthianSy
4. 8. / Corinthians, 12. 28. // Corinthi-
ans, 10. 8.) But all such expressions must
needs be other ways interpreted. God is the
highest cause that acts by council; and it
must needs be altogether repugnant to think
he should forecast the state of this world by
no better a scheme than to order two
sovereign powers in the same grand com-
munity, which would be to set the universe
into a flame: That should such an error
happen, one must needs be forthwith ex-
tinguished, to bring the frame of nature into
a just temper and keep it out of harm's way.
But, to proceed with my purpose, I shall go
back upon the civil scheme and inquire after
two things : First of rebellion against govern-
ment in general; and then in special whether
any of the aforesaid species of regular govern-
ment can be predicable of the church of God
on earth.
In general concerning rebellion against
government, for particular subjects to break
in upon regular communities duly estab-
lished is from the premises to violate the
law of nature, and is a high usurpation upon
the first grand immunities of mankind.
Such rebels in states, and usurpers in
churches, affront the world with a pre-
sumption that the best of the brotherhood
are a company of fools, and that themselves
have fairly monopolized all the reason of
human nature. Yea, they take upon them
the boldness to assume a prerogative of
trampling under foot the natural original
equality and liberty of their fellows; for to
push the proprietors of settlements out of
possession of their old, and impose new
schemes upon them, is virtually to declare
them in a state of vassalage, or that they
were born so; and therefore, will the usurper
be so gracious as to insure them they shall
not be sold at the next market, they must
esteem it a favor; for by this time all the
original prerogatives of man's nature are
intentionally a victim, smoking to satiate
the usurper's ambition. It is a very tart
observation on an English monarch, and,
where it may by proportion be applied to a
subject, must needs sink very deep and serve
30
JOHN WISE
for evidence iiiuler this head. It is in the
secret history of Klingl ClharlesI II and
K[iniil Jlamesl II, p. 2, says my author:
Where the constitution of a nation is such
tliat the laws of the land are the measures
both of the sovereign's commands and the
obedience of the subjects, whereby it is
provided that as the one are not to invade
what by concessions and stipuhitions is
granted to the ruler, so the other is not to
deprive them of their lawful and determined
rights and liberties, then the prince who
strives to subvert the fundamental laws of
the society is the traitor and the rebel,
and not the people, who endeavor to preserve
and defend their own. It's very applicable
to particular men in their rebellions or
usurpations in church or state.
In special I shall now proceed to inquire
whether any of the aforesaid species of
regular, unmixed governments can with any
show of reason be predicable of the church of
Christ on earth. If the churches of Christ,
as churches, are either the object or subject
of a sovereign power intrusted in the hands
of men, then most certainly one of the
forecited schemes of a perfect government
will be applicable to it.
Before I pursue the inquiry it may not be
improper to pause and make some caution
here, by distinguishmg between that which
may have some resemblance of civil power
and the thing itself; and so the power of
churches is but a faint resemblance of civil
power. It comes in reality nothing near to
the thing itself; for the one is truly co-
ercive, the other persuasive; the one is
sovereign power, the other is delegated and
ministerial. But not to delay, I shall pro-
ceed with my inquiry, and therein shall
endeavor to humor the several great claimers
of government in the church of Christ.
And,
I shall begin with a monarchy. It's
certain his holiness, either by reasonable
pleas or powerful cheats, has assumed an
absolute and universal sovereignty. This
fills his cathedral chair and is adorned with
a triple crown; and in defense thereof [he]
does protest: The Almighty has made him
both key-keeper of heaven and hell, with the
adjacent territories of purgatory, and vested
in him an absolute sovereignty over the
Christian v/orld. And his right has so far
jirevailed that princes and civil monarchs
hold their crowns and donations as his
dutiful sons and loyal subjects, lie there-
fore decks himself with the spoils of the
divine attributes, styling himself our Lord
God, optimum, viaximumy ei supremum
numen in Terris;'^ a God on earth, a visible
deity; and that his power is absolute and his
wisdom infallible. And many of the great
potentates of the earth have paid their
fealty, as though it was really so. One of
them clad in canvas, going barefoot in the
depth of winter (in obedience to the decree,
stinting the penance in proportion to the
wickedness of princes), has waited many
days for absolution at his pious gates.
Another has thrown himself down prostrate
a humble penitent before him. He has
placed his holy foot on the monarch's pro-
fane neck, as crushing a vermin crawling
out of the stable of his sovereignty; and
others frequently kiss his toes with very
profound devotion. These and such like
triumphant signals of his sovereign power
does he wear. And indeed if he is the
universal monarch of the Catholic Church,
princes that are members of it must needs
knock under, for that in one world there
cannot possibly be two Most High's, any
more than two Infinites. Thus you see the
clergy or Gospel ministry of the Christian
world have so wisely handled business and
managed the Gospel that they have fairly
(as they avouch) found a sovereign power
bequeathed in it to the ministry of Christ,
and, rummaging more warily and nicely,
at last found a spiritual monarch very com-
pletely furnished with the keys of all sorts
of power hanging at his girdle. And may we
not pronounce the wiser they! — seeing the
world, growing weary of religion, was willing
to loll itself down to sleep and leave them in
sole trust with the whole interest of God's
kingdom. But the sad inquiry is, whether
this sort of government has not plainly sub-
verted the design of the Gospel and the end
for which Christ's government was ordained,
m., the moral, spiritual, and eternal happi-
ness of men \
But I have no occasion to pursue this
remark with tedious demonstrations. It's
very plain, it's written with blood in capital
1 I he best, greatest, and highest God in the world.
VINDICATION OF GOVERNMENT OF NP:W ENGLAND CHIRCHES 31
letters, to be read at midnight by the flames
of Smithfield^ and other such like conse-
crated fires, that the government of this
ecclesiastical monarch has, instead of sancti-
fying, absolutely debauched the world and
subverted all good Christianity in it. So
that without the least show of any vain pre-
sumption we may infer that God and wise
nature were never propitious to the birth of
this monster.
An aristocracy which places the supreme
power in a select company of choice persons:
Here I freely acknowledge, were the Gospel
ministry established the subject of this
power, viz.y to will and do in all church
affairs without control, etc.y this govern-
ment might do to support the church in its
most valuable rights, etc.^ if we could be
assured they would make the Scripture, and
not their private will, the rule of their
personal and ministerial actions. And
indeed upon these terms any species of gov-
ernment might serve the great design of
redemption. But considering how great an
interest is embarked and how frail a bottom
we trust, though we should rely upon the
best of men, especially if we remember what
is in the hearts of good men {viz.y much
ignorance, abundance of small ends, many
times cloaked with a high pretense in
religion; pride skulking and often breeding
revenge upon a small affront, and blown
up by a pretended zeal, yet really and truly
by nothing more divine than interest, or
ill nature), and also considering how very
uncertain we are of the real goodness of
those we esteem good men, and also how
impossible it is to secure the entail of it to
successors, and also if we remind how
Christianity by the foresaid principle has
been peeled, robbed, and spoiled already, it
cannot consist with the light of nature to
venture again upon such perils, especially if
we can find a safer way home. More
distmctly,
It is very plain (allowing me to speak
emblematically) the primitive constitution
of the churches was a democracy, as ap-
pears by the foregoing parallel. But after
the Christian churches were received into
the favor of the imperial court, under the
> London, north of St, Paul's Cathedral. The al-
lusion is to its use in the time of Queen Mary for burning
heretics at the stake.
dominion of Constantine the Great, there
being many preliminaries which had fur-
nished the ministers with a disposition
thereunto, they quickly deprived the fra-
ternities of their rights in the government of
the churches, when they were once provided
of a plentiful maintenance through the
liberality of Constantine; that when Chris-
tianity was so luxuriantly treated, as by his
great bounty and noble settlement, it is said
there was a voice heard from heaven saying:
"Now is poison poured into the church."
But the subversion of the constitution is a
story too long now to tell. Take therefore
part of it, out of a late author well versed in
antiquity, which may give some brief image
of the whole: Non multa secula jus Plebis
Illaesum Mansit, neque Aliter Evenire Potuit.
Quin Illudy vel amittatury vel saltern diminua-
tur^ etc. {De Ordina, Diss. Ilystorica, p. 36,
40, 41.)
The right of the people did not remain
unhurt through many ages, neither could it
well be otherways but that it must be lost,
or much diminished. Zonaras^ does confess
that heretofore bishops were chosen by the
suffrage of the people. But, many seditions
happening amongst them, it was decreed
that every bishop should hereafter be chosen
by the authority of the bishops of every
province. The cause seemed to be so very
specious that nothing could be more decent
or more conducive to the safety of the
commonwealth.
Yet (says my author) if you do well weigh
the business you must needs acknowledge
nothing could have happened more per-
nicious or destructive to the church of God.
For, soon after these things came to pass, it
is very obvious that tyranny over the con-
sciences of the faithful and an intolerable
pride everywhere grew rampant amongst
the guides of the church. Yet there was one
thing still very needful to be done, and that
was to establish or confirm the power which
the metropolitans and bishops had acquired
to themselves. Therefore they fell to it
tooth and nail to drive away the fraternity
from all interest in elections; and alas, poor
hearts! they began to sleep with both ears,
2 Translated in the following sentence, in the new
paragraph.
3 Byzantine chronicler and theologian, flourished in
twelfth century.
32
JOHN WISE
that then was scarce any enemy left to
interrupt or control the conquerors. This
was the manner of the clergy till they had
made themselves the subjects of all power
and then acted arbitrarily, and did what
they pleased in the church of God.
l^ut let the learned, knowing world con-
sider what the issue of all this was, scil.y
what a wretched capacity the drowsiness
and cowardice of the people, and the usurpa-
tion and ambition of the ministry, brought
the professing world into. If those who were
truly godly on both sides had in a few ages
looked down from heaven, and had eyed the
following centuries, they might have beheld
a world of matter for sorrowful impressions;
to think that they themselves had occasioned
the ruin of millions by their remiss and
passive temper in one sort, and too much
humoring and nourishing pride, and high
conceits of themselves and others, in the
other; when as if they had stood firm to the
government as left settled by the apostles,
they had certainly prevented an apostasy
that has damned and confounded a great
part of about thirty generations of men,
women, and children. That for my own
part I can upon experience in some measure
truly say (to the history of the primitive
churches in the loss of their government and
the consequences which followed, when I am
impelled to repeat it to myself) as one
JEntas said to Queen Dido:
Infandum, regina, jubes renovare dolorem.
Quis talia fando
Temper et a lacrimis! ^
So doleful a contemplation is it to think the
world should be destroyed by those men
who by God vv^ere ordained to save it!
In a word, an aristocracy is a dangerous
constitution in the church of Christ, as it
possesses the presbytery of all church power.
What has been observed sufficiently evinces
it. And not only so but from the nature
of the constitution, for it has no more barrier
to it against the ambition, insults, and
arbitrary measures of men, than an absolute
monarchy. But to abbreviate: it seems
most agreeable with the light of nature that
if there be any of the regular governments
settled in the church of God it must needs be,
1 Virgil, Mneid, Bk. II, 3, 6, 8.
A democracy. This is a form of govern-
ment which the light of nature does highly
value, and often directs to as most agreeable
to the just and natural prerogatives of
human beings. This was of great account
in the early times of the world. And not
only so, but upon the experience of several
thousand years, after the world had been
tumbled and tossed from one species of
government to another at a great expense of
blood and treasure, many of the wise nations
of the world have sheltered themselves under
it again, or at least have blandished, and
balanced their governments with it.
It is certainly a great truth, sciL, that
man's original liberty after it is resigned (yet
under due restrictions) ought to be cherished
in all wise governments, or otherwise a man,
in making himself a subject, he alters him-
self from a freeman into a slave, which to do
is repugnant to the law of nature. Also the
natural equality of men amongst men must
be duly favored; in that government was
never established by God or nature to give
one man a prerogative to insult over another,
therefore in a civil, as well as in a natural
state of being, a just equality is to be in-
dulged so far as that every man is bound to
honor every man, which is agreeable both
with nature and religion (/ Peter ^ 2. 17):
"Honor all men." — The end of all govern-
ment is to cultivate humanity and promote
the happiness of all, and the good of every
man in all his rights, his life, liberty, estate,
honor, etc.^ without injury or abuse done to
any. Then certainly it cannot easily be
thought that a company of men, that shall
enter into a voluntary compact to hold all
power in their own hands, thereby to use and
improve their united force, wisdom, riches,
and strength for the common and particular
good of every member, as is the nature of a
democracy — I say it cannot be that this sort
of constitution will so readily furnish those
in government with an appetite or disposition
to prey upon each other, or embezzle the
common stock, as some particular persons
may be apt to do when set off and entrusted
with the same power. And, moreover, this
appears very natural, that when the afore-
said government or power, settled in all,
when they have elected certain capable
persons to minister in their affairs and the
said ministers remain accountable to the
VINDICATION OF GOVERNMENT OF NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES 33
assembly, these officers must needs be under
the influence of many wise cautions from
their own thoughts (as well as under con-
finement by their commission) in their
whole administration. And from thence it
must needs follow that they will be more apt
and inclined to steer right for the main
point, viz., the peculiar good and benefit of
the whole and every particular member, fairly
and sincerely. And why may not these
stand for very rational pleas in church order .f*
For certainly if Christ has settled any
form of power in his church he has done it for
his church's safety, and for the benefit of
every member. Then he must needs be
presumed to have made choice of that
government as should least expose his people
to hazard, either from the fraud or arbitrary
measures* of particular men. And it is as
plain as daylight there is no species of gov-
ernment like a democracy to attain this end.
There is but about two steps from an aristoc-
racy to a monarchy, and from thence but
one to a tyranny. An able standing force
and an ill nature, ipso facto, turns an absolute
monarch into a tyrant. This is obvious
amongst the Roman Caesars and through the
world. And all these direful transmutations
are easier in church aflPairs (from the different
qualities of things) than in civil states. For
what is it that cunning and learned men can't
make the world swallow as an article of their
creed, if they are once invested with an
uncontrollable power, and are to be the
standing orators to mankind in matters of
faith and obedience.'' Indeed some very
wise and learned men are pleased to inveigh,
and reproach the notion of a democracy in
the church, which makes the Cetu fidelium,
or community of the faithful, the first sub-
ject of the power of government. This they
say tends to Brownism and abhorred an-
archy, and then say they upon such premises,
it must needs follov/ that every member of
the body must be an officer, and then every
one must preach and dispense the sacra-
ments, etc.
[But] certainly such gentlemen either
design to pose and baffle their readers with
fallacy, or they themselves never took up
or understood the true ideas of the several
species of government; in that a democracy
is as regular a form and as particular as any
other. For,
1. An absolute or limited monarch can't
manage the power or government devolved
upon him without the great officers of the
crown, or a large set of ministers; though
possibly he may with the quicker despatch
issue out his decrees, yet he must execute
all by his ministry. And why may not a
democracy be indulged the same liberty .f'
And this will prevent all anarchy or con-
fusion most apparently. But,
2. The bitter pill to swallow in this doc-
trine of a democracy in the church is the
terrible power of life and death, or the
accountableness of particular members to
the assembly, and especially those in the
ministry; but yet this is agreeable with the
nature of the constitution and easily man-
aged without anarchy, or popular confusion
also, which would be made very evident if
we should but run the parallel in all points
between the democracy of the state and
church. But nextly from the premises I
shall
3. Infer that, if these churches are not
properly formed, yet are [they] fairly estab-
lished in their present order by the law of
nature. And will they be advised, I would
exhort them to try who will be so bold as to
dare to disseize them. A monarchy has been
tried in the church with a witness, but it has
absolutely failed us. An aristocracy in a
deep calm threw the democracy overboard
and took not only the helm in hand, but
seized ship and cargo as their right and title,
but after some time brought all to ship-
wreck, and that in a good harbor too.
A democracy was the noble government
which beat out in all the bad weather of ten
bloody persecutions under the management
of antiquity. And this is our constitution,
and what, can't we be pleased .f* This con-
stitution is as agreeable with the light and
laws of nature as any other whatsoever, as
has been fairly laid down and fully evinced,
and more accommodated to the concerns of
religion than any other. Therefore I shall
now conclude my demonstration with this
brief appeal to the common reason of
mankind, viz.:
How can it consist with the honorable
terms man holds upon here on earth that
the best sort of men that we can find in the
world, such men as are adorned with a
double set of ennobling immunities, the first
34
JOHN WISE
from natiirt', the other from grace — that
these men when they enter into charter-
party to manage a trade for heaven must
ipso facto be chipped under a government
that is arbitrary and despotic, yea, that
carries the plain symptoms of a tyranny in
it, when the liglit of nature know^s of a better
species and frequently has made use of it?
It wants no farther demonstration; for it's
most apparent that nature is so much mis-
tress of herself that man, in a natural state
of being, is under (jod the first subject of all
power, and therefore can make his own
choice, and by deliberate compacts settles
his own conditions for the government of
himself in a civil state of being. And when
a government so settled shall throw itself
from its foundations, or the subjects of
sovereign power shall subvert or confound
the constitution, they then degrade them-
selves, and so all power returns again to the
people, who are the first owners. And what!
is man become so unfortunate, degraded,
and debased as to be without all power in
settling a government over himself, relating
to the matters of his eternal well-being? Or
when he comes back to a father's house
must he fall into the capacity of a mere
passive being, and be put under such tutors
as can easily turn tyrants over him, and no
relief left for him in his own hands? This is
certainly most repugnant to the light of
nature, and very disagreeable with the
liberty and free genius of a Gospel state.
Nay, in a word, if the government of the
churches be settled by God, either in the
hands of a church monarch, or aristocracy,
and the people are no ways the subject of
church power — nay, if they are not under
Christ, the fountain of power, then the
reformation, so-called, is but a mere cheat,
a schism, and notorious rebellion, neither is
there room left for the least palliation or
shadow of excuse for the reformers in re-
nouncing their obedience to their public
governors. And. the martyrologies which
pretend to immortalize the fame of eminent
heroes must be changed into chronicles,
handing along an account of the just and
deserved fate of a crew of rebels against God
and government. For what business had
such a company of illiterate and crack-
brained fellows to meddle with their rulers,
or examine into their administrations? For
if they have no right of power in govern-
ment, they stand absolutely bound to yield
a passive obedience and non-resistance;
and, if they are so hardy and daring as to
oppose their lawful rulers, the sharpest
penalty in this world is too easy for them —
the inquisition is but dallying and playing
with them — hell is their desert. But how it
comes about that a state of grace, when in
want of a suitable government, is become
such a vassal, and wise and cunning nature
is by her creator entrusted and adorned with
more ennobling prerogatives, I must leave
and resign unto those learned men to solve,
who plead for an aristocracy in the churches
of Christ. * * *
It's certain every species of government,
simple and mixed, have their various ex-
cellencies and defects; much may be said
in honor of each, and also every constitution
may have something wanting; at least it
may seem so, under a more critical survey
of its nature, principles, ill-conveniencies,
corrupt ministry, misfortunes, etc. And
many times a government falls under scandal
from distemper of mind, from false ends and
corrupt interests, which sway and overrule
men's thoughts relating to government more
than from the constitution itself. But,
however, to evade all circular discourses, we
may very fairly infer, where we find nations
flourishing, and their liberty and property
with the rest of the great immunities of man's
nature nourished, secured, and best guarded
from tyranny, we may venture to pronounce
this people to be the subjects of a noble
government; and there be many such on
earth whose constitution will serve to justify
ours. I shall instance in three, and no
more.
I. The P^enetian commonwealth; though
some are pleased to call the government of
this free state an aristocracy, but it seems
more properly a limited democracy, for that
the seat of sovereign power is their ancient
commons, called their families, enrolled in
the golden book; these make up the grand
council of the nations, settle the public
ministry, and enact laws, etc. This people
have by this mode of government raised
themselves into so august and flourishing a
capacity that from a very obscure original
they are grown to that degree as to bridle
and curb the pride and haughtiness of Turk
VINDICATION OF GOVERNMENT OF NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES 35
and Pope. This example must needs be no
small honor to our constitution. But,
2. The Belgic provinces are without inter-
ruption allowed to be the subjects of a formed
democracy. They in some ages past being
insulted and unmercifully trampled upon by
that august tyrant, the Spanish monarch,
they, being his subjects, broke loose from
him and set up for themselves. They
assumed to themselves their original power,
and, when they had got it into their hands,
had the wit, and kept it, and have improved
it in the form of a democracy to this day;
and God has blessed them, that from the
poor states of Holland^ they are now grown
to wear the splendid title of "their high
mightinesses," and are a match for most
monarchs on earth. Says Gordon of their
government: "The seven provinces of Hol-
land, being under a democratical govern-
ment, are as it were several commonwealths,
each province being a distinct state; yea,
and every city having an independent power
within itself to judge of all causes, whether
civil or criminal, and to inflict even capital
punishments; but all joining together make
one republic, the most considerable in the
world." * * *
3. The English. This nation is reputed to
be the subjects of the finest and most in-
comparable government in the world. And
this original happy form of government is
(says one) truly and properly called an Eng-
lishman's liberty: a privilege to be freed in
person and estate from arbitrary violence and
oppression, and a greater inheritance than
we derive from our parents. And this birth-
right of Englishmen shines most conspicu-
ously in two things:
(i) In Parliaments^ wherein the subject
has, by his representatives, a share in legis-
lative power, and so makes his own laws, and
disposes of his own money.
(2) In Juries, whereby he has a share in
the executive part of law, so that no causes
are tried, nor any man adjudged to lose his
life, member, or estate, but upon the verdict
of his peers, his equals or neighbors, and of
his own condition.
These two grand pillars of English liberty
are the fundamental, vital privileges whereby
we have been, and are still preserved more
free and happy than any other people in the
world, and we trust shall ever continue so.
For whosoever shall design to impair, per-
vert, undermine either of these, do strike at
the very constitution of our government,
and ought to be prosecuted and punished
with the utmost zeal and vigor. For to
poison all the springs and rivers in the king-
dom could not be a greater mischief, for this
would only affect the present age, but the
other would ruin and enslave all our
posterity. * * *
JONATHAN EDWARDS (1703-1758)
Jonathan Edwards was born at East (now South) Windsor, Connecticut, on 5 October, 1703.
He was the Hfth of his parents' eleven children, and their only son. When he was thirteen he entered
a school at Saybrook, which was soon removed to New Haven, to become Yale Collej^c, from which
he was graduated in 1720. He remained at New Haven two years more, studying divinity, and then,
after a short period of preaching in New York, took his M.A. at Yale and was for two years a tutor
in the College (1724-1726). At the end of this period he was called to assist his grandfather, the
venerable Solomon Stoddard, in the church at Northampton. He was installed in this post on 15
February, 1727. Shortlj' afterwards he married Sarah Pierrepont of New Haven. In 1729 Edwards's
grandfather died, leaving him in sole charge of the Northampton church. Here he remained until
he was dismissed by the congregation, in June, 1750. In the following year he removed to Stock-
bridge, Massachusetts, where he took charge of a mission to the Indians. At this remote frontier
post he lived until 1758, when he journeyed to Princeton to become President of Nassau Hall, the
College of New Jersey, in succession to the elder Aaron Burr. The small-pox was present in the town,
and Edwards was inoculated. From the effects of this he died on 22 March, shortly after his inaug-
uration.
Such were the chief outward events in the life of the most rigorous and profound thinker whom
America has produced. Even as a boy Edwards exhibited phenomenal capacities, as can be seen from
his paper on The Flying Spider, written when he was about twelve years old. During his sophomore
year in college he read Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which made a deep impression
on him. As early as this, or earlier, he had begun his lifelong practice of reading and thinking with
a pen in his hand, always ready to write down what might be useful to him, and always aiming, not
at mere assimilation, but at positive thinking on his own account. And soon after his reading of
Locke's Essay he began a series of notes for a comprehensive treatise on the mind, and another series
for a treatise on natural science. These notes cannot be exactly dated, but it is considered certain
that some of the most interesting of them date from his undergraduate days, or from about his six-
teenth year, and that all, or practically all, of them date from before his twentieth year. Fragments
though they are, they are amongst the most significant of Edwards's writings, and selections from
them are here reprinted. They exhibit not only the early development of his intellectual powers, but
also the astonishing fact that, almost certainly without knowledge of Bishop Berkeley's work, he had
gone on from Locke to an idealism Berkeleian in character; and they exhibit as well the fact that
he had already, after studying Sir Isaac Newton, reached independent conclusions concerning the
method of science.
But Edwards's upbringing, immediate surroundings, and inner experiences all conspired to lead
him aside from the glittering career as a philosopher and man of letters which he might have had, and
to send him on in life as the last and greatest leader of New England Puritanism. In the Personal
Narrative here reprinted — one of the classics of the world's religious literature — we are given the day,
12 January, 1723, when he solemnly dedicated himself to the service of God. On this day he also
entered in the Resolutions which he had begun to draw up for his guidance, one upon which he acted
unfalteringly throughout the remainder of his life: "Resolved, that no other end but religion shall have
any influence at all on any of my actions; and that no action shall be, in the least circumstance, any
otherwise than the religious end will carry it." The task which confronted Edwards, in his attempt
to live in the spirit of this Resolution, was one of opposing the teachings of the Dutch theologian Ar-
minius, according to which man's will was regarded as free and man consequently was asserted to
have the power of initiating actions, on his own account, which might contribute to his salvation.
Arminius attempted to soften Calvinism both by taking off from the Deity responsibility for the exist-
ence of evil and by legitimizing man's sense of his own dignity and worth. The intention was well
enough, but, not to speak of other difficulties, practically the diffusion of Arminianism lent a certain
sanction to the religious indifference which had begun to spread through New England by the early
part of the eighteenth century. Edwards's task, then, was to discredit Arminian teaching, to revive
genuine Calvinism, and to try to rouse the people to an effective sense of their complete dependence
on God, and of the tremendous consequences of sinful disobedience.
36
THE MIND
37
It is significant that one of the Resolutions above referred to reads: "Resolved, to hve with all my
Plight while I do hvc." lulwards did so, and his own inner religious experiences partook of the nature
of ecstasy. He thus brought Hre as well as devotion to his life's work — a fire that shone and burned
through his severely controlled and rigorously logical sermons and discourses. And for a time he
seemed to be wonderfully succeeding in his efforts. In the years 1734 ^"^ ^735 ^^ brought about an
unmistakable revival of religious interest, whose extent and nature may be learned from his Faithful
Narrative of the Surprising JVork of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton and
the Neighboring Tozvns and Villages (written in 1736). And this revival prepared the way for the
"Great Awakening" which swept through New England a few years later, one of the important events
of which was Edwards's preaching, at F^nfield, of his most famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God. The "Awakening" must have seemed to Edwards the sign and seal of almost complete
success in the practical portion of his task, and he confidently justified it against criticism in The Dis-
tinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (1741) and in Some Thoughts Concerning the Present
Revival of Religion in New England (1742). Nevertheless, those who distrusted the "Awakening"
were in the right of it, for the high-pitched excitement induced by religious ecstasy or terror could not
endure, and indeed tended to subside into strong reaction. Edwards soon saw indications of this, and
felt it directly in his dismissal from Northampton. The immediate causes of this painful incident
scarcely account for it, and the truth is that a large portion of Edwards's congregation had come to
fear the man, and were ready to seize any pretext for banishing one who failed to understand that not
all men were, like himself, able and anxious heroically to devote their whole lives to the service of God.
Thus Edwards's life ended in outer defeat, though he continued, held up by his own sense of "evangelical
integrity," to support his cause in one way, if not in another. His later years were largely occupied
by the composition of several treatises which still, in an alien age, are read with admiration, for their
evidences of his religious genius and of his power of sustained and close argument. The chief of these
are: A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746); A Careful and Strict Inquiry into the Modern
Prevailing Notions of that Freedom of the Will which is Supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency (1754);
The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended (1758); and Two Dissertations: I. Concerning
the End for which God Created the World. II. The Nature of True Virtue (posthumously published,
1765)-
THE MIND^
EXCELLENCY
There has nothing been more w^ithout a
definition than Excellency; although it be
what we are more concerned with than any
thing else whatsoever: yea, we are concerned
with nothing else. But what is this Ex-
cellency? Wherein is one thing excellent,
and another evil; one beautiful, and another
deformed.? Some have said that all Ex-
cellency is IlarmoJiy, Symmetry^ or Pro-
portion; but they have not yet explained it.
We would know, Why Proportion is more
excellent than Disproportion; that is, why
Proportion is pleasant to the mind, and Dis-
proportion unpleasant.? Proportion is a
thing that may be explained yet further.
It is an Equalityy or Likeness of ratios; so
that it is the Equality, that makes the Pro-
portion. Excellency therefore seems to con-
sist in Equality. Thus, if there be two per-
fect equal circles, or globes, together, there is
1 All of the following selections are reprinted from
the ten-volume edition of Edwards's Works (New York,
1829) edited with a memoir by S. E. Dwight.
something more of beauty than if they were
of unequal, disproportionate magnitudes.
And if two parallel lines be drawn, the beauty
is greater, than if they were obliquely inclined
without proportion, because there is equality
of distance. And if betwixt two parallel
lines, two equal circles be placed, each at the
same distance from each parallel line, as in
Fig. I, the beauty is greater than if they stood
o o
3
4
0
0
0
0
0
0
at irregular distances from the parallel lines.
If they stand, each in a perpendicular line,
going from the parallel lines (Fig. 2), it is
requisite that they should each stand at an
equal distance from the perpendicular line
next to them; otherwise there is no beauty.
If there be three of these circles between
two parallel lines, and near to a perpendicu-
lar line run between them (Fig. 3), the most
beautiful form, perhaps, that they could be
placed in, is in an equilateral triangle with
the cross line, because there are most equali-
38
JONAI'IIAN EDWARDS
ties. The dlst.uue of the two next to tin-
cross line is eqii;il from thnt, nnd also equal
from rlu' parallel lines. 1 he distance of the
third from each parallel is ecjual, and its
distance from each ot the other two circles
is equal, and is also equal to their distance
from one another, and likewise eciual to
their distance from each end of the cross
line. There are two equilateral triangles:
one made by the three circles, and the other
made by the cross line and two of the sides
of the first protracted till they meet that
line. And if there be another like it, on the
opposite side, to correspond with it and it be
taken altogether, the beauty is still greater,
where the distances from the lines, in the
one, are equal to the distances in the other;
also the two next to the cross lines are at
equal distances from the other two; or, if
you go crosswise, from corner to corner.
The two cross lines are also parallel, so that
all parts are at an equal distance, and
innumerable other equalities might be
found.
This simple Equality, without Proportion,
is the lowest kind of Regularity, and may be
called Simple Beauty. All other beauties
and excellencies may be resolved into it.
Proportion is Complex Beauty. Thus, if we
suppose that there are tw^o points, A B,
placed at two inches' distance, and the
next, C, one inch farther (Fig. i), it is req-
uisite, in order to regularity and beauty,
Fig. I
B CD
Fig. 2
B C
if there be another, D, that it should be at
half an inch distance; otherwise there is
no regularity, and the last, D, would stand
out of its proper place; because now the
relation that the space C D, bears to B C,
is equal to the relation that B C, bears to
A B; so that B C D, is exactly similar to
ABC. It is evident, this is a more compli-
cated excellency than that which consisted in
Equality, because the terms of the relation
are here complex, and before were simple.
When there are three points set in a right
line, it is requisite, in order to regularity,
that they should be set at an equal distance,
as A B C (Fig. 2), where A B, is similar to
B C, or the relation of C to B, is the same as
of B to A. But in the other are three terms
necessary in each of the parts, between
which the relation, B C D, is as ABC:
so that here more simple beauties are omit-
ted, and yet there is a general complex
beauty: that is, B C is not as A B, nor is
C D as B C, but yet, B C D is as A B C. It
is requisite that the consent or regularity of
C D to B C, be omitted, for the sake of the
harmony of the whole. For although, if
C D was perfectly equal to B C, there would
be regularity and beauty with respect to
them two; yet, if A B be taken into the
idea, there is nothing but confusion. And it
might be requisite, if these stood with others,
even to omit this proposition, for the sake
of one more complex still. Thus, if they
stood with other points, where B stood at
four inches' distance from A, C at two from
B, and D at six from C: the place where D
must stand in, if A, B, C, D, were alone,
viz., one inch from C, must be so as to be
made proportionate with the other points
beneath:
A
B C D
I ' I ' I ' I ' I
A
I I I
B
I I I I I I I I I I I I I
C D
So that although A, B, C, D, are not pro-
portioned, but are confusion among them-
selves; yet taken with the whole they are
proportioned and beautiful.
All beauty consists in similarness or iden-
tity of relation. In identity of relation
consists all likeness, and all identity between
two consists in identity of relation. Thus,
when the distance between two is exactly
equal, their distance is their relation one to
another, the distance is the same, the bodies
are two; wherefore this is their correspon-
dency and beauty. So bodies exactly of the
same figure, the bodies are two, the relation
between the parts of the extremities is the
same, and this is their agreement with them.
But if there are two bodies of diflPerent
shapes, having no similarness of relation be-
tween the parts of the extremities; this, con-
sidered by itself, is a deformity, because
being disagrees with being, which must
undoubtedly be disagreeable to perceiving
being: because what disag'-ees with Being
must necessarily be disagreeable to Being in
general, to every thing that partakes of
Entity, and of course to perceiving being;
THE MIND
39
and what agrees with Being, must be agree-
able to Being in general, and therefore to
perceiving being. But agreeableness of per-
ceiving being is pleasure, and disagreeable-
ness is pain. Disagreement or contrariety to
Being is evidently an approach to Nothing,
or a degree of Nothing; which is nothing
else but disagreement or contrariety of
Being, and the greatest and only evil: And
Entity is the greatest and only good. And
by how much more perfect Entity is that is
without mixture of Nothing, by so much the
more Excellency. Two beings can agree
one with another in nothing else but Rela-
tion; because otherwise the notion of their
twoness (duality) is destroyed, and they
become one.
And so, in every case, what is called Corre-
spondency, Symmetry, Regularity, and the
like, may be resolved into Equalities; though
the Equalities in a beauty, in any degree
complicated, are so numerous that it would
be a most tedious piece of work to enumerate
them. There are millions of these Equali-
ties. Of these consist the beautiful shape of
flowers, the beauty of the body of man, and
of the bodies of other animals. That sort of
beauty which is called Natural, as of vines,
plants, trees, etc., consists of a very compli-
cated harmony; and all the natural motions,
and tendencies, and figures of bodies in the
Universe are done according to proportion,
and therein is their beauty. Particular dis-
proportions sometimes greatly add to the
general beauty, and must necessarily be, in
order to a more universal proportion: — So
much equality, so much beauty; though it
may be noted that the quantity of equality
is not to be measured only by the number,
but the intenseness, according to the quan-
tity of being. As bodies are shadows of
being, so their proportions are shadows of
proportion.
The pleasures of the senses, where har-
mony is not the object of judgment, are the
result of equality. Thus in Music, not only
in the proportion which the several notes
of a tune bear, one among another, but in
merely two notes, there is harmony; whereas
it is impossible there should be proportion
between only two terms. But the propor-
tion is in the particular vibrations of the air,
which strike on the ear. And so, in the
pleasantness of light, colors, tastes, smells,
and touch, all arise from proportion of mo-
tion. The organs are so contrived that, upon
the touch of such and such particles, there
shall be a regular and harmonious motion of
the animal spirits.
Spiritual harmonies are of vastly larger
extent: i. c, the proportions are vastly
oftener redoubled, and respect mere beings,
and require a vastly larger view to compre-
hend them; as some simple notes do more
affect one, who has not a comprehensive
understanding of Music.
The reason why Equality thus pleases the
mind, and Inequality is unpleasing, is be-
cause Disproportion, or Inconsistency, is
contrary to Being. For Being, if we examine
narrowly, is nothing else but Proportion.
When one being is inconsistent with another
being, then Being is contradicted. But con-
tradiction to Being, is intolerable to per-
ceiving being, and the consent to Being,
most pleasing.
Excellency consists in the Similarness of
one being to another — not merely Equality
and Proportion, but any kind of Similar-
ness— thus Similarness of direction. Sup-
posing many globes moving in right lines, it
is more beautiful, that they should move all
the same way, and according to the same
direction, than if they moved disorderly;
one, one way, and another, another. This
is an universal definition of Excellency: —
The Consent of Being to Being, or Being's
Consent to Entity. The more the Consent is,
and the more extensive, the greater is the
Excellency.
How exceedingly apt are we, when we are
stitting still, and accidentally casting our
eye upon some marks or spots in the floor or
wall, to be ranging of them into regular
parcels and figures: and, if we see a mark
out of its place, to be placing of it right, by
our imagination; and this, even while we
are meditating on something else. So we
may catch ourselves at observing the rules
of harmony and regularity, in the careless
motions of our heads or feet, and when play-
ing with our hands, or walking about the
room.
Pleasedness, in perceiving Being, always
arises either from a perception of Consent to
Being in general, or of Consent to that
Being that perceives. As we have shown
40
JONATHAN EDWARDS
that Ajirteablcncss to Entity must be agree-
able to perceiving; Entity it is as evident that
it is necessary that Agreeableness to that
Being must be pleasing to it, if it perceives
it. So that Pleasedness does not always
arise from a perception of Excellency lin
general;] but the greater a Being is, and the
more it has of Entity, the more will Con-
sent to Being in general please it. But God
is proper Entity itself, and these two there-
fore, in Him, become the same; for, so far as
a thing consents to Being in general, so far it
consents to Him; and the more perfect Cre-
ated Spirits are, the nearer do they come to
their Creator, in this regard.
That, vvhich is often called Self Love^ is
exceedingly improperly called Love^ for they
do not only say that one loves himself, when
he sees something amiable in himself, the
view of which begets delight. But merely
an inclination to pleasure, and averseness to
pain, they call Self Love; so that the devils,
and other damned spirits, love themselves,
not because they see any thing in them-
selves, which they imagine to be lovely, but
merely, because they do not incline to pain
but to pleasure, or merely because they are
capable of pain or pleasure; for pain and
pleasure include an inclination to agreeable-
ness, and an aversion to disagreeableness.
Now how improper is it to say, that one
loves himself, because what is agreeable to
him is agreeable to him, and what is dis-
agreeable to him is disagreeable to him:
which mere Entity supposes. So that this,
that they call Self Love, is no affection, but
only the Entity of the thing, or his being
what he is.
One alone, without any reference to any
more, cannot be excellent; for in such case,
there can be no manner of relation no way,
and therefore no such thing as Consent.
Indeed what we call One, may be excellent
because of a consent of parts, or some con-
sent of those in that being, that are dis-
tinguished into a plurality some way or other.
But in a being that is absolutely without any
plurality, there cannot be Excellency, for
there can be no such thing as consent or
agreement.
One of the highest excellencies is Love.
As nothing else has a proper being but
Spirits, and as Bodies are but the shadow of
being, therefore the consent of bodies one
to another, and the harmony that is among
them, is but the shadow of Excellency. The
highest Excellency therefore must be the
consent of Spirits one to another. But the
consent of Spirits consists half in their
mutual love one to another. And the sweet
harmony between the various parts of the
Universe, is only an image of mutual love.
But yet a lower kind of love may be odious,
because it hinders, or is contrary to, a higher
and more general. Even a lower proportion
is often a deformity, because it is contrary
to a more general proportion.
Coroll. I. If so much of the beauty and
excellency of Spirits consists in Love, then
the deformity of evil spirits consists as much
in hatred and malice.
Coroll. 2. The more any doctrine, or insti-
tution, brings to light of the Spiritual World,
the more will it urge to Love and Charity.
Happiness strictly consists in the per-
ception of these three things: of the consent
of being to its own being; of its own consent
to being; and of being's consent to being.
Excellence, to put it in other words, is
that which is beautiful and lovely. That
which is beautiful, considered by itself sepa-
rately, and deformed, considered as a part
of something else more extended; or beauti-
ful, only with respect to itself and a few
other things, and not as a part of that which
contains all things — the Universe; is false
beauty and a confined beauty. That which
is beautiful, with respect to the university
of things, has a generally extended excellence
and a true beauty; and the more extended,
or limited, its system is, the more confined
or extended is its beauty.
As bodies, the objects of our external
senses, are but the shadows of beings; that
harmony, wherein consists sensible excel-
lency and beauty, is but the shadow of
excellency. That is, it is pleasant to the
mind, because it is a shadow of love. When
one thing sweetly harmonizes with another,
as the Notes in music, the notes are so
conformed, and have such proportion one
to another, that they seem to have respect
one to another, as if they loved one another.
NOTES ON NATURAL SCIENCE
41
So the beauty of figures and motions is, when
one part has such consonant proportion
with the rest, as represents a general agree-
ing and consenting together; which is very-
much the image of Love, in all the parts of a
Society, united by a sweet consent and
charity of heart. Therein consists the beauty
of figures, as of floWers drawn with a pen;
and the beauty of the body, and of the
features of the face.
There is no other way, that sensible things
can consent one to another but by Equality,
or by Likeness, or by Proportion. There-
fore the lowest or most simple kind of beauty
is equality or likeness; because by equality
or likeness, one part consents with but one
part; but by Proportion one part may
sweetly consent to ten thousand diflPerent
parts; all the parts may consent with all
the rest; and not only so, but the parts,
taken singly, may consent with the whole
taken together. Thus, in the figures or flour-
ishes drawn by an acute penman, every
stroke may have such a proportion, both by
the place and distance, direction, degree of
curvity, etc.y that there may be a consent, in
the parts of each stroke, one with another,
and a harmonious agreement with all the
strokes, and with the various parts, com-
posed of many strokes, and an agreeableness
to the whole figure taken together.
There is a beauty in Equality, as appears
very evident by the very great respect men
show to it, in every thing they make or do.
How unbeautiful would be the body, if the
parts on one side were unequal to those on
the other; how unbeautiful would writing
be, if the letters were not of an equal height,
or the lines of an equal length, or at an equal
distance, or if the pages were not of an equal
width or height; and how unbeautiful would
a building be, if no equality were observed in
the correspondent parts.
Existence or Entity is that, mto which all
Excellency is to be resolved. Being or Ex-
istence is what is necessarily agreeable to
Being; and when Being perceives it, it will
be an agreeable perception; and any con-
tradiction to Being or Existence is what
Being when it perceives, abhors. If Being,
in itself considered, were not pleasing, Be-
ing's consent to Being would not be pleasing,
nor would Being's disagreeing with Being,
be displeasing. Therefore, not only may
Greatness be considered as a capacity of
Excellency; but a Being, by reason of his
greatness considered alone, is the more
excellent, because he partakes more of
Being. Though if he be great, if he dissents
from more general and extensive Being, or
from Universal Being; he is the more odious
for his greatness, because the dissent or con-
tradiction to Being in general is so much the
greater. It is more grating to see much
Being dissent from Being than to see little;
and his greatness, or the quantity of Being he
partakes of, does nothing towards bettering
his dissent from Being in general, because
there is no proportion between Finite Being,
however great, and Universal Being.
Coroll. I. Hence it is impossible that God
should be any otherwise, than excellent;
for he is the Infinite, Universal and All-
comprehending, Existence.
2. Hence God infinitely loves himself,
because his Being is Infinite. He is in him-
self, if I may so say, an Infinite Quantity of
Existence.
3. Hence we learn one reason, why per-
sons, who view Death merely as Annihila-
tion, have a great abhorrence of it, though
they live a very afflicted life.
NOTES ON NATURAL SCIENCE
OF THE PREJUDICES OF THE
IMAGINATION
Of all prejudices, no one so fights with
Natural Philosophy, and prevails more
against it, than those of the Imagination.
It is these, which make the vulgar so roar out,
upon the mention of some very rational
philosophical truths. And indeed I have
known of some very learned men, that have
pretended to a more than ordinary freedom
from such prejudices, so overcome by them,
that, merely because of them, they have
believed things most absurd. And truly I
hardly know of any other prejudices, that
are more powerful against truth of any kind,
than those; and I believe they will not give
the hand to any in any case, except to those
arising from our ruling self-interest, or the
impetuosity of human passions. And there
is very good reason for it; for opinions, aris-
42
JONATHAN EDWARDS
in<^ from imagination, take us as soon as we
are born, are beat into us by every act of
sensation, and so j^row up with us from our
very births, and by that means grow into us
so fast, that it is ahiiost impossible to root
them out; being, as it were, so incorporated
with our very minds, that whatsoever is ob-
jected contrary thereunto, is, as if it were
dissonant to the very constitution of them.
Hence men come to make what they can
actually perceive by their senses, or by im-
mediate and outside reflection into their own
souls, the standard of possibility and im-
possibility; so that there must be no body,
forsooth, bigger than they can conceive of,
or less than they can see with their eyes: no
motion, either much swifter, or slower, than
they can imagine. As to the greatness, and
distances of bodies, the learned world have
pretty well conquered their imagination,
with respect to them; neither will any body
flatly deny, that it is possible for bodies to
be of any degree of bigness that can be
mentioned; yet imaginations of this kind,
among the learned themselves, even of this
learned age, have a very powerful secret
influence, to cause them, either to reject
things really true, as erroneous, or to em-
brace those that are truly so. Thus some
men will yet say, they cannot conceive, how
the Fixed Stars can be so distant as that the
Earth's annual revolution should cause no
parallax among them, and so are almost
ready to fall back into antiquated Ptolemy
his system, merely to ease their imagina-
tion.— Thus also, on the other hand, a very
learned man and sagacious astronomer, upon
consideration of the vast magnitude of the
visible part of the universe, has, in the
ecstasy of his imagination, been hurried on
to pronounce the universal infinite; which I
may say, out of veneration, was beneath
such a man as he. As if it were any more an
argument, because what he could see of the
universe were so big, as he was assured it
was. And suppose he had discovered the
invisible universe, so vast as it is, to be as a
globule of water to another Universe; the
case is the same; as if it w^ould have been
any more of an argument, that that larger
Universe was infinite, than if the visible
part thereof were no bigger than a particle of
the water of this. I think one is no nearer
to infinite than the other.
OF BEING
That there should absolutely be Nothing
at all, is utterly impossible. The mind, let
it stretch its conceptions ever so far, can
never so much as bring itself to conceive of
a state of perfect Nothing. It puts the mind
into mere convulsion and confusion, to think
of such a state: and it contradicts the very
nature of the soul, to think that such a state
should be. It is the greatest of contradic-
tions, and the aggregate of all contradictions,
to say that thing should not be. It is true,
we cannot so distinctly show the contra-
diction in words; because we cannot talk
about it, without speaking stark nonsense,
and contradicting ourselves at every way:
and because Nothing is that, whereby we
distinctly show other particular contradic-
tions. But here we are run up to our first
principle, and have no other to explain the
nothingness, or not being of Nothing by.
Indeed we can mean nothing else by Noth-
ing, but a state of absolute contradiction;
and if any man thinks, that he can conceive
well enough how there should be Nothing, I
will engage, that what he means by Nothing,
is as much Something, as any thing that he
ever thought of in his life; and I believe,
that if he knew what Nothing was, it would
be intuitively evident to him that it could
not be. — Thus we see it is necessary that
some being should eternally be. And it is a
more palpable contradiction still to say, that
there must be Being somewhere, and not
otherwhere, for the words Absolute Nothingy
and Where, contradict each other. And,
besides, it gives as great a shock to the mind,
to think of pure Nothing being in any one
place, as it does to think of it in all places:
and it is self-evident, that there can be
Nothing in one place, as well as in another;
and if there can be in one, there can be [in] all.
So that we see that this Necessary, Eternal
Being must be Infinite and Omnipresent.
This Infinite and Omnipresent being can-
not be solid. Let us see how contradictory
it is, to say that an Infinite being is solid;
for solidity surely is nothing but resistance
to other solidities. — Space is this necessary,
eternal, infinite, and omnipresent being.
We find that we can, with ease, conceive how
all other beings should not be. We can re-
move them out of our minds, and place some
NOTES ON NATURAL SCIENCE
43
other in the room of them: but Space is the
very thing, that we can never remove, and
conceive of its not being. If a man would
imagine Space any where to be divided, so
as there should be nothing between the
divided parts, there remams Space between,
notwithstanding, and so the man contra-
dicts himself. And it is self-evident I believe
to every man, that Space is necessary, eter-
nal, infinite, and omnipresent. But I had as
good speak plain: I have already said as
much as, that Space is God. And it is indeed
clear to me, that all the Space there is, not
proper to body, all the Space there is with-
out the bounds of Creation, all the Space
there was before the Creation, is God him-
self; and no body would in the least pick at
it, if it were not because of the gross con-
ceptions that we have of Space.
A state of absolute nothing is a state of
absolute contradiction. Absolute nothing is
the aggregate of all the contradictions in the
world: a state, wherein there is neither
body, nor spirit, nor space, neither empty
space nor full space, neither little nor great,
narrow nor broad, neither infinite space nor
finite space, not even a mathematical point,
neither up nor down, neither north nor south
(I do not mean, as it is with respect to the
body of the earth, or some other great body),
but no contrary points, positions or direc-
tions, no such thing as either here or there,
this way or that way, or any way. When we
go about to form an idea of perfect Nothing,
we must shut out all these things: we must
shut out of our minds both space that has
something in it, and space that has nothing
in it. We must not allow ourselves to think
of the least part of Space, be it ever so small.
Nor must we suffer our thoughts to take
sanctuary in a mathematical point. When
[we] go to expel being out of our thoughts,
we must be careful not to leave empty space
in the room of it; and when we go to expel
emptiness from our thoughts, we must not
think to squeeze it out by any thing close,
hard and solid; but we must think of the
same, that the sleeping rocks do dream of;
and not till then, shall we get a complete idea
of Nothing.
When we go to Inquire, Whether or no,
there can be absolutely Nothing.? we utter
nonsense, in so inquiring. The stating of
the question is nonsense; because we make
a disjunction where there is none. Either
Being, or absolute Nothing, is no disjunction;
no more than whether a triangle is a triangle,
or not a triangle. There is no other way, but
only for there to be existence: there is no
such thing, as absolute Nothing. There is
such a thing, as Nothing, with respect to
this ink and paper: there is such a thing, as
Nothing, with respect to you and me: there
is such a thing, as Nothing, with respect to
this globe of earth, and with respect to this
Universe. There is another way, beside
these things, having existence; but there is
no such thing, as Nothing, with respect to
Entity, of being, absolutely considered. We
do not know what we say, if we say that we
think it possible in itself, that there should
not be Entity.
And how doth it grate upon the mind, to
think that Something should be from all
eternity, and yet Nothing all the while be
conscious of it. To illustrate this: Let us
suppose that the World had a being from all
eternity, and had many great changes, and
wonderful revolutions, and all the while
Nothing knew it, there was no knowledge in
the Universe of any such thing. How is it
possible to bring the mind to imagine this.''
Yea, it is really impossible it should be, that
any thing should exist, and Nothing know it.
Then you will say. If it be so, it is, because
Nothing has any existence but in conscious-
ness: No, certainly, no where else, but either
in created or uncreated consciousness.
Suppose there were another Universe,
merely of bodies, created at a great distance
from this; created in excellent order, har-
monious motions, and a beautiful variety;
and there was no created intelligence in it,
nothing but senseless bodies, and nothing
but God knew any thing of it. I demand
where else that Universe would have a being,
but only in the Divine consciousness .f* Cer-
tainly, in no other respect. There would be
figures, and magnitudes, and motions, and
proportions; but where, where else, except
in the Almighty's knowledge.? How is it
possible there should.? — But then you will
say. For the same reason, in a room closely
shut up, which nobody sees, there is nothing,
except in God's knowledge. — I answer,
Created beings are conscious of the effects
of what is in the room; for, perhaps, there
is not one leaf of a tree, nor a spire of grass,
44
JONATHAN EDWARDS
but what produces effects, all over tlie
Universe and will produce them, to the end
of eternity. But any otherwise, there is
nothing in a room so shut up, but only in
God's consciousness. How can any thing be
there, any other way? This will appear to
be truly so, to any one who thinks of it, with
the whole united strength of his mind. Let
us suppose, for illustration, this impossibility,
that all the spirits in the Universe were, for
a time, deprived of their consciousness, and
that God's consciousness, at the same time,
were to be intermitted. I say the Universe,
for that time, would cease to be, of itself;
and this not merely, as we speak, because
the Almighty could not attend to uphold it;
but because God could know nothing of it.
It is our foolish imagination that will not
suffer us to see it. We fancy there may be
figures and magnitudes, relations and proper-
ties, without any one know^ing of it. But
it is our imagination hurts us. We do not
know what figures and properties are.
Our imagination makes us fancy that we
see shapes, and colors, and magnitudes,
though nobody is there to behold it. But
to help our imagination, let us thus state
the case: Let us suppose the creation de-
prived of every ray of light, so that there
should not be the least glimmering of light
in the Universe. Now all will own that, in
such case, the Universe would really be
immediately deprived of all its colors. No
one part of the Universe is any more red, or
blue, or green, or yellow, or black, or white,
or light, or dark, or transparent, or opaque.
There would be no visible distinction be-
tween the Universe and the rest of the in-
comprehensible void: yea, there would be
no difference, in these respects, between the
Universe and the infinite void; so that any
part of that void would really be as light and
as dark, as white and as black, as red and as
green, as blue and as brown, as transparent
and as opaque, as any part of the Universe:
so that, in such case, there w^ould be no
difference, in these respects, between the
Universe and Nothing. So also, there would
be no difference, between one part of the
Universe and another: all, in these respects,
is alike confounded with, and undistinguished
from, infinite emptiness.
At the same time, also, let us suppose the
Universe to be altogether deprived of mo-
tion, and all parts of it to be at perfect rest.
1 hen, the Universe would not differ from
the void, in this respect: there would be no
more motion in the one, than in the other.
Then, also, solidity would cease. All that
we mean, or can be meant, by solidity, is
resistance; resistance to touch, the resist-
ance of some parts of space. 1 his is all the
knowledge we get of solidity, by our senses,
and, I am sure, all that we can get, any other
way. But solidity shall be shown to be
nothing else, more fully, hereafter. But
there can be no resistance, if there is no
motion. One body cannot resist another,
when there is perfect rest among them.
But, you will say. Though there is no actual
resistance, yet there is potential resistance:
that is, such and such parts of space would
resist upon occasion. But this is all that I
would have, that there is no solidity now;
not but that God could cause there to be, on
occasion. And if there is no solidity, there
is no extension, for extension is the extended-
ness of solidity. Then, all figure, and magni-
tude, and proportion, immediately cease.
Put, then, both these suppositions together:
that is, deprive the Universe of light, and
motion, and the case would stand thus, with
the Universe: There would be neither white
nor black, neither blue nor brown, neither
bright nor shaded, pellucid nor opaque, no
noise nor sound, neither heat nor cold,
neither fluid nor solid, neither wet nor dry,
neither hard nor soft, nor solidity, nor
extension, nor figure, nor magnitude, nor
proportion, nor body, nor spirit. What,
then, is to become of the Universe? Cer-
tainly it exists no where, but in the Divine
mind. This will be abundantly clearer to
one, after having read what I have further
to say of solidity, etc.: so that we see that a
Universe, without motion, can exist no where
else but in the mind — either infinite or
finite.
Corollary. It follows from hence, that
those beings which have knowledge and
consciousness, are the only proper and real,
and substantial beings; inasmuch as the
being of other things is only by these. From
hence, we may see the gross mistake of those
who think material things the most sub-
stantial beings, and spirits more like a
shadow; whereas, spirits only are properly
substance.
PERSONAL NARRATIVE
45
THINGS TO BE CONSIDERED, OR
WRITTEN FULLY ABOUT
Second Series
47. Since, as has been shown, body is
nothing but an infinite resistance, in some
parts of space, caused by the immediate
exercise of Divine power; it follows, that as
great and as wonderful power is every mo-
ment exerted in the upholding of the world,
as at first was exerted in its creation: the
first creation being only the first exertion of
this power, to cause such resistance, and the
preservation, only the continuation or the
repetition of this power, every moment to
cause this resistance: so that the Universe is
created out of nothing every moment. And,
if it w^ere not for our imaginations, w^hich
hinder us, we might see that wonderful work
performed continually, which was seen by
the morning stars, when they sang together.
SARAH PIERREPONTi
They say there is a young lady in [New
Haven] who is beloved of that Great Being,
who made and rules the world, and that
there are certain seasons in which this Great
Being, in some way or other invisible, comes
to her and fills her mind with exceeding
sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for
any thing, except to meditate on him — that
she expects after a while to be received up
where he is, to be raised up out of the world
and caught up into heaven; being assured
that he loves her too w^ell to let her remain
at a distance from him always. There she is
to dwell with him, and to be ravished with
his love and delight for ever. Therefore, if
you present all the world before her, with the
richest of its treasures, she disregards it and
cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain
or afl^liction. She has a strange sweetness in
her mind, and singular purity in her affec-
tions; is most just and conscientious in all
her conduct; and you could not persuade her
to do any thing wrong or sinful, if you would
give her all the world, lest she should offend
this Great Being. She is of a wonderful
sweetness, calmness, and universal benevo-
1 Written, it is said, four years before Edwards's
marriage to Sarah Pierrepont — i.e., when he was twenty
and she thirteen.
lence of mind; especially after this Great
God has manifested himself to her mind.
She will sometimes go about from place to
place, singing sweetly; and seems to be
always full of joy and pleasure; and no one
knows for what. She loves to be alone,
walking in the fields and groves, and seems
to have some one invisible always conversing
with her.
PERSONAL NARRATIVE^
1 HAD a variety of concerns and exercises
about my soul from my childhood; but had
two more remarkable seasons of awakening,
before I met with that change by which I
was brought to those new dispositions, and
that new sense of things, tj^iat I have since
had. The first time was when I was a boy,
some years before I went to college, at a
time of remarkable awakening in my father's
congregation. I was then very much affected
for many months, and concerned about the
things of religion, and my soul's salvation;
and was abundant in duties. I used to pray
five times a day in secret, and to spend much
time in religious talk with other boys, and
used to meet with them to pray together.
I experienced I know not what kind of delight
in religion. My mind was much engaged in
it, and had much self-righteous pleasure; and
it was my delight to abound in religious
duties. I with some of my schoolmates
joined together, and built a booth in a
swamp, in a very retired spot, for a place of
prayer. And besides, I had particular secret
places of my own in the woods, where I used
to retire by myself; and was from time to
time much affected. My affections seemed
to be lively and easily moved, and I seemed
to be in my element when engaged in relig-
ious duties. And I am ready to think, many
are deceived with such affections, and such
a kind of delight as I then had in religion,
and mistake it for grace.
But in process of time, my convictions and
affections wore off; and I entirely lost all
those affections and delights and left off
secret prayer, at least as to any constant
performance of it; and returned like a dog
to his vomit, and went on in the ways of sin.
2 Written at some time after January, 1739 (see the
concluding paragraph), probably within the following
couple of years.
46
JONATHAN EDWARDS
Indeed I was at times very uneasy, especially
toward the latter part of my time at college;
when it pleased (lod to seize me with the
pleurisv; in which he brought me nigh to
the grave, and shook me over the pit of hell.
And yet, it was not long after my recovery
before I fell again into my old ways of sin.
But God would not suffer me to go on with
my quietness; I had great and violent in-
ward struggles, till, after many conflicts
with wicked inclinations, repeated resolu-
tions, and bonds that I laid myself under by
a kind of vows to God, I was brought wholly
to break oflp all former wicked ways, and all
ways of known outward sin; and to apply
myself to seek salvation, and practice many
religious duties; but without that kind of
affection and dalight which I had formerly
experienced. My concern now wrought
more by inward struggles and conflicts, and
self-reflections. I made seeking my salva-
tion the main business of my life. But yet,
it seems to me, I sought after a miserable
manner; which has made me sometimes
since to question, whether ever it issued in
that which was saving; being ready to
doubt, whether such miserable seeking ever
succeeded. I was indeed brought to seek
salvation in a manner that I never was
before; I felt a spirit to part with all things
in the world, for an interest in Christ. — My
concern continued and prevailed, with many
exercising thoughts and inward struggles;
but yet it never seemed to be proper to
express that concern by the name of terror.
From my childhood up, my mind had been
full of objections against the doctrine of
God's sovereignty, in choosing whom he
would to eternal life, and rejecting whom he
pleased; leaving them eternally to perish,
and be everlastingly tormented in hell. It
used to appear like a horrible doctrine to
me. But I remember the time very well
when I seemed to be convinced, and fully
satisfied, as to this sovereignty of God, and
his justice in thus eternally disposing of
men, according to his sovereign pleasure.
But never could give an account, how, or by
what means, I was thus convinced, not in
the least imagining at the time, nor a long
time after, that there was any extraordinary
influence of God's Spirit in it; but only that
now I saw further, and my reason appre-
hended the justice and reasonableness of it.
However, my mind rested in it; and it put
an end to all those cavils and objections.
And there has been a wonderful alteration in
my mind, with respect to the doctrine of
(jod's sovereignty, from that day to this;
so that I scarce ever have found so much as
the rising of an objection against it, in the
most absolute sense, in God's showing mercy
to whom he will show mercy, and hardening
whom he will, (jod's absolute sovereignty
and justice, with respect to salvation and
damnation, is what my mind seems to rest
assured of, as much as of any thing that I
see with my eyes; at least it is so at times.
But I have often, since that first conviction,
had quite another kind of sense of God's
sovereignty than I had then. I have often
since had not only a conviction, but a de-
lightful conviction. The doctrine has very
often appeared exceeding pleasant, bright,
and sweet.
Absolute sovereignty is what I love to
ascribe to God. But my first conviction
was not so.
The first instance that I remember of that
sort of inward, sweet delight in God and
divine things that I have lived much in
since, was on reading those words (I
Timothy, i, 17): Now unto the King eternal^
immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be
honor and glory for ever and ever, Amen. As
I read the words, there came into my soul,
and was as it were diffused through it, a
sense of the glory of the Divine Being; a
new sense, quite different from any thing I
ever experienced before. Never any words
of Scripture seemed to me as these words
did. I thought within myself, how excellent
a being that was, and how happy I should
be, if I might enjoy that God, and be
wrapt up in heaven, and be as it were swal-
lowed up in him for ever! I kept saying,
and as it were singing over these words of
Scripture to myself; and went to pray to
God that I might enjoy him, and prayed in
a manner quite different from what I used
to do; with a new sort of affection. But it
never came into my thought that there was
any thing spiritual, or of a saving nature in
this.
From about that time, I began to have a
new kind of apprehensions and ideas of
Christ, and the work of redemption, and the
glorious way of salvation by him. An
PERSONAL NARRATIVE
47
inward, sweet sense of these things, at times,
came into my heart; and my soi 1 was led
away in pleasant views and contemplations
of them. And my mind was greatly engaged
to spend my time in reading and meditating
on Christ, on the beauty and excellency of
his person, and the lovely way of salvation
by free grace in him. I found no books so
delightful to me, as those that treated of
these subjects. Those words (Canticles, ii,
i) used to be abundantly with me, / am the
Rose of Sharon, arid the Lily of the valleys.
The words seemed to me sweetly to represent
the loveliness and beauty of Jesus Christ.
The whole book of Canticles used to be
pleasant to me, and I used to be much in
reading it, about that time; and found, from
time to time, an inward sweetness, that
would carry me away, in my contemplations.
This I know not how to express otherwise,
than by a calm, sweet abstraction of soul
from all the concerns of this world; and
sometimes a kind of vision, or fixed ideas
and imaginations, of being alone in the
mountains, or some solitary wilderness, far
from all mankind, sweetly conversing with
Christ, and wrapt and swallowed up in God.
The sense I had of divine things, would often
of a sudden kindle up, as it were, a sweet
burning in my heart; an ardor of soul, that
I know not how to express.
Not long after I began to experience these
things, I gave an account to my father of
some things that had passed in my mind.
I was pretty much affected by the discourse
we had together; and when the discourse
was ended, I walked abroad alone, in a
solitary place in my father's pasture for
contemplation. And as I was walking there
and looking up on the sky and clouds, there
came into my mind so sweet a sense of the
glorious majesty and grace of God, that I
know not how to express. I seemed to see
them both in a sweet conjunction; majesty
and meekness joined together; it was a
gentle, and holy majesty; and also a ma-
jestic meekness; a high, great, and holy
gentleness.
After this my sense of divine things
gradually increased, and became more and
more lively, and had more of that inward
sweetness. The appearance of every thing
was altered; there seemed to be, as it were,
a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine
glory, in almost every thing. God's excel-
lency, his wisdom, his purity and love,
seemed to appear in every thing; in the sun,
moon, and stars; in the clouds, and blue
sky; in the grass, fiowers, trees; in the
water, and all nature; which used greatly
to fix my mind. I often used to sit and view
the moon for continuance; and in the day,
spent much time in viewing the clouds and
sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these
things; in the mean time, singing forth,
with a low voice, my contemplations of the
Creator and Redeemer. And scarce any
thing, among all the works of nature, was
so delightful to me as thunder and lightning;
formerly, nothing had been so terrible to me.
Before, I used to be uncommonly terrified
with thunder, and to be struck with terror
when I saw a thunder storm rising; but now,
on the contrary, it rejoiced me. I felt God,
so to speak, at the first appearance of a
thunder storm; and used to take the oppor-
tunity, at such times, to fix myself in order
to view the clouds, and see the lightnings
play, and hear the majestic and awful voice
of God's thunder, which oftentimes was
exceedingly entertaining, leading me to
sweet contemplations of my great and
glorious God. While thus engaged, it always
seemed natural to me to sing, or chant for
my meditations; or, to speak my thoughts in
soliloquies with a singing voice.
I felt then great satisfaction, as to my
good state; but that did not content me. I
had vehement longings of soul after God and
Christ, and after more holiness, wherewith
my heart seemed to be full, and ready to
break; which often brought to my mind the
words of the Psalmist (Psalm cxix, 28): Aly
soul breaketh for the longing it hath. I often
felt a mourning and lamenting in my heart,
that I had not turned to God sooner, that I
might have had more time to grow in grace.
My mind was greatly fixed on divine things;
almost perpetually in the contemplation of
them. I spent most of my time in thinking
of divine things, year after year; often walk-
ing alone in the woods, and solitary places,
for meditation, soliloquy, and prayer, and
converse with God; and it was always my
manner, at such times, to sing forth my
contemplations. I was almost constantly in
ejaculatory prayer, wherever I was. Prayer
seemed to be natural to me, as the breath hy
4.9
JONATHAN EDWARDS
which the iiiw.ird hurnin^s of my lieart had
vent. 1 he dehj:;hts which 1 now felt in the
thinu;s of rehgion, were of an exceedinp;ly
different kind from those before mentioned,
that I had when a boy; and what I then had
no more notion of, than one born bhnd has of
pleasant and beautiful colors. They were of
a more inward, pure, soul-animating, and
refreshinc; nature. Those former delights
never reached the heart; and did not arise
from any sight of the divine excellency of the
things of God; or any taste of the soul-
satisfying and life-giving good there is in
them.
My sense of divine things seemed gradu-
ally to increase, until I went to preach at
New York, which was about a year and a
half after they began; and while I was there,
I felt them, very sensibly, in a higher degree
than I had done before. My longings after
God and holiness were much increased.
Pure and humble, holy and heavenly Chris-
tianity appeared exceedingly amiable to me.
I felt a burning desire to be in every thing a
complete Christian; and conform to the
blessed image of Christ; and that I might
live, in all things, according to the pure and
blessed rules of the Gospel. I had an eager
thirsting after progress in these things, which
put me upon pursuing and pressing after
them. It was my continual strife day and
night, and constant inquiry, how I should
be more holy, and live more holily, and more
becoming a child of God, and a disciple of
Christ. I now sought an increase of grace
and holiness, and a holy life, with much more
earnestness than ever I sought grace before
I had it. I used to be continually examining
myself, and studying and contriving for
likely ways and means how I should live
holily, with far greater diligence and earnest-
ness than ever I pursued any thing in my
life; but yet with too great a dependence on
my own strength; which afterwards proved
a great damage to me. My experience had
not then taught me, as it has done since, my
extreme feebleness and impotence, every
manner of way; and the bottomless depths of
secret corruption and deceit there was in my
heart. However, I went on with my eager
pursuit after more holiness, and conformit}''
to Christ.
The heaven I desired was a heaven of
holiness; to be with God, and to spend my
eternity in divine love, and holy communion
with Christ. My mind was very much taken
up with contemplations on heaven, and the
enjoyments there; and living there in perfect
holiness, humility, and love. And it used
at that time to appear a great part of the
happiness of heaven, that there the saints
could express their love to Christ. It ap-
peared to me a great clog and burden, that
what I felt within I could not express as I
desired. The inward ardor of my soul
seemed to be hindered and pent up, and
could not freely flame out as it would. I
used often to think, how in heaven this prin-
ciple should freely and fully vent and express
itself. Heaven appeared exceedingly delight-
ful, as a world of love; and that all happiness
consisted in living in pure, humble, heavenly,
divine love.
I remember the thoughts I used then to
have of holiness; and said sometimes to
myself, "I do certainly know that I love
holiness, such as the Gospel prescribes." It
appeared to me that there was nothing in it
but what was ravishingly lovely; the highest
beauty and amiableness — a divine beauty;
far purer than any thing here upon earth;
and that every thing else was like mire and
defilement, in comparison of it.
Holiness, as I then wrote down some of
my contemplations on it, appeared to me to
be of a sweet, pleasant, charming, serene,
calm nature; which brought an inexpressible
purity, brightness, peacefulness, and ravish-
ment to the soul. In other words, that it
made the soul like a field or garden of God,
with all manner of pleasant flowers; all
pleasant, delightful, and undisturbed; en-
joying a sweet calm, and the gently vivifying
beams of the sun. The soul of a true Chris-
tian, as I then wrote my meditations, ap-
peared like such a little white flower as we
see in the spring of the year; low and humble
on the ground, opening its bosom to receive
the pleasant beams of the sun's glory; re-
joicing as it were in a calm rapture; diffusing
around a sweet fragrancy; standing peace-
fully and lovingly, in the midst of other
flowers round about; all in like manner
opening their bosoms, to drink in the light
of the sun. There was no part of creature
holiness, that I had so great a sense of its
loveliness, as humility, brokenness of heart
and poverty of spirit; and there was nothing
PERSONAL NARRATIVE
49
that I so earnestly longed for. My heart
panted after this, to lie low before God, as
in the dust; that I might be nothing, and
that God might be ALL, that I might become
as a little child.
While at New York, I was sometimes
much affected with reflections on my past
life, considering how late it was before I
began to be truly religious; and how
wickedly I had lived till then; and once so
as to weep abundantly, and for a con-
siderable time together.
On January 12, 1723, I made a solemn
dedication of myself to God, and wrote it
down; giving up myself, and all that I had
to God; to be for the future in no respect
my own; to act as one that had no right to
himself, in any respect. And solemnly
vowed to take God for my whole portion
and felicity; looking on nothing else as any
part of my happiness, nor acting as if it were;
and his law for the constant rule of my obedi-
ence; engaging to fight with all my might
against the world, the flesh, and the devil, to
the end of my life. But I have reason to be
infinitely humbled, when I consider how
much I have failed of answering my obliga-
tion.
I had then abundance of sweet religious
conversation in the family where I lived,
with Mr. John Smith and his pious mother.
My heart was knit in aflPection to those in
whom were appearances of true piety; and
I could bear the thoughts of no other com-
panions, but such as were holy, and the
disciples of the blessed Jesus. I had great
longings for the advancement of Christ's
kingdom in the world; and my secret prayer
used to be, in great part, taken up in praying
for it. If I heard the least hint of any thing
that happened, in any part of the world,
that appeared, in some respect or other, to
have a favorable aspect on the interest of
Christ's kingdom, my soul eagerly catched at
it; and it would much animate and refresh
me. I used to be eager to read public news
letters, mainly for that end; to see if I could
not find some news favorable to the interest
of religion in the world.
I very frequently used to retire into a
solitary place, on the banks of Hudson's
river, at some distance from the city, for
contemplation on divine things, and secret
converse with God; and had many sweet
hours there. Sometimes Mr. Smith and I
walked there together, to converse on the
things of God; and our conversation used
to turn much on the advancement of Christ's
kingdom in the world, and the glorious things
that God would accomplish for his church in
the latter days. I had then, and at other
times, the greatest delight in the holy
Scriptures, of any book whatsoever. Often-
times in reading it, every word seemed to
touch my heart. I felt a harmony between
something in my heart, and those sweet and
powerful words. I seemed often to see so
much light exhibited by every sentence, and
such a refreshing food communicated, that
I could not get along in reading; often dwell-
ing long on one sentence, to see the wonders
contained in it; and yet almost every sen-
tence seemed to be full of wonders.
I came away from New York in the montli
of April, 1723, and had a most bitter parting
with Madam Smith and her son. My heart
seemed to sink within me at leaving the
family and city where I had enjoyed so many
sweet and pleasant days. I went from New
York to Weathersfield, by water, and as I
sailed away I kept sight of the city as long
as I could. However, that night, after this
sorrowful parting, I was greatly comforted
in God at Westchester, where we went ashore
to lodge; and had a pleasant time of it all
the voyage to Saybrook. It was sweet to
me to think of meeting dear Christians in
heaven, where we should never part more.
At Saybrook we went ashore to lodge, on
Saturday, and there kept the Sabbath;
where I had a sweet and refreshing season,
walking alone in the fields.
After I came home to Windsor, I remained
much in a like frame of mind as when at
New York; only sometimes I felt my heart
ready to sink with the thoughts of my
friends at New York. My support was in
contemplations on the heavenly state; as I
find in my Diary of May i, 1723. It was a
comfort to think of that state, where there is
fullness of joy; where reigns heavenly, calm,
and delightful love, without alloy; where
there are continually the dearest expressions
of this love; where is the enjoyment of the
persons loved, without ever parting; where
those persons who appear so lovely in this
world, will really be inexpressibly more
lovely and full of love to us. And how
so
JONATHAN EDWARDS
sweetly will the nuitnal lovers join together
to sing the praises of God and the Lamb!
I low will it hll us with joy to think that this
enjoyment, these sweet exercises, will never
cease, but will last to all eternity! I con-
tinued much in the same frame, in the gen-
eral, as when at New York, till I went to
New Haven as tutor to the college; particu-
larly once at Bolton, on a journey from
Boston, while walking out alone in the
fields. After I went to New Haven I sunk
in religion; my mind being diverted from
my eager pursuits after holiness, by some
affairs that greatly perplexed and distracted
my thoughts.
In September, 1725, I was taken ill at
New Haven, and while endeavoring to go
home to Windsor, was so ill at the North
Village, that I could go no further; where I
lay sick for about a quarter of a year. In
this sickness God was pleased to visit me
again with the sweet influences of his Spirit.
My mind was greatly engaged there in
divine, pleasant contemplations, and long-
ings of soul. I observed that those who
watched with me, would often be looking
out wishfully for the morning; which
brought to my mind those words of the
Psalmist, and which my soul with delight
made its own language. My soul zvaiteth for
the Lordy more than they that watch for the
morning, I say, more than they that watch for
the morning; and when the light of day
came in at the windows, it refreshed my soul
from one morning to another. It seemed to
be some image of the light of God's glory.
I remember, about that time, I used
greatly to long for the conversion of some
that I was concerned with; I could gladly
honor them, and with delight be a servant
to them, and lie at their feet, if they were
but truly holy. But, some time after this,
I was again greatly diverted in my mind
with some temporal concerns that exceed-
ingly took up my thoughts, greatly to the
wounding of my soul; and went on through
various exercises, that it would be tedious
to relate, which gave me much more experi-
ence of my own heart, than ever I had before.
Since I came to this town,^ I have often
had sweet complacency in God, in views of
his glorious perfections and the excellency of
1 Nortfiampton.
Jesus Christ. God has appeared to me a
glorious and lovely being, chiefly on the
account of his holiness. The holiness of God
has always appeared to me the most lovely
of all his attributes. The doctrines of God's
absolute sovereignty, and free grace, in
showing mercy to whom he would show
mercy; and man's absolute dependence on
the operations of God's Holy Spirit, have
very often appeared to me as sweet and
glorious doctrines. These doctrines have
been much my delight. God's sovereignty
has ever appeared to me great part of his
glory. It has often been my delight to
approach God, and adore him as a sovereign
God, and ask sovereign mercy of him.
I have loved the doctrines of the Gospel;
they have been to my soul like green pas-
tures. The Gospel has seemed to me the
richest treasure; the treasure that I have
most desired, and longed that it might dwell
richly in me. The way of salvation by
Christ has appeared, in a general way,
glorious and excellent, most pleasant and
most beautiful. It has often seemed to me
that it would in a great measure spoil heaven,
to receive it in any other way. That text
has often been affecting and delightful to me.
Isaiah, xxxii, 2: A man shall be an hiding
place from the windy and a covert from the
tempest, etc.
It has often appeared to me delightful to
be united to Christ; to have him for my
head, and to be a member of his body; also
to have Christ for my teacher and prophet.
I very often think with sweetness, and long-
ings, and pantings of soul, of being a little
child, taking hold of Christ, to be led by him
through the wilderness of this world. That
text, Matthew, xviii, 3, has often been sweet
to me, except ye be coiiverted and become as
little children, etc. I love to think of coming
to Christ, to receive salvation of him, poor
in spirit, and quite empty of self, humbly
exalting him alone; cut off entirely from my
own root, in order to grow into, and out of
Christ; to have God in Christ to be all in all;
and to live by faith on the Son of God, a life
of humble unfeigned confidence in him.
That Scripture has often been sweet to me,
Psalm cxv, i : Not unto us, 0 Lord, not unto
us, but to thy name give glory, for thy mercy
and for thy truth's sake. And those words of
Christ, Luke, x, 21: In that hour Jesus ie-
PERSONAL NARRATIVE
51
joked in spirit , snd saidy I thank thee, O
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou
hast hid these thiiigs from the wise and prudent,
and hast revealed them u7ito babes; even so,
Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight. That
sovereignty of God which Christ rejoiced in,
seemed to me worthy of such joy; and that
rejoicing seemed to show the excellency of
Christ, and of what spirit he was.
Sometimes, only mentionmg a single word
caused my heart to burn within me; or only
seeing the name of Christ, or the name of
some attribute of God. And God has
appeared glorious to me, on account of the
Trinity. It has made me have exalting
thoughts of God, that he subsists in three
persons: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The
sweetest joys and delights I have experienced
have not been those that have arisen from a
hope of my own good estate; but in a direct
view of the glorious things of the Gospel.
When I enjoy this sweetness, it seems to
carry me above the thoughts of my own
estate; it seems at such times a loss that I
cannot bear, to take off my eye from the
glorious pleasant object I behold without
me, to turn my eye in upon myself, and my
own good estate.
My heart has been much on the advance-
ment of Christ's kingdom in the world. The
histories of the past advancment of Christ's
kingdom have been sweet to me. When I
have read histories of past ages, the pleasant-
est thing in all my reading has been, to read
of the kingdom of Christ being promoted.
And when I have expected, in my reading,
to come to any such thing, I have rejoiced in
the prospect, all the way as I read. And my
mind has been much entertained and de-
lighted with the Scripture promises and
prophecies, which relate to the future glori-
ous advancement of Christ's kingdom upon
earth.
I have sometimes had a sense of the ex-
cellent fullness of Christ, and his meetness
and suitableness as a Savior; whereby he
has appeared to me, far above all, the chief
often thousands. His blood and atonement
have appeared sweet, and his righteousness
sweet; which was always accompanied with
ardency of spirit; and inward strugglings
and breathings, and groanings that cannot
be uttered, to be emptied of myself, and
swallowed up in Christ.
Once as I rode out into the woods for my
health, in 1737, having alighted from my
horse in a retired place, as my manner com-
monly has been, to walk for divine contem-
plation and prayer, I had a view that for me
was extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of
God, as Mediator between God and man,
and his wonderful, great, full, pure, and
sweet grace and love, and meek and gentle
condescension. This grace that appeared so
calm and sweet, appeared also great above
the heavens. The person of Christ appeared
ineffably excellent with an excellency great
enough to swallow up all thought and con-
ception— which continued as near as I can
judge, about an hour; which kept me the
greater part of the time in a flood of tears,
and weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul
to be, what I know not otherwise how to
express, emptied and annihilated; to lie in
the dust, and to be full of Christ alone; to
love him with a holy and pure love; to trust
in him; to live upon him; to serve and
follow him; and to be perfectly sanctified
and made pure, with a divine and heavenly
purity. I have, several other times, had
views very much of the same nature, and
which have had the same effects.
I have many times had a sense of the glory
of the third person in the Trinity, in his office
of Sanctifier; in his holy operations, com-
municating divine light and life to the soul.
God, in the communications of his Holy
Spirit, has appeared as an infinite fountain
of divine glory and sweetness; being full,
and sufficient to fill and satisfy the soul;
pouring forth itself in sweet communica-
tions; like the sun in its glory, sweetly and
pleasantly diffusing light and life. And I
have sometimes had an affecting sense of the
excellency of the word of God, as a word of
life; as the light of life; a sweet, excellent,
life-giving word; accompanied with a thirst-
ing after that word, that it might dwell
richly in my heart.
Often, since I lived in this town, I have
had very affecting views of my own sinful-
ness and vileness; very frequently to such
a degree as to hold me in a kind of loud
weeping, sometimes for a considerable time
together; so that I have often been forced to
shut myself up. I have had a vastly greater
sense of my own wickedness, and the bad-
ness of my own heart, than ever I had before
5^
JONATHAN EDWARDS
my conversion. It has often appeared to
me, that if Ciod should mark iniquity against
me, I should appear the very worst of all
mankind; of all that have been since the
beginning of the world to this time; and
that I should have by far the lowest place in
hell. When others, that have come to talk
with me about their soul concerns, have
e.xpressed the sense they have had of their
own wickedness, by saying that it seemed to
them, that they were as bad as the devil
himself; I thought their expression seemed
exceedingly faint and feeble, to represent
my wickedness.
My wickedness, as I am in myself, has
long appeared to me perfectly ineffable, and
swallowing up all thought and imagination;
like an infinite deluge, or mountains over my
head. I know not how to express better
what my sins appear to me to be, than by
heaping infinite upon infinite, and multiply^
ing infinite by infinite. Very often, for these
many years, these expressions are in my
mind, and in my mouth, "Infinite upon
infinite — Infinite upon infinite!" When I
look into my heart, and take a view of my
wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely
deeper than hell. And it appears to me that
were it not for free grace, exalted and raised
up to the infinite height of all the fullness
and glory of the great Jehovah, and the arm
of his power and grace stretched forth in all
the majesty of his power, and in all the glory
of his sovereignty, I should appear sunk
down in my sins below hell itself; far beyond
the sight of every thing, but the eye of
sovereign grace, that can pierce even down
to such a depth. And yet, it seems to me,
that my conviction of sin is exceedingly
small, and faint; it is enough to amaze me,
that I have no more sense of my sin. I
know certainly, that I have very little sense
of my sinfulness. When I have had turns of
weeping and crying for my sins, I thought I
knew at the time, that my repentance was
nothing to my sin.
I have greatly longed of late for a broken
heart, and to lie low before God; and, when
I ask for humility, I cannot bear the thoughts
of being no more humble than other Chris-
tians. It seems to me, that though their
degrees of humility may be suitable for
them, yet it would be a vile self-exaltation
to me, not to be the lowest in humility of all
mankind. Others speak of their longing to
be "humbled to the dust." That may be a
proper expression for them, but I always
think of myself, that I ought, and it is an
expression that has long been natural for
me to use in prayer, "to lie infinitely low
before God." And it is affecting to think
how ignorant I was, when a young Christian,
of the bottomless, mfinite depths of wicked-
ness, pride, hypocrisy, and deceit, left in my
heart.
I have a much greater sense of my univer-
sal, exceeding dependence on God's grace
and strength, and mere good pleasure, of
late, than I used formerly to have; and have
experienced more of an abhorrence of my
own righteousness. The very thought of
any joy arising in me, on any consideration
of my own amiableness, performances, or
experiences, or any goodness of heart or life,
is nauseous and detestable to me. And yet
I am greatly afflicted with a proud and self-
righteous spirit, much more sensibly than I
used to be formerly. I see that serpent
rising and putting forth its head continually,
every where, all around me.
Though it seems to me, that, in some
respects, I was a far better Christian, for
two or three years after my first conversion,
than I am now; and lived in a more constant
delight and pleasure; yet, of late years, I
have had a more full and constant sense of
the absolute sovereignty of God, and a de-
light in that sovereignty; and have had
more of a sense of the glory of Christ, as a
Mediator revealed in the Gospel. On one
Saturday night, in particular, I had such a
discovery of the excellency of the Gospel
above all other doctrines, that I could not
but say to myself, "This is my chosen light,
my chosen doctrine"; and of Christ, "This
is my chosen Prophet." It appeared sweet,
beyond all expression, to follow Christ, and
to be taught, and enlightened, and instructed
by him; to learn of him, and live to him.
Another Saturday night (January, 1739), I
had such a sense, how sweet and blessed a
thing it was to walk in the way of duty; to
do that which was right and meet to be
done, and agreeable to the holy mind of God;
that it caused me to break forth into a kind
of loud weeping, which held me some time,
so that I was forced to shut myself up, and
fasten the doors. I could not but, as it were,
THE CHRISTIAN PILGRIM
53
cry out, "How happy are they which do
that which is right in the sight of God! They
are blessed indeed, they are the happy ones ! "
I had, at the same time, a very affecting
sense, how meet and suitable it was that
God should govern the world, and order all
things according to his own pleasure; and
I rejoiced in it, that God reigned, and
that his will was done.
THE CHRISTIAN PILGRIM,
or
THE CHRISTIAN'S LIFE A
JOURNEY TOWARD HEAVEN
Hebrews, xi, 13, 14:
And confessed that they were strangers and
pilgrims on the earth. For they that say
such things declare plainly that they seek
a country.
The apostle is here exhibiting the excel-
lency of faith, by its glorious effects and
happy issue in the saints of the Old Testa-
ment. Having enumerated examples of
Abel, Enoch and Noah, of Abraham and
Sarah, of Isaac and Jacob, he relates that
all "these died in faith, not having received
the promises, but having seen them afar off,
were persuaded of them and embraced them,
and confessed that they were strangers and
pilgrims on earth." In these words the
apostle seems more immediately to refer to
Abraham and Sarah, and their kindred who
came with them from Haran, and from Ur
of the Chaldees, as appears by the fifteenth
verse, where he says, "and truly if they had
been mindful of that country whence they
came out, they might have had opportunity
to have returned."
Two things may be here observed.
I. The confession which they made con-
cerning themselves to it, that they were
strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Of
this we have a particular account concerning
Abraham, "I am a stranger and a sojourner
with you. "J And it seems to have been a
general sense of the patriarchs, by what
Jacob says to Pharaoh. "And Jacob said
to Pharaoh, the days of the years of my
pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years:
few and evil have the days of the years of
1 Genesis, xxiii, 4.
my hfe been, and have not attained to the
days of the years of the life of my fathers in
the days of their pilgrimage."^ "I am a
stranger and a sojourner with thee, as all
my fathers were."^
2. The inference that the apostle draws
from hence, m., that they sought another
country as their home. " For they that say
such things, declare plainly that they seek
a country." In confessing that they were
strangers, they plainly declared that this
is not their country, that this is not the place
where they are at home. And in confessing
themselves to be pilgrims, they declared
plainly that this is not their settled abode;
but that they have respect to some other
country, which they seek and to which they
are traveling.
SECTION I
That this life ought to he so spent by us, as to he
only a journey, or pilgrimage, tozuard heaven.
Here I would observe,
I. That we ought not to rest in the world
and its enjoyments, but should desire heaven.
We should seek first the kingdom of God.^ We
ought above all things to desire a heavenly
happiness, to be with God, and dwell with
Jesus Christ. Though surrounded with out-
ward enjoyments, and settled in families
with desirable friends and relations; though
we have companions whose society is de-
lightful, and children in whom we see many
promising qualifications; though we live by
good neighbors, and are generally beloved
where known; yet we ought not to take our
rest in these things as our portion. We
should be so far from resting in them that
we should desire to leave them all, in God's
due time. We ought to possess, enjoy, and
use them, with no other view but readily to
quit them, whenever we are called to it, and
to change them willingly and cheerfully for
heaven.
A traveler is not wont to rest in what he
meets with, however comfortable and pleas-
ing on the road. If he passes through
pleasant places, flowery meadows, or shady
groves, he does not take up his content in
these things, but only takes a transient view
2 Genesis, xlvii, 9.
* Psalm xxxix, la.
* St. Matthew, vi, 2;^.
54
JONATHAN EDWARDS
of them as he ^oes along. He is not enticed
by fine appearances to put off the thought
of proceeding. No, but his journey's end is
in his mind. If he meets with comfortable
accommodations at an inn, he entertains no
thoughts of setthng there. He considers
that these things are not his own, that he is
but a stranger; and when lie has refreshed
himself, or tarried for a night, he is for
going forward. And it is pleasant to him to
think that so much of the way is gone.
So should we desire heaven more than the
comforts and enjoyments of this life. The
apostle mentions it as an encouraging, com-
fortable consideration to Christians, that
they draw nearer their happiness. "Now is
our salvation nearer than when we be-
lieved." Our hearts ought to be loose to
these things, as that of a man on a journey,
that we may as cheerfully part with them
whenever God calls. "But this I say,
brethren, the time is short: it remaineth,
that both they that have wives, be as though
they had none; and they that weep, as
though they wept not; and they that re-
joice, as though they rejoiced not; and they
that buy, as though they possessed not; and
they that use this world, as not abusing it;
for the fashion of this world passeth away.''^
— These things, as only lent to us for a little
while, to serve a present turn; but we should
set our hearts on heaven, as our inheritance
for ever.
2. We ought to seek heaven by traveling
m the way that leads thither. This is a w^ay
of holiness. We should choose and desire
to travel thither in this way and no other,
and part with all those carnal appetites
which as weights will tend to hinder us.
"Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin
which doth so easily beset us, and let us run
with patience the race that is set before us. "2
However pleasant the gratification of any
appetite may be, we must lay it aside, if it
be any hindrance, or a stumbling-block in
the way to heaven.
We should travel on in the way of obedi-
ence to all God's commands, even the
difficult as well as the easy, denying all our
smful inclinations and interests. The way
to heaven is ascending; we must be content
to travel up hill, though it be hard and tire-
1 I Corinthians, vii, 29-30.
* Hebrews, xii, i.
some, and contrary to the natural bias of
our flesh. We should follow Christ; the
path he traveled was the right way to heaven.
We should take up our cross and follow him,
in meekness and lowliness of heart, obedi-
ence and charity, diligence to do good, and
patience under afflictions. Ihe way to
heaven is a heavenly life, an imitation of those
who are in heaven, in their holy enjoyments,
loving, adoring, serving, and praising God
and the Lamb. Even if we could go to
heaven with the gratification of our lusts,
we should prefer a way of holiness and
conformity to the spiritual self-denying rules
of the gospel.
3. We should travel On in this way in a
laborious manner. Long journeys are
attended with toil and fatigue, especially if
through a wilderness. Persons, in such a
case, expect no other than to suffer hard-
ships and weariness. So we should travel in
this way of holiness, improving our time and
strength, to surmount the difficulties and
obstacles that are in the way. The land
we have to travel through is a wilderness;
there are many mountains, rocks, and rough
places that we must go over, and, therefore,
there is a necessity that we should lay out
our strength.
4. Our whole lives ought to be spent in
traveling this road. We ought to begin
early. This should be the first concern,
when persons become capable of acting.
When they first set out in the zvorld, they
should set out on this journey. And we
ought to travel on with assiduity. It ought
to be the work of every day. We should
often think of our journey's end, and make
it our daily work to travel on in the way
that leads to it. He who is on a journey is
often thinking of the destined place, and it is
his daily care and business to get along, and
to improve his time to get toward his
journey's end. Thus should heaven be con-
tinually in our thoughts; and the immediate
entrance or passage to it, viz.^ death, should
be present with us. We ought to persevere in
this way as long as we live.
"Let us run w^ith patience the race that is
set before us." Though the road be diffi-
cult, and toilsome, we must hold out with
patience, and be content to endure hard-
ships. Though the journey be long, yet we
must not stop short, but hold on till we
"HE CHRISTIAN PILGRIM
S!^
arrive at the place we seek. Nor should we
be discouraged with the length and diffi-
culties of the way, as the children of Israel
were, and be for turning back again. All
our thought, and design, should be to press
forward till we arrive.
5. We ought to be continually growing in
holiness; and, in that respect, coming
nearer and nearer to heaven. We should be
endeavoring to come nearer to heaven in
being more heavenly; becoming naore and
more like the inhabitants of heaven, in
respect of holiness, and conformity to God;
the knowledge of God and Christ; in clear
views of the glory of God, the beauty of
Christ, and the excellency of divine things,
as we come nearer to the beatific vision. We
should labor to be continually growing in
divine love — that this may be an increasing
flame in our hearts, till they ascend wholly
in this flame — in obedience and an heavenly
conversation; that w^e may do the will of
God on earth, as the angels do in heaven:
in comfort and spiritual joy; in sensible
communion with God and Jesus Christ.
Our path should be as "the shining light,
that shines more and more to the perfect
day."i We ought to be hungering and
thirsting after righteousness, after an in-
crease in righteousness. "As new^-born
babes desire the sincere milk of the word,
that ye may grow thereby. "2 The perfection
of heaven should be our mark. "This one
thing I do: forgetting those things w^hich
are behind, and reaching forth unto those
things that are before, I press toward the
mark, for the prize of the high calling of God
in Christ Jesus. "^
6. All other concerns of life ought to be
entirely subordinate to this. When a man
is on a journey, all the steps he takes are
subordinated to the aim of getting to his
journey's end. And, if he carries money or
provisions with him, it is to supply him in
his journey. So we ought wholly to sub-
ordinate all our other business, and all our
temporal enjoyments, to this affair of
traveling to heaven. When any thing we
have becomes a clog and hindrance to us,
we should quit it immediately. The use of
our worldly enjoyments and possessions
1 Proverbs, iv, 18.
- 1 Peter, ii, 2.
3 Philippians, iii, 13-I4.
should be with such a view, and in such a
manner, as to further us in our way heaven-
ward. Thus we should eat, and drink, and
clothe ourselves, and improve the conversa-
tion and enjoyment of friends. And, what-
ever business we are setting about, whatever
design we are engaging in, we should inquire
with ourselves whether this business, or
undertaking, will forward us in our way to
heaven.'' And, if not, we should quit our
design.
SECTION II
IFhy the Christian's life is a journey or
pilgrimage?
I. This world is not our abiding place.
Our continuance here is but very short.
Man's days on the earth are as a shadow.
It was never designed by God that this
world should be our home. Neither did God
give us these temporal accommodations for
that end. If God has given us ample estates,
and children, or other pleasant friends, it is
with no such design that we should be fur-
nished here as for a settled abode, but with a
design that we should use them for the
present, and then leave them in a very little
time. When w^e are called to any secular
business, or charged with the care of a
family, if we improve our lives to any other
purpose than as a journey toward heaven,
all our labor will be lost. If we spend our
lives in the pursuit of a temporal happiness;
as riches, or sensual pleasures, credit and
esteem from men, delight in our children, and
the prospect of seeing them well brought
up, and well settled, etc. — all these things
will be of little significancy to us. Death
will blow up all our hopes, and will put an
end to these enjoyments. "The places
that have known us will know us no more,"
and "the eye that has seen us shall see us
no more." We must be taken away for ever
from all these things; and it is uncertain
when: it may be soon after we are put into
the possession of them. And then, where
will be all our worldly employments and
enjoyments, when we are laid in the silent
grave! "So man lieth down, and riseth not
again, till the heavens be no more."^
2. The future world was designed to be
our settled and everlasting abode. There it
< Job, xiv, 12.
5^
JONATHAN EDWARDS
was intended that we should he fixed; nnd
there alone is a lastinc; hahimnon, and a
lasting: inheritance. Ihe present state is
short and transitory, but our state in the
other world is everlasting. And as we are
there at first, so must we be without change.
Our state in the future world, therefore,
being eternal, is of so much greater im-
portance than our state here that all our
concerns in this world should be wholly
subordmated to it.
3. Heaven is that place alone where our
highest end and highest good is to be ob-
tained. God hath made us for himself.
"Of him, and through him, and to him are
all things." Therefore, then do we attain
to our highest end when we are brought to
God: but that is by being brought to
heaven; for that is God's throne, the place
of his special presence. There is but a very
imperfect union with God to be had in this
world, a very imperfect knowledge of him
in the midst of much darkness, a very im-
perfect conformity to God, mingled with
abundance of estrangement. Here we can
serve and glorify God, but in a very im-
perfect manner; our service being mingled
with sin, which dishonors God. But when
we get to heaven (if that ever be), we shall
be brought to a perfect union with God,
and have more clear views of him. There
we shall be fully conformed to God, without
any remaining sin: for "we shall see him
as he is." There we shall serve God per-
fectly, and glorify him in an exalted manner,
even to the utmost of the powers and
capacity of our nature. Then we shall
perfectly give up ourselves to God: our
hearts will be pure and holy offerings, pre-
sented in a flame of divine love.
God is the highest good of the reasonable
creature; and the enjoyment of him is the
only happiness with which our souls can be
satisfied. To go to heaven fully to enjoy
God, is infinitely better than the most
pleasant accommodations here. Fathers
and mothers, husbands, wives, or children,
or the company of earthly friends, are but
shadows; but the enjoyment of God is the
substance. These are but scattered beams,
but God is the sun. These are but streams,
but God is the fountain. These are but
drops, but God is the ocean. Therefore it
becomes us to spend this life only as a
journey toward heaven, as it becomes us to
make the seeking of our highest end and
proper good the whole work of our lives, to
which we should subordinate all other con-
cerns of life. Why should we labor for, or
set our hearts on any thing else, but that
w'hich is our proper end and true happiness?
4. Our present state, and all that belongs
to it, is designed by him that made all
things to be wholly in order to another
world. This world was made for a place of
preparation for another. Man's mortal life
was given him that he might be prepared
for his fixed state. And all that God has
here given us is given to this purpose. The
sun shines, and the rain falls upon us, and the
earth yields her increase to us for this end.
Civil, ecclesiastical, and family affairs, and
all our personal concerns, are designed and
ordered in subordination to a future world
by the maker and disposer of all things. To
this, therefore, they ought to be subordinated
by us.
SECTION III
Instruction afforded by the consideration that
life is a journey ^ or pilgrimage ^ toward
heaven.
I. This doctrine may teach us moderation
in our mourning for the loss of such dear
friends who, while they lived, improved their
lives to right purposes. If they lived a holy
life, then their lives were a journey toward
heaven. And why should we be immoderate
in mourning, when they are got to their
journey's end.' Death, though it appears
to us with a frightful aspect, is to them a
great blessing. Their end is happy, and
better than their beginning. " The day of
their death is better than the day of their
birth.'* "^ While they lived, they desired
heaven, and chose it above this world, or
any of its enjoyments. For this they
earnestly longed, and why should we grieve
that they have obtained it.^ Now they have
got to their Father's house. They find more
comfort a thousand times, now they are got
home, than they did in their journey. In
this world they underwent much labor and
toil; it was a wilderness they passed through.
There were many diflficulties in the way —
mountains and rough places. It was labori-
1 Ecclesiastes, vli, 1.
THE CHRISTIAN PILGRIM
57
ous and fatiguing to travel the road, and they
had many wearisome days and nights; but
now they have got to their everlasting rest.
"And I heard a voice from heaven, saying
unto me, \\ rite, blessed are the dead which
die in the Lord from henceforth: yea, saith
the Spirit, that they may rest from their
labors; and their works do follow them."i
They look back upon the difficulties, and
sorrows, and dangers of life, rejoicing that
they have surmounted them all.
We are ready to look upon death as their
calamity, and to mourn that those who were
so dear to us should be in the dark grave;
that they are there transformed to cor-
ruption and worms; taken away from their
dear children and enjoyments, etc., as though
they were m awful circumstances. But this
is owing to our infirmity; they are in a
happy condition, inconceivably blessed.
They do not mourn, but rejoice with exceed-
ing joy: their mouths are filled with joyful
songs, and they drink at rivers of pleasure.
They find no mixture of grief that they
have changed their earthly enjoyments, and
the company of mortals, for heaven. Their
life here, though in the best circumstances,
was attended with much that was adverse
and afflictive: but now there is an end to all
adversity. "They shall hunger no more,
nor thirst any more; neither shall the sun
light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb
which is in the midst of the throne shall
feed them and shall lead them unto living
fountains of waters: and God shall wipe
away all tears from their eyes." 2
It is true, we shall see them no more in
this world, yet we ought to consider that
we are traveling toward the same place;
and why should we break our hearts that
they have got there before us.^" We are
following after them, and hope, as soon as
we get to our journey's end, to be with them
again, in better circumstances. A degree of
mourning for near relations when departed
is not inconsistent with Christianity, but
very agreeable to it; for as long as we are
flesh and blood we have animal propensities
and aflfections. But we have just reason
that our mourning should be mingled with
joy. "But I would not have you be igno-
rant, brethren, concerning them that are
1 Revelation, xiv, 13.
'Revelation, vii, 16-17.
asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others
that have no hope";^ — i. e., that they
should not sorrow as the Heathen, who had
no knowledge of a future happiness. This
appears by the following verse: ^^ For if we
believe that Jesus died and rose again^ even so
them also which sleep in Jesus, will God bring
with him.''
2. If our lives ought to be only a journey
toward heaven, how ill do they improve their
lives that spend them in traveling toward
hell.^ Some men spend their whole lives,
from their infancy to their dying day, in
going down the broad way to destruction.
They not only draw nearer to hell as to time,
but they every day grow more ripe for
destruction; they are more assimilated to
the inhabitants of the infernal world. While
others press forward in the straight and
narrow way to life, and laboriously travel
up the hill toward Zion, against the inclina-
tions and tendency of the flesh, these run
with a swift career down to eternal death.
This is the employment of every day, with
all wicked men; and the whole day is spent
in it. As soon as ever they awake in the
morning they set out anew in the way to
hell, and spend every waking moment in it.
They begin in early days. "The wicked are
estranged from the womb, they go astray
as soon as they are born, speaking lies."^
They hold on it with perseverance. Many of
them who live to be old are never weary in
it; though they live to be an hundred years
old, they will not cease traveling in the way
to hell, till they arrive there. And all the
concerns of life are subordinated to this
employment. A wicked man is a servant of
sin; his powers and faculties are employed
in the service of sin, and in fitness for hell.
And all his possessions are so used by him
as to be subservient to the same purpose.
Men spend their time in treasuring up wrath
against the day of wrath. Thus do all un-
clean persons, who live in lascivious practices
in secret; all malicious persons; all profane
persons, that neglect the duties of religion.
Thus do all unjust persons, and those who
are fraudulent and oppressive in their deal-
ings. Thus do all backbiters and revilers;
all covetous persons, that set their hearts
chiefly on the riches of this world. Thus do
3 1 Thessalonians, iv, 13.
* Psalm xlviii, 4.
58
JONATHAN EDWARDS
tavern-haunters, and frequenters of evil
company; and many other kinds that might
be mentioned. Thus the bulk of mankind
are hastening onward in the broad way to
destruction; which is, as it were, filled up
with the multitude that are going in it with
one accord. And they are every day gomg
to hell out of this broad way by thousands.
Multitudes are continually flowing down into
the great lake of fire and brimstone, as some
mighty river constantly disembogues its
water into the ocean.
3. Hence when persons are converted
they do but begin their work, and set out
in the way they have to go. They never till
then do any thing at that work in which their
whole lives ought to be spent. Persons
before conversion never take a step that
way. Then does a man first set out on his
journev, when he is brought home to Christ;
and so far is he from having done his work,
that his care and labor in his Christian work
and business is then but begun, in which he
must spend the remaining part of his life.
Those persons do ill who, when they are
converted, and have obtained a hope of their
being in a good condition, do not strive as
earnestly as they did before, while they were
under awakenings. They ought, hence-
forward, as long as they live, to be as earnest
and laborious, as watchful and careful as
ever; yea, they should increase more and
more. It is no just excuse, that now they
have obtained conversion. Should not we
be as diligent that we may serve and glorify
God as that we ourselves may be happy?
And if we have obtained grace, yet we ought
to strive as much that we may obtain the
other degrees that are before, as we did to
obtain that small degree that is behind. The
apostle tells us, that he forgot what was
behind, and reached forth toward what was
before. 1
Yea, those who are converted have now a
further reason to strive for grace; for they
have seen something of its excellency. A
man who has once tasted the blessings of
Canaan has more reason to press toward
it than he had before. And they who are
converted should strive to "make their
calling and election sure." All those who
are converted are not sure of it; and those
who are sure, do not know that they shall
^ Philippians, iii, 13.
be always so; and still seeking and serving
God with the utmost diligence is the way
to have assurance, and to have it maintained.
SECTION IV
An exhortation so to spend the present life that
It may only be a journey tozvard heaven.
Labor to obtain such a disposition of
mind that you may choose heaven for your
inheritance and home, and may earnestly
long for it, and be willing to change this
world, and all its enjoyments, for heaven.
Labor to have your heart taken up so much
about heaven, and heavenly enjoyments, as
that you may rejoice when God calls you to
leave your best earthly friends and comforts
for heaven, there to enjoy God and Christ.
Be persuaded to travel in the way that
leads to heaven; viz., in holiness, self-denial,
mortification, obedience to all the com-
mands of God, following Christ's example,
in a way of a heavenly life, or imitation of
the saints and angels in heaven. Let it be
your daily work, from morning till night,
and hold out in it to the end; let nothing
stop or discourage you, or turn you aside
from this road. And let all other concerns
be subordinated to this. Consider the rea-
sons that have been mentioned why you
should thus spend your life; that this world
IS not your abiding place, that the future
world is to be your everlasting abode; and
that the enjoyments and concerns of this
world are given entirely in order to another.
And consider further for motive,
I. How worthy is heaven that your life
should be wholly spent as a journey toward
it. To what better purpose can you spend
your life, whether you respect your duty or
your interest.' What better end can you
propose to your journey than to obtain
heaven.'' You are placed in this world, with
a choice given you, that you may travel
which way you please; and one way leads to
heaven. Now can you direct your course
better than this way.' All men have some
aim or other in living. Some mainly seek
worldly things; they spend their days in
such pursuits. But is not heaven, where is
fullness of joy for ever, much more worthy
to be sought by you.^ How can you better
employ your strength, use your means, and
spend your days, than in traveling the road
THE CHRISTIAN PILGRIM
59
that leads to the everlasting enjoyment of
God, to his glorious presence, to the new
Jerusalem, to the heavenly Mount Zion,
where all your desires will be filled, and no
danger of ever losing your happiness? No
man is at home in this world, whether he
choose heaven or not; here he is but a
transient person. Where can you choose
your home better than in heaven?
2. This is the way to have death com-
fortable to us. To spend our lives so as to
be only a-journeying toward heaven is the
way to be free from bondage, and to have
the prospect and forethought of death
comfortable. Does the traveler think of
his journey's end with fear and terror? Is
it terrible to him to think that he has almost
got to his journey's end? Were the children
of Israel sorry, after forty years' travel in the
wilderness, when they had almost got to
Canaan? This is the way to be able to part
with the world without grief. Does it grieve
the traveler, when he has got home, to quit
his staff and load of provisions that he had
to sustain him by the way?
3. No more of your life will be pleasant to
think of when you come to die, than has been
spent after this manner. If you have spent
none of your life this way, your whole life
will be terrible to you to think of, unless
you die under some great delusion. You will
see then, that all of your life that has been
spent otherwise is lost. You will then see
the vanity of all other aims that you may
have proposed to yourself. The thought of
what you here possessed and enjoyed will
not be pleasant to you, unless you can think
also that you have subordinated them to
this purpose.
4. Consider that those who are willing
thus to spend their lives as a journey toward
heaven, may have heaven. Heaven, how-
ever high and glorious, is attainable for such
poor worthless creatures as we are. We
may attain that glorious region which is the
habitation of angels; yea, the dwelling-
place of the Son of God; and where is the
glorious presence of the great Jehovah.
And we may have it freely, without money
and without price; if we are but willing to
travel the road that leads to it, and bend our
course that way as long as we live, we may
and shall have heaven for our eternal resting
place.
5. Let it be considered, that if our lives
be not a journey toward heaven they will
be a journey to hell. All mankind, after
they have been here a short while, go to
either of the two great receptacles of all that
depart out of this world; the one is heaven,
whither a small number, in comparison,
travel; and the other is hell, whither the bulk
of mankind throng. And one or the other
of these must be the issue of our course in
this world.
I shall conclude by giving a few directions:
1. Labor to get a sense of the vanity of
this world; on account of the little satisfac-
tion that is to be enjoyed here; its short
continuance, and unserviceableness when we
most stand in need of help, viz., on a death-
bed. All men that live any considerable
time in the world might see enough to con-
vince them of its vanity, if they would but
consider. Be persuaded, therefore, to exer-
cise consideration when you see and hear,
from time to time, of the death of others.
Labor to turn your thoughts this way. See
the vanity of the world in such a glass.
2. Labor to be much acquainted with
heaven. If you are not acquainted with it,
you will not be likely to spend your life as a
journey thither. You will not be sensible
of its worth, nor will you long for it. Unless
you are much conversant in your mind with
a better good, it will be exceeding difficult
to you to have your hearts loose from these
things, and to use them only in subordina-
tion to something else, and be ready to part
with them for the sake of that better good.
Labor, therefore, to obtain a realizing sense
of a heavenly world, to get a firm belief of
its reality, and to be very much conversant
with it in your thoughts.
3. Seek heaven only by Jesus Christ.
Christ tells us that he is the way, and the
truth, and the life.^ He tells that he is the
door of the sheep. "I am the door, by me
if any man enter in, he shall be saved; and
go in and out and find pasture." 2 If we,
therefore, would improve our lives as a
journey toward heaven, we must seek it by
him, and not by our own righteousness; as
expecting to obtain it only for his sake, look-
ing to him, having our dependence on him,
who has procured it for us by his merit.
1 St. John, xiv, 6
2 St. John, X, 9.
6o
JONATHAN EDWARDS
And expect strength to walk in holiness, the
way that leads to heaven, only from him.
4. Let Christians help one another in
going this journey. There are many ways
whereby Christians might greatly forward
one another in their way to heaven, as by
religious conference, etc. Therefore let them
be exhorted to go this journey as it were m
company, conversing together, and assisting
one another. Company is very desirable in
a journey, but in none so much as this.
Let them go united, and not fall out by the
way, which would be to hinder one another;
but use all means they can to help each other
up the hill. This would insure a more suc-
cessful traveling, and a more joyful meeting
at their Father's house in glory.
SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF
AN ANGRY GOD 1
Deuteronomy, xxxii, 35:
Their foot shall slide in due time.
In this verse is threatened the vengeance
of God on the wicked unbelieving Israelites,
who were God's visible people, and who lived
under the means of grace; but who, not-
withstanding all God's wonderful works
toward them, remained (as ver. 28) void of
counsel, having no understanding in them.
Under all the cultivations of heaven they
brought forth bitter and poisonous fruit —
as in the two verses next preceding the
text. — The expression I have chosen for my
text, Their foot shall slide in due time, seems
to imply the following things, relating to the
punishment and destruction to which these
wicked Israelites were exposed.
I. That they were always exposed to
destruction; as one that stands or walks in
slippery places is always exposed to fall.
This is implied in the manner of their de-
struction coming upon them, being repre-
sented by their foot sliding. The same is
expressed. Psalm Ixxiii, i8: "Surely thou
1 Preached at Enfield, 3 July, 1741, at a time of great
awakenings, and attended with remarkable impres-
sions on many of the hearers (Dwight). Published at
Boston in the same year, at Edinburgh in 1745, and at
New York in 1753. It is perhaps necessary to point
out that the preceding sermon is as essential as this
one to an understanding alike of Edwards's beliefs
and of New England Puritanism.
didst set them in slippery places; thou
castedst them down into destruction."
2. It implies that they were always ex-
posed to sudden, unexpected destruction.
As he that walks in slippery places is every
moment liable to fall, he cannot foresee one
moment whether he shall stand or fall the
next; and when he does fall, he falls at once
without warning: Which is also expressed
in Psalm Ixxiii, 18, 19: "Surely thou didst
set them in slippery places; thou castedst
them down into destruction: How are they
brought into desolation as in a moment!"
3. Another thing implied is, that they are
liable to fall of themselves, without being
thrown down by the hand of another; as
he that stands or walks on slippery ground
needs nothing but his own weight to throw
him down.
4. That the reason why they are not
fallen already, and do not fall now, is only
that God's appointed time is not come. For
it is said that when that due time, or ap-
pointed time comes, their foot shall slide.
Then they shall be left to fall, as they are
inclined by their own weight. God will not
hold them up in these slippery places any
longer, but will let them go; and then, at
that very instant, they shall fall into destruc-
tion; as he that stands on such slippery
declining ground, on the edge of a pit, he
cannot stand alone, when he is let go he
immediately falls and is lost.
The observation from the words that I
would now insist upon is this: "There is
nothing that keeps wicked men at any one
moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure
of God." By the mere pleasure of God, I
mean his sovereign pleasure, his arbitrary
will, restrained by no obligation, hmdered
by no manner of difficulty, any more than
if nothing else but God's mere will had in
the least degree, or in any respect whatso-
ever, any hand in the preservation of wicked
men one moment. The truth of this observa-
tion may appear by the following considera-
tions.
I. There is no want of pozver in God to
cast wicked men into hell at any moment.
Men's hands cannot be strong when God
rises up. The strongest have no power to
resist him, nor can any deliver out of his
hands. He is not only able to cast wicked
men into hell, but he can most easily do it.
SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD
6i
Sometimes an earthly prince meets with a
great deal of difficulty to subdue a rebel,
who has found means to fortify himself, and
has made himself strong by the numbers of
his followers. But it is not so with God.
There is no fortress that is any defense from
the power of God. Though hand join in
hand, and vast multitudes of God's enemies
combine and associate themselves, they are
easily broken in pieces. They are as great
heaps of light chaff before the whirlwind, or
large quantities of dry stubble before de-
vouring flames. We find it easy to tread
on and crush a worm that we see crawling
on the earth; so it is easy for us to cut or
singe a slender thread that any thing hangs
by: thus easy is it for God, when he pleases,
to cast his enemies down to hell. What are
we, that we should think to stand before
him, at whose rebuke the earth trembles,
and before whom the rocks are thrown
down }
2. They deserve to be cast into hell; so
that divine justice never stands in the way,
it makes no objection against God's using
his power at any moment to destroy them.
Yea, on the contrary, justice calls aloud for
an infinite punishment of their sins." Divine
justice says of the tree that brings forth such
grapes of Sodom: "Cut it down, why cum-
bereth it the ground?" (Luke, xiii, 7.) The
sword of divine justice is every moment
brandished over their heads, and it is nothing
but the hand of arbitrary mercy, and God's
mere will, that holds it back.
3. They are already under a sentence of
condemnation to hell. They do not only
justly deserve to be cast down thither, but
the sentence of the law of God, that eternal
and immutable rule of righteousness that
God has fixed between him and mankind,
is gone out against them, and stands against
them, so that they are bound over already
to hell. John, iii, 18: "He that believeth
not is condemned already." So that every
unconverted man properly belongs to hell;
that is his place; from thence he is. John,
viii, 23: "Ye are from beneath." And
thither he is bound; it is the place that
justice, and God's word, and the sentence of
his unchangeable law assign to him.
4. They are now the objects of that very
same anger and wrath of God that is ex-
pressed in the torments of hell. And the
reason why they do not go down to hell at
each moment is not because God, in whose
power they are, is not then very angry with
them; as he is with many miserable creatures
now tormented in hell, who there feel and
bear the fierceness of his wrath. Yea, God
is a great deal more angry with great num-
bers that are now on earth: yea, doubtless,
with many that are now in this congregation,
who it may be are at ease, than he is with
many of those who are now in the flames of
hell.
So that it is not because God is unmindful
of their wickedness, and does not resent it,
that he does not let loose his hand and cut
them off. God is not altogether such an
one as themselves, though they may imagine
him to be so. The wrath of God burns
against them, their damnation does not
slumber; the pit is prepared, the fire is made
ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to
receive them; the flames do now rage and
glow. The glittering sword is whet, and
held over them, and the pit hath opened its
mouth under them.
5. The devil stands ready to fall upon
them, and seize them as his own, at what
moment God shall permit him. They belong
to him; he has their souls in his possession,
and under his dominion. The Scripture
represents them as his goods (Luke, xi, 12).
The devils watch them; they are ever by
them at their right hand; they stand wait-
ing for them, like greedy hungry lions that
see their prey, and expect to have it, but
are for the present kept back. If God should
withdraw his hand, by which they are
restrained, they would in one moment fly
upon their poor souls. The old serpent is
gaping for them; hell opens its mouth wide
to receive them; and if God should permit
it they would be hastily swallowed up and
lost.
6. There are in the souls of wicked men
those hellish principles reigning, that would
presently kindle and flame out into hell fire,
if it were not for God's restraints. There is
laid in the very nature of carnal men a
foundation for the torments of hell. There
are those corrupt principles in reigning power
in them, and in full possession of them, that
are seeds of hell fire. These principles are
active and powerful, exceeding violent in
their nature, and if it were not for the
62
JONATHAN EDWARDS
restratmnj; hand of Ciotl upon them tluv
would soon break out, they would flanie
out after the same manner as the same
corruptions, the same enmity does m the
hearts of damned souls, and would beget the
same torments as they do in them. The
souls of the wicked are in Scripture compared
to the troubled sea (Isaiah, Ivii, 20). For
the present, God restrains their wickedness
by his mighty power, as he does the raging
waves of the troubled sea, saying: "Hitherto
shalt thou come, but no further"; but if
God should withdraw that restraining power
it would soon carry all before it. Sin is the
ruin and misery of the soul; it is destructive
in its nature; and if God should leave it
without restraint there would need nothing
else to make the soul perfectly miserable.
The corruption of the heart of man is im-
moderate and boundless in its fury; and
while wicked men live here it is like fire
pent up by God's restraints, whereas if it
were let loose it would set on fire the course
of nature; and as the heart is now a sink of
sin, so, if sin was not restrained, it would
immediately turn the soul into a fiery oven,
or a furnace of fire and brimstone.
7. It is no security to wicked men for one
moment that there are no visible means of
death at hand. It is no security to a natural
man that he is now in health, and that he
does not see which way he should now
immediately go out of the world by any
accident, and that there is no visible danger
in any respect in his circumstances. The
manifold and continual experience of the
world in all ages shows this is no evidence
that a man is not on the very brink of
eternit}^ and that the next step will not be
into another world. The unseen, un-
thought-of ways and means of persons
going suddenly out of the world are in-
numerable and inconceivable. Unconverted
men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten
covering, and there are innumerable places
in this covering so weak that they will not
bear their weight, and these places are not
seen. The arrows of death fly unseen at
noon-day; the sharpest sight cannot dis-
cern them. God has so many different
unsearchable ways of taking wicked men
out of the world and sending them to hell,
that there is nothing to make it appear that
God had need to be at the expense of a I
miracle, or go out of the ordinary course of
his providence, to destroy any wicked man,
at any moment. All the means that there
are of sinners going out of the world, are
so in God's hands, and so universallv and
ab.solutely subject to his power and determi-
nation, that it does not depend at all the
less on the mere will of God, whether
sinners shall at any moment go to hell, than
if means were never made use of, or at all
concerned in the case.
8. Natural men's prudence and care to
preserve their own lives, or the care of
others to preserve them, do not secure them
a moment. To this, divine providence and
universal experience do also bear testimony.
There is this clear evidence that men's own
wisdom is no security to them from death:
that if it were otherwise we should see some
difference between the wise and politic men
of the world, and others, with regard to their
liableness to early and unexpected death:
but how is it in fact.'' Ecclesiastes, ii, 16:
"How dieth the wise man.'* even as the
fool."
9. All wicked men's pains and contrivance
which they use to escape hell, while they
continue* to reject Christ, and so remain
wicked men, do not secure them from hell
one moment. Almost every natural man
that hears of hell flatters himself that he
shall escape it; he depends upon himself
for his own security; he flatters himself in
what he has done, in what he is now doing,
or what he intends to do. Every one lays
out matters in his own mind how he shall
avoid damnation, and flatters himself that
he contrives well for himself, and that his
schemes will not fail. They hear indeed that
there are but few saved, and that the greater
part of men that have died heretofore are
gone to hell; but each one imagines that he
lays out matters better for his own escape
than others have done. He does not intend
to come to that place of torment; he says
wMthin himself that he intends to take
effectual care, and to order matters so for
himself as not to fail.
But the foolish children of men miserably
delude themselves in their own schemes,
and in confidence in their own strength and
wnsdom; they trust to nothing but a shadow.
The greater part of those who heretofore
have lived under the same means of grace^
SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD
63
and are now dead, are undoubtedly gone to
hell; and it was not because they were not
as wise as those who are now alive; it was
not because they did not lay out matters
as well for themselves to secure their own
eseape. If we could speak with them, and
inquire of them, one by one, whether they
expected, when alive, and when they used
to hear about hell, ever to be the subjects
of that misery, we doubtless should hear one
and another reply: "No, I never intended
to come here; I had laid out matters other-
wise in my mind; I thought I should con-
trive well for myself; I thought my scheme
good. I intended to take effectual care;
but it came upon me unexpected; I did not
look for it at that time, and in that manner;
it came as a thief: Death outwitted me:
God's wrath was too quick for me. Oh, my
cursed foolishness! I was flattering myself,
and pleasing myself with vain dreams of
what I would do hereafter; and when I was
saying, Peace and safety, then suddenly
destruction came upon me."
10. God has laid himself under no obliga-
tion, by any promise to keep any natural
man out of hell one moment. God certainly
has made no promises either of eternal life,
or of any deliverance or preservation from
eternal death, but what are contained in
the covenant of grace, the promises that are
given in Christ, in whom all the promises
are yea and amen. But surely they have
no interest in the promises of the covenant
of grace who are not the children of the cove-
nant, who do not believe in any of the
promises, and have no interest in the
Mediator of the covenant.
So that, whatever some have imagined
and pretended about promises made to
natural men's earnest seeking and knocking,
it is plain and manifest that, whatever pains
a natural man takes in religion, whatever
prayers he makes, till he believes in Christ
God is under no manner of obligation to
keep him a moment from eternal destruction.
So that thus it is, that natural men are
held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell;
they have deserved the fiery pit, and are
already sentenced to it; and God is dread-
fully provoked, his anger is as great toward
them as to those that are actually suffering
the executions of the fierceness of his wrath
in hell, and they have done nothing in the
least to appease or abate that anger, neither
is God in the least bound by any promise
to hold them up one moment; the devil is
waiting for them, hell is gaping for them,
the flames gather and flash about them, and
would fain lay hold on them, and swallow
them up; the fire pent up in their own
hearts is struggling to break out; and they
have no interest in any Mediator, there are
no means within reach that can be any
security to them. In short, they have no
refuge, nothing to take hold of; all that
preserves them every moment is the mere
arbitrary will, and unconvenanted, un-
obliged forbearance of an incensed God.
Application
The use of this awful subject may be for
awakening unconverted persons in this
congregation. This that you have heard is
the case of every one of you that are out of
Christ. That world of misery, that lake of
burning brimstone, is extended abroad under
you. There is the dreadful pit of the glow-
ing flames of the wrath of God; there is
hell's wide gaping mouth open; and you
have nothing to stand upon, nor any thing
to take hold of; there is nothing between
you and hell but the air; it is only the power
and mere pleasure of God that holds you up.
You probably are not sensible of this;
you find you are kept out of hell, but do not
see the hand of God in it, but look at other
things, as the good state of your bodily
constitution, your care of your own life,
and the means you use for your own preser-
vation. But indeed these things are nothing;
if God should withdraw his hand they would
avail no more to keep you from falling than
the thin air to hold up a person that is
suspended in it.
Your wickedness makes you as it were
heavy as lead, and to tend downward with
great weight and pressure toward hell; and
if God should let you go you would immedi-
ately sink and swiftly descend and plunge
into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy
constitution, and your own care and pru-
dence, and best contrivance, and all your
righteousness, would have no more influence
to uphold you and keep you out of hell
than a spider's web would have to stop a
fallen rock. Were it not for the sovereign
pleasure of God, the earth would not bear
64
JONATHAN EDWARDS
you one iiioiiunt; for you are a burden to it;
the creation groans with you; the creature
is made subject to the bondage of your
corrujition, not willingly; the sun does not
willingly shine upon you to give you light to
serve sin and Satan; the earth does not
willingly yield her increase to satisfy your
lusts; nor is it willingly a stage for 3'our
wickedness to be acted upon; the air does
not willingly serve you for breath to main-
tain the flame of life in your vitals, while
you spend your life in the service of God's
enemies. God's creatures are good, and
were made for men to serve God w^ith, and
do not willingly subserve to any other pur-
pose, and groan when they are abused to
purposes so directly contrary to their nature
and end. And the world would spew you
out, were it not for the sovereign hand of
him who hath subjected it in hope. There
are black clouds of God's wrath now hang-
ing directly over your heads, full of the
dreadful storm, and big with thunder; and
were it not for the restraining hand of God
it would immediately burst forth upon you.
The sovereign pleasure of God, for the
present, stays his rough wind; otherwise it
would come with fury, and your destruction
would come like a whirlwind, and you would
be like the chaflf of the summer threshing
floor.
The wrath of God is like great waters
that are dammed for the present; they
increase more and more, and rise higher and
higher, till an outlet is given; and the longer
the stream is stopped the more rapid and
mighty is its course, w^hen once it is let
loose. It is true, that judgment against your
evil works has not been executed hitherto;
the floods of God's vengeance have been
withheld; but your guilt in the meantime
is constantly increasing, and you are every
day treasuring up more wrath; the waters
are constantly rising, and waxing more and
more mighty; and there is nothing but the
mere pleasure of God that holds the waters
back, that are unwilling to be stopped, and
press hard to go forward. If God should
only withdraw his hand from the flood-gate,
it would immediately fly open, and the
fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of
God would rush forth with inconceivable
fury, and would come upon you with omnipo-
tent power; and if your strength were ten
thousand tunes greater than it is, yea, ten
thousand times greater than the strength of
the stoutest, sturdiest devil in hell, it would
be nothing to withstand or endure it.
The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the
arrow made ready on the string, and justice
bends the arrow at your heart, and strains
the bow, and it is nothing but the mere
pleasure of God, and that of an angry God,
without any promise or obligation at all,
that keeps the arrow one moment from
being made drunk with your blood. Thus
all you that never passed under a great
change of heart, by the mighty power of the
Spirit of God upon your souls; all you that
were never born again, and made new
creatures, and raised from being dead in sin,
to a state of new, and before altogether
unexperienced light and life, are in the hands
of an angry God. However you may have
reformed your life in many things, and may
have had religious affections, and may keep
up a form of religion in your families and
closets, and in the house of God, it is nothing
but his mere pleasure that keeps you from
being this moment swallowed up in ever-
lasting destruction. However unconvinced
you may now be of the truth of what you
hear, by and by you will be fully convinced
of it. Those that are gone from being in the
like circumstances with you see that it was
so with them; for destruction came sud-
denly upon most of them, when they
expected nothing of it, and while they were
saying. Peace and safety; now they see
that those things on which they depended
for peace and safety were nothing but thin
air and empty shadows.
The God that holds you over the pit of
hell, much as one holds a spider or some
loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you,
and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath
toward you burns like fire; he looks upon
you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast
into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to
bear to have you in his sight; you are ten
thousand times more abominable in his eyes
than the most hateful venomous serpent is
in ours. You have oflFended him infinitely
more than ever a stubborn rebel did his
prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand
that holds you from falling into the fire
every moment. It is to be ascribed to
nothing else that you did not go to hell the
SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD
65
last night; that you was suffered to awake
again in this world, after you closed your
eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason
to be given why you have not dropped into
hell since you arose in the morning, but that
God's hand has held you up. There is no
other reason to be given why you have not
gone to hell since you have sat here in the
house of God, provoking his pure eyes by
your sinful wicked manner of attending his
solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else
that is to be given as a reason why you do
not this very moment drop down into hell.
O sinner! Consider the fearful danger
you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a
wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of
wrath, that you are held over in the hand
of that God whose wrath is provoked and
incensed as much against you as against
many of the damned in hell. You hang by
a slender thread, with the flames of divine
wrath flashing about it, and ready every
moment to singe it, and burn it asunder;
and you have no interest in any Mediator,
and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself,
nothing to keep off the flames of wrath,
nothing of your own, nothing that you ever
have done, nothing that you can do, to
induce God to spare you one moment. —
And consider here more particularly,
I. Whose wrath it is: it is the wrath of
the infinite God. If it were only the wrath
of man, though it were of the most potent
prince, it would be comparatively little to be
regarded. The wrath of kings is very much
dreaded, especially of absolute monarchs,
who have the possessions and lives of their
subjects wholly in their power, to be dis-
posed of at their mere will. Proverbs, xx, 2:
"The fear of a king is as the roaring of a
lion: Whoso provoketh him to anger,
sinneth against his own soul." The subject
that very much enrages an arbitrary prince
is liable to sufi'er the most extreme torments
that human art can invent, or human
power can inflict. But the greatest earthly
potentates in their greatest majesty and
strength, and when clothed in their greatest
terrors, are but feeble, despicable worms of
the dust in comparison of the great and
almighty Creator and King of heaven and
earth. It is but little that they can do,
when most enraged, and when they have
exerted the utmost of their fury. All the
kings of the earth, before God, are as grass-
hoppers; they are nothing, and less than
nothing; both their love and their hatred
is to be despised. The wrath of the great
King of kings is as much more terrible than
theirs as his majesty is greater. Luke xii,
4, 5: "And I say unto you, my friends. Be
not afraid of them that kill the body, and
after that, have no more that they can do.
But I will forewarn you whom you shall
fear: fear him, which after he hath killed,
hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto
you. Fear him."
2. It is t\\t fierceness of his wrath that you
are exposed to. We often read of the fury
of God, as in Isaiah, lix, 18: "According to
their deeds, accordingly he will repay fury to
his adversaries." So Isaiah, Ixvi, 15: "For
behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with
his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his
anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames
of fire." And in many other places. So,
Revelation, xix, 15, we read of "the wine
press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty
God." The words are exceeding terrible.
If it had only been said, "the wrath of
God," the words would have implied that
which is infinitely dreadful; but it is "the
fierceness and wrath of God." The fury of
God! the fierceness of Jehovah! Oh, how
dreadful must that be! Who can utter or
conceive what such expressions carry in
them! But it is also "the fierceness and
wrath of Almighty God." As though there
would be a very great manifestation of his
almighty power in what the fierceness of his
wrath should inflict, as though omnipotence
should be as it were enraged, and exerted,
as men are wont to exert their strength in
the fierceness of their wrath. Oh! then,
what will be the consequence! What will
become of the poor worms that shall sufi^er
it! Whose hands can be strong.? And
whose heart can endure? To what a dread-
ful, inexpressible, inconceivable depth of
misery must the poor creature be sunk who
shall be the subject of this!
Consider this, you that are here present,
that yet remain in an unregenerate state.
That God will execute the fierceness of his
anger implies that he will inflict wrath
without any pity. When God beholds the
inefi^able extremity of your case, and sees
your torment to be so vastly disproportioned
6G
TONATHAN EDWARDS
to your sticnt;th, :iml sees how your poor
soul is cruslied, and sinks down, as it were,
into an infinite ploom, he will have no com-
passion upon you, he will not forbear the
executions of his wrath, or in the least lighten
his hand; there shall be no moderation or
mercy, nor will God then at all stay his
rough wind; he will have no regard to your
welfare, nor be at all careful lest you should
suffer too much in any other sense, than only
that you shall not suffer beyond zvhat strict
justice requires. Nothing shall be withheld,
because it is so hard for you to bear. Ezekiel,
viii, i8: "Therefore will I also deal in fury:
mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have
pity; and though they cry in mine ears with
a loud voice, yet I will not hear them." Now
God stands ready to pity you; this is a day
of mercy; you may cry now with some
encouragement of obtaining mercy. But
when once the day of mercy is past your
most lamentable and dolorous cries and
shrieks will be in vain; you will be wholly
lost and thrown away of God, as to any
regard to your welfare. God will have no
other use to put you to but to suffer misery;
you shall be continued in being to no other
end; for you will be a vessel of wrath fitted
to destruction; and there will be no other
use of this vessel but to be filled full of
wrath. God w\\\ be so far from pitying you
when you cry to him, that it is said he will
only "laugh and mock" (Proverbs, i, 25,
26, etc.).
How awful are those words, Isaiah, Ixiii,
3, which are the words of the great God:
"I will tread them in mine anger, and will
trample them in my fury, and their blood
shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and
I will stain all my raiment." It is perhaps
impossible to conceive of words that carry
in them greater manifestation of these three
things, viz. J contempt, and hatred, and
fierceness of indignation. If you cry to God
to pity you, he will be so far from pitying
you in your doleful case, or showing you the
least regard or favor, that, instead of that,
he will only tread you under foot. And
though he will know that you cannot bear
the weight of omnipotence treading upon
you, yet he will not regard that, but he will
crush you under his feet without mercy;
he \\'\\\ crush out your blood, and make it
fly, and it shall be sprinkled on his garments.
so as to stain all his raiment. He will not
only hate you, but he will have you in the
utmost contempt; no place shall be thought
fit for you, but under his feet to be trodden
down as the mire of the streets.
3. The misery you are exposed to is that
which God will inflict to that end that he
might show what that wrath of Jehovah is.
God hath had it on his heart to show to
angels and men, both how excellent his love
is, and also how terrible his wrath is. Some-
times earthly kings have a mind to show how
terrible their wrath is, by the extreme
punishments they would execute on those
that would provoke them. Nebuchadnezzar,
that mighty and haughty monarch of the
Chaldean empire, was willing to show his
wrath when enraged with Shadrach, Me-
shech, and Abednego, and accordingly gave
orders that the burning fiery furnace should
be heated seven times hotter than it was
before; doubtless, it wms raised to the
utmost degree of fierceness that human art
could raise it. But the great God is also
willing to show his wrath, and magnify his
awful majesty and mighty power in the ex-
treme sufferings of his enemies. Romans,
ix, 22: "What if God, willing to show his
wrath, and to make his power known, endure
with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath
fitted to destruction.^" And seeing this is
his design, and what he has determined,
even to show how terrible the unrestrained
wrath, the fury and fierceness of Jehovah is,
he will do it to eflPect. There will be some-
thing accomplished and brought to pass
that will be dreadful with a witness. When
the great and angry God hath risen up and
executed his awful vengeance on the poor
sinner, and the wretch is actually suffering
the infinite weight and power of his indigna-
tion, then will God call upon the whole
universe to behold that awful majesty and
mighty power that is to be seen in it. Isaiah,
xxxiii, 12-14: "And the people shall be as
the burnings of lime, as thorns cut up shall
they be burnt in the fire. Hear ye that are
far off, what I have done; and ye that are
near, acknowledge my might, i he sinners
in Zion are afraid; fearfulness hath sur-
prised the hypocrites," etc.
Thus it will be with you that are in an
unconverted state, if you continue in it;
the infinite might, and majesty, and terrible-
SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD
(^7
ness of the omnipotent God shall be magni-
fied upon you, in the ineffable strength of
your torments. You shall be tormented in
the presence of the holy angels, and in the
presence of the Lamb; and when you shall
be in this state of suffering, the glorious
inhabitants of heaven shall go forth and
look on the awful spectacle, that they may
see what the wrath and fierceness of the
Almighty is; and when they have seen it,
they will fall down and adore that great
power and majesty. Isaiah, Ixvi, 23, 24:
"And it shall come to pass, that from one
new moon to another, and from one sabbath
to another, shall all flesh come to worship
before me, saith the Lord. And they shall
go forth and look upon the carcasses of the
men that have transgressed against me; for
their worm shall not die, neither shall their
fire be quenched, and they shall be an abhor-
ring unto all flesh."
4. It is everlasting wrath. It would be
dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath
of Almighty God one moment; but you
must suffer it to all eternity. There will
be no end to this exquisite, horrible misery.
When you look forward, you shall see a
long for-ever, a boundless duration before
you, which will swallow up your thoughts
and amaze your soul; and you will abso-
lutely despair of ever having any deliverance,
any end, any mitigation, any rest at all.
You will know certainly that you must wear
out long ages, millions of millions of ages,
in wrestling and conflicting with this al-
mighty merciless vengeance; and then,
when you have so done, when so many ages
have actually been spent by you in this
manner, you will know that all is but a
point to what remains. So that your punish-
ment will indeed be infinite. Oh, who can
express what the state of a soul in such
circumstances is! All that we can possibly
say about it gives but a very feeble, faint
representation of it; it is inexpressible and
inconceivable; for "who knows the power
of God's anger?"
How dreadful is the state of those that
are daily and hourly in the danger of this
great wrath and infinite misery! But this is
the dismal case of every soul in this con-
gregation that has not been born again,
however moral and strict, sober and religious,
they may otherwise be. Oh, that you would
consider it, whether you be young or old!
There is reason to think that there are many
in this congregation now hearing this dis-
course, that will actually be the subjects of
this very misery to all eternity. We know
not who they are, or in what seats they sit,
or what thoughts they now have. It may
be they are now at ease, and hear all these
things without much disturbance, and are
now flattering themselves that they are
not the persons, promising themselves that
they shall escape. If we knew that there
was one person, and but one, in the whole
congregation, that was to be the subject of
this misery, what an awful thing would it be
to think of! If we knew who it was, what an
awful sight would it be to see such a person!
How might all the rest of the congregation
lift up a lamentable and bitter cry over him!
But, alas! instead of one, how many is it
likely will remember this discourse in hell.''
And it would be a wonder if some that are
now present should not be in hell in a very
short time, even before this year is out.
And it would be no wonder if some persons
that now sit here, in some seats of this
meeting-house, in health, quiet and secure,
should be there before to-morrow morning.
Those of you that finally continue in a
natural condition, that shall keep out of hell
longest, will be there in a little time! Your
damnation does not slumber; it will come
swiftly and, in all probability, very sud-
denly upon many of you. You have reason
to wonder that you are not already in hell.
It is doubtless the case of some whom you
have seen and known, that never deserved
hell more than you, and that heretofore
appeared as likely to have been now alive
as you. Their case is past all hope; they are
crying in extreme misery and perfect despair;
but here you are in the land of the living
and in the house of God, and have an oppor-
tunity to obtam salvation. What would not
those poor damned hopeless souls give for one
day's opportunity such as you now enjoy!
And now you have an extraordinary
opportunity, a day wherein Christ has
thrown the door of mercy wide open, and
stands in calling and crying with a loud
voice to poor sinners; a day wherein many
are flocking to him, and pressing into the
kingdom of God. Many are daily coming
from the east, west, north, and south;
68
JONATHAN EDWARDS
many that were very lately in the same
miserable condition that you are in, are now
in a happy state, with their hearts filled
with love to him who has loved them and
washed them from their sins in his own blood,
and rejoicing in hope of the glory of God.
How awful is it to be left behind at such a
day! To see so many others feasting, while
you are pining and perishing! To see so
many rejoicing and singing for joy of heart,
while you have cause to mourn for sorrow
of heart, and howl for vexation of spirit!
How can you rest one moment in such a
condition? Are not your souls as precious
as the souls of the people at Suffield,' where
they are flocking from day to day to Christ?
Are there not many here who have lived
long in the world, and are not to this day
born again? and so are aliens from the
commonwealth of Israel, and have done
nothing ever since they have lived but
treasure up wrath agamst the day of wrath?
Oh, sirs, your case, in an especial manner,
is extremely dangerous. Your guilt and
hardness of heart is extremely great. Do
you not see how generally persons of your
years are passed over and left, in the present
remarkable and wonderful dispensation of
God's mercy? You had need to consider
yourselves, and awake thoroughly out of
sleep. You cannot bear the fierceness and
wrath of the infinite God. — And you, young
men, and young women, will you neglect
this precious season which you now enjoy,
when so many others of your age are re-
nouncing all youthful vanities, and flocking
to Christ? You especially have now an
extraordinary opportunity; but if you
neglect it, it will soon be with you as with
those persons who spent all the precious
days of youth in sin, and are now come to
such a dreadful pass in blindness and hard-
ness.— And you, children, who are uncon-
verted, do not you know that you are going
down to hell, to bear the dreadful wrath of
1 A town near Enfield.
that God who is now angry with you every
day and every night? Will you be content
to be the children of the devil, when so many
other children in the land are converted and
are become the holy and happy children of
the King of kings?
And let every one that is yet [out] of
Christ, and hanging over the pit of hell,
whether they be old men and women, or
middle aged, or young people, or little chil-
dren, now barken to the loud calls of God's
word and providence. This acceptable year
of the Lord, a day of such great favors to
some, will doubtless be a day of as remark-
able vengeance to others. Men's hearts
harden, and their guilt increases apace at
such a day as this, if they neglect their souls;
and never was there so great danger of such
persons being given up to hardness of heart
and blindness of mind. God seems now to
be hastily gathering in his elect in all parts
of the land; and probably the greater part
of adult persons that ever shall be saved
will be brought in now in a little time, and
that it will be as it was on the great out-
pouring of the Spirit upon the Jews in the
apostles' days; the election will obtain, and
the rest will be blinded. If this should be
the case with you, you will eternally curse
this day, and will curse the day that ever
you was born, to see such a season of the
pouring out of God's Spirit, and will wish
that you had died and gone to hell before
you had seen it. Now undoubtedly it is as
it was in the days of John the Baptist,
the ax is in an extraordinary manner laid
at the root of the trees, that every tree
which brings not forth good fruit may be
hewn down and cast into the fire.
Therefore, let every one that is out of
Christ now awake and fly from the wrath
to come. The wrath of Almighty God is
now undoubtedly hanging over a great part
of this congregation: Let every one fly out
of Sodom: "Haste and escape for your
lives, look not behind you, escape to the
mountain, lest you be consumed."
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790)
A large portion of Franklin's own account of the earlier half of his life is here reprinted, and the
classic story need not be summarized. But its readers should be aware that their author's later life
was not less varied than the portion of which he treats, and, too, that it was full of larger triumphs.
Franklin, because of the later limit of his Autobiography, is still too generally thought of as merely
the archetype of the American self-made man — the tallow chandler's son and printer's boy who rose
by his own efforts to prosperity, independence, and a position of local influence. And the prudential
maxims gathered together from Poor Richard's Almanac in the celebrated JVay to Wealth go properly
enough with this picture, though some may feel that the form given to these maxims points to a nimbler
wit than the mere successful money-maker usually commands. If so, it points correctly; and with
that nimble wit went a sound sense of what is practically useful, a large public spirit, and a sane human-
itarianism which informed a great public career to which the successful pursuit of the "almighty dollar"
was but the prelude.
By the middle 1750's Franklin had already achieved a more than local fame both as a skillful
negotiator and as an inventor and scientific discoverer, and he had fairly earned, by his "improve-
ments in the electric branch of natural philosophy," honorary degrees from Yale and Harvard (later
he received doctoral degrees from St. Andrews, Edinburgh, and Oxford). He had also perceived,
under the stimulus of threatened war with France, and publicly urged, the necessity of a close union
of all the British colonies. In 1757 he was, because of his many successes in the service of his colony,
Pennsylvania's inevitable choice as her agent to present her case against the Proprietors to the authori-
ties in London. He remained in England a little over five years, eventually succeeding in his mission,
and, in the meantime, making many warm friends. To one of them he wrote in 1763, the year follow-
ing his return to Philadelphia: "Of all the enviable things England has, I envy it most its people.
Why should that petty island, which, compared to America, is but like a stepping-stone in a brook,
scarce enough of it above water to keep one's shoes dry; why, I say, should that little island enjoy, in
almost every neighborhood, more sensible, virtuous, and elegant minds than we can collect in ranging
one hundred leagues of our vast forests?"
To the island whose cultured and intelligent people he found so thoroughly congenial he was again
sent by Pennsylvania in 1764, and there he remained, acting after a while as agent also for other colo-
nies (Georgia, New Jersey, Massachusetts), until 1775, when he could no longer be useful in London.
Even he could not turn the tide of ignorance and folly which helped to bring on the Revolution, though
he did all that one man could do to lessen British ignorance of the colonies. One illustration of his
lighter manner of combating absurd misrepresentations must be quoted. In 1765 he wrote to the
editor of a newspaper, pretending to defend "an honest set of writers, whose comfortable living depends
on collecting and supplying the printers with news at the small price of sixpence an article, and who
always show their regard to truth by contradicting in a subsequent article such as are wrong — for
another sixpence." Englishmen might doubt these writers' reports of manufactories being set up in
America, to the prejudice of industry in Great Britain, because, for instance, American sheep have
but little wool. But, rejoined Franklin: "Do not let us suffer ourselves to be amused with such ground-
less objections. The very tails of the American sheep are so laden with wool that each has a little
car or wagon on four little wheels, to support and keep it from trailing on the ground." And "this is
as certainly true as the account said to be from Quebec, in all the papers of last week, that the inhabi-
tants of Canada are making preparations for a cod and whale fishery this 'summer in the upper lakes.*
Ignorant people may object that the upper lakes are fresh, and that cod and whale are salt-water fish;
but let them know. Sir, that cod, like other fish when attacked by their enemies, fly into any water
where they can be safest; that whales, when they have a mind to eat cod, pursue them wherever they
fly; and that the grand leap of the whale in that chase up the fall of Niagara is esteemed, by all who
have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature."
This is merely fooling, but it must have been efl^ective fooling, and Franklin's efforts, whether
gay or grave, for better understanding were unremitting and well considered — were those of a shrewd
and capable diplomat. Nevertheless, they were unavailing, and in 1775 "that fine and noble China
69
70
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
vasi', till' British l\nipirc," was ahoiir to break, and lir came linme to lulp break it. He was immedi-
ately made a member of the Second Continental Congress, and also i\istmaster-Gencral of the colonies,
and he took his proper place as a leader in the preparations for war. This, most would feel, was enough
for a man now seventy years old. Hut it was soon felt that no American could serve as well as he in
the vitallv necessary task of jirocuring aid from France, and accordinuly he sailed for Paris in the fall
of 1776. There he remained until 1785, completely at home in French society, almost idolized hy his
many friends, and showing himself an accomplished, urbane courtier, wise as well as witty, and emi-
nently successful not only in achieving his official purposes, but also in winning for America a place
in the hearts of generous Frenchmen. When he returned to Philadelphia, old, weak, and full of honors,
he was still not allowed to rest from public service, but was immediately made President (i.e., Gov-
ernor) of Pennsylvania, and, after holding that office as long as the law permitted (three consecutive
years), he was made a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Three years later he died,
on 17 April, 1790. He has been called our greatest diplomat; he was also a successful tradesman, a
scientist, a philosopher, and a wise statesman. His experience of the world was singularly complete,
and he was a gifted writer. Although practically all of his writings save the Autobiography are occa-
sional and minor, he has made himself live in them, so that he remains for us a vivid, companionable
figure, perhaps, as he has been called, the most perfectly representative man of letters of the eighteenth
century.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY i
***** * *
JosiAH, my father, married young, and
carried his wife with three children into
New England, about 1682. The conventicles
having been forbidden by law, and fre-
quently disturbed, induced some consider-
able men of his acquaintance to remove to
that country, and he was prevailed with to
accompany them thither, where they ex-
pected to enjoy their mode of religion with
freedom. By the same wife he had four
children more, born there; and by a second
wife ten more, in all seventeen; of which I
remember thirteen sitting at one time at
his table, who all grew up to be men and
women, and married; I was the youngest
son, and the youngest child but two, and
1 The earlier portion, comprising rather more than
a third of the whole, was written in 1771, and was
addressed in the fashion of a letter to Franklin's nat-
ural son, William, the royal governor of New Jersey.
It was not intended for publication, but for the author's
descendants. When Franklin went to France in 1776
he left his papers behind him. The account of his life
from 1706 to 1730 somehow fell into the hands of his
friend Abel James, a Quaker, who in 1782 wrote, urg-
ing Franklin to continue the narrative. Another
friend also urged him to complete it for publication,
and accordingly in 1784, when he was living at Passy,
he wrote a further installment. But again the task
was laid aside, and was not resumed until 1788. At
this time he carried the narrative down to his arrival
in London in July, 1757. Later, in the last year of
his life, he wrote an additional short passage, in which
he very briefly covered the years from 1757 to 1762.
By a strange series of misfortunes the Autobiography
was never printed correctly or in full until 1868 (though
there had been many imperfect editions, beginning
with a French translation published in I79i)-
was born in Boston, New England. 2 My 1
mother, the second wife, was Abiah Folger,
daughter of Peter Folger, one of the first
settlers of New England, of whom honorable
mention is made by Cotton Mather, in his
church history of that country entitled
Magnalia Christi Americana, as "a godly ,
learned Englishman^'' if I remember the
words rightly. I have heard that he wrote
sundry small occasional pieces, but only one
of them was printed, which I saw now many
years since. It was written in 1675, ir* the
home-spun verse of that time and people,
and addressed to those then concerned in the
government there. It was in favor of liberty
of conscience, and in behalf of the Baptists,
Quakers, and other sectaries that had been
under persecution, ascribing the Indian wars,
and other distresses that had befallen the
country, to that persecution, as so many
judgments of God to punish so hemous an
offense, and exhorting a repeal of those
uncharitable laws. The whole appeared to
me as WTitten with a good deal of decent
plainness and manly freedom. The six
concluding lines I remember, though I have
forgotten the two first of the stanza; but
the purport of them was, that his censures
proceeded from good will, and therefore
he would be known to be the author.
Because to be a libeler (says he)
I hate it with my heart;
From Sherburne town, where now I dwell,
My name I do put here;
2 On 17 January, 1706 (6 January, old style).
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
71
Without offense your real friend,
It is Peter Folgier.^
My elder brothers were all put apprentices
to different trades. I was put to the gram-
mar-school at eight years of age, my father
intending to devote me, as the tithe of his
sons, to the service of the Church. My
early readiness in learning to read (which
must have been very early, as I do not
remember when I could not read), and the
opinion of all his friends, that I should cer-
tainly make a good scholar, encouraged him
in this purpose of his. My uncle Benjamin,
too, approved of it, and proposed to give
me all his short-hand volumes of sermons, I
suppose as a stock to set up with, if I would
learn his character.^ I continued, however,
at the grammar-school not quite one year,
though in that time I had risen gradually
from the middle of the class of that year to
be the head of it, and farther was removed
into the next class above it, in older to go
with that into the third at the end of the
year. But my father, in the meantime, from
a view of the expense of a college education,
which having so large a family he could not
well afford, and the mean living many so
educated were afterwards able to obtain, —
reasons that he gave to his friends in my
hearing, — altered his first intention, took
me from the grammar-school, and sent me
to a school for writing and arithmetic, kept
by a then famous man, Mr. George Brow-
nell, very successful in his profession gen-
erally, and that by mild, encouraging
methods. Under him I acquired fair writ-
ing pretty soon, but I failed in the arith-
metic, and made no progress in it. At ten
years old I was taken home to assist my
father in his business, which was that of a
tallow-chandler and soap-boiler; a business
1 Tfie preceding lines are as follows:
"I am for peace and not for war,
And that's the reason why
I write more plain than some men do.
That use to daub and lie.
But I shall cease, and set my name
To what I here insert,
Because to be a libeler
I hate it with my heart."
The title of the piece is A Looking-Glass for the
Times; or. The Former Spirit of New England Revived
in this Generation, published 1676. "Sherburne" is
now Nantucket.
2 1.e.y his method, which was of his own invention.
he was not bred to, but had assumed on his
arrival in New England, and on finding his
dyeing trade would not maintain his family,
being in little request. Accordingly, I was
employed in cutting wick for the candles,
filling the dipping mold and the molds for
cast candles, attending the shop, going of
errands, etc.
I disliked the trade, and had a strong
inclination for the sea, but my father de-
clared against it; however, living near the
water, I was much in and about it, learned
early to swim well, and to manage boats;
and when in a boat or canoe with other boys
I was commonly allowed to govern, especially
in any case of difficulty; and upon other
occasions I was generally a leader among the
boys, and sometimes led them into scrapes,
of which I will mention one instance, as it
shows an early projecting public spirit,
though not then justly conducted.
There was a salt-marsh that bounded part
of the mill-pond, on the edge of which, at
high water, we used to stand to fish for
minnows. By much trampling, we had made
it a mere quagmire. My proposal was to
build a wharf there fit for us to stand upon,
and I showed my comrades a large heap of
stones, which were intended for a new house
near the marsh, and which would very well
suit our purpose. Accordingly, in the
evening, w^hen the workmen were gone, I
assembled a number of my play-fellows,
and working with them diligently like so
many emmets, sometimes two or three to a
stone, we brought them all away and built
our little wharf. The next morning the
workmen were surprised at missing the
stones, which were found in our wharf. In-
quiry was made after the removers; we
were discovered and complained of; several
of us were corrected by our fathers; and,
though I pleaded the usefulness of the work,
mine convinced me that nothing was useful
which was not honest.
I continued thus employed in my father's
business for two years, that is, till I was
twelve years old; and my brother John,
who was bred to that business, having left
my father, married, and set up for himself
at Rhode Island, there was all appearance
that I was destined to supply his place, and
72
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
become a tallow-chandler, ikit my dislike
to the trade continuing, my father was
under apprehensions that if he did not find
one for me more agreeable, I should break
away and get to sea, as his son Josiah had
done, to his great vexation. He therefore
sometimes took me to walk with him, and
see joiners, bricklayers, turners, braziers,
etc., at their work, that he might observe
my inclination, and endeavor to fix it on
some trade or other on land. It has ever
since been a pleasure to me to see good
workmen handle their tools; and it has
been useful to me, having learned so much
by it as to be able to do little jobs myself
in my house when a workman could not
readily be got, and to construct little ma-
chines for my experiments, while the inten-
tion of making the experiment was fresh
and warm in my mind. My father at last
fixed upon the cutler's trade, and my uncle
Benjamin's son Samuel, who was bred to
that business in London, being about that
time established in Boston, I was sent to
be with him some time on liking. But his
expectations of a fee with me displeasing
my father, I was taken home again.
From a child I was fond of reading, and
all the little money that came into my hands
was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the
Pilgrim s Progress, my first collection was
of John Bunyan's works in separate little
volumes. I afterward sold them to enable
me to buy R. Burton's Historical Collections ;
they were small chapmen's books, and cheap,
forty or fifty in all.' My father's little
library consisted chiefly of books in polemic
divinity, most of which I read, and have
since often regretted that, at a time when I
had such a thirst for knowledge, more proper
books had not fallen in my way, since it was
now resolved I should not be a clergyman.
Plutarch's Lives there was in which I read
abundantly, and I still think that time
spent to great advantage. There was also
a book of De Foe's, called an Essay on Pro-
jects, and another of Dr. Mather's, called
Essays to do Good, which perhaps gave me
a turn of thinking that had an influence on
some of the principal future events of my
life.
1 They were published in London at intervals from
1681 to 1736. Dr. Johnson thought them "very proper
to allure backward readers."
1 his bookish inclination at length deter-
mined my father to make me a printer,
though he had already one son (James) of
that profession. In 171 7 my brother James
returned from England with a press and
letters to set up his business in Boston. I
liked it much better than that of my father,
but still had a hankering for the sea. To
prevent the apprehended effect of such an
inclination, my father was impatient to
have me bound to my brother. I stood out
some time, but at last was persuaded, and
signed the indentures when I was yet but
twelve years old. I was to serve as an
apprentice till I was twenty-one years of
age, only I was to be allowed journeyman's
wages during the last year. In a little time
I made great proficiency in the business,
and became a useful hand to my brother.
I now had access to better books. An
acquaintance with the apprentices of boo'k-
sellers enabled me sometimes to borrow a
small one, which I was careful to return soon
and clean. Often I sat up in my room read-
ing the greatest part of the night, when the
book was borrowed in the evening and to .
be returned early in the morning, lest it
should be missed or wanted.
And after some time an ingenious trades-
man, Mr. Matthew Adams, who had a pretty
collection of books, and who frequented our
printing-house, took notice of me, invited
me to his library, and very kindly lent me
such books as I chose to read. I now took
a fancy to poetry, and made some little
pieces; my brother, thinking it might turn
to account, encouraged me, and put me on
composing occasional ballads. One was
called The Lighthouse Tragedy, and contained
an account of the drowning of Captain
Worthilake, with his two daughters; the
other was a sailor's song, on the taking of
Teach (or Blackbeard) the pirate. They
were wretched stuff", in the Grub-street-
ballad style; and when they were printed
he sent me about the town to sell them.
The first sold wonderfully; the event, being
recent, having made a great noise. This
flattered my vanity; but my father dis-
couraged me by ridiculing my performances,
and telling me verse-makers were generally
beggars. So I escaped being a poet, most
probably a very bad one; but as prose
writing has been of great use to me in the J
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
73
course of my life, and was a principal means
of my advancement, I shall tell you how,
in such a situation, I acquired what little
ability I have in that way.
There was another bookish lad in the
town, John Collins by name, with whom I
was intimately acquainted. We sometimes
disputed, and very fond we were of argu-
ment, and very desirous of confuting one
another, which disputatious turn, by the
way, is apt to become a very bad habit,
making people often extremely disagreeable
in company by the contradiction that is
necessary to bring it into practice; and
thence, besides souring and spoiling the con-
versation, is productive of disgusts and,
perhaps, enmities where you may have
occasion for friendship. I had caught it
by reading my father's books of dispute
about religion. Persons of good sense, I
have since observed, seldom fall into it,
except lawyers, university men, and men of
all sorts that have been bred at Edinborough.
A question was once, somehow or other,
started between Collins and me, of the pro-
priety of educating the female sex in learn-
ing, and their abilities for study. He was
of opinion that it was improper, and that
they were naturally unequal to it. I took
the contrary side, perhaps a little for dis-
pute's sake. He was naturally more elo-
quent, had a ready plenty of words, and
sometimes, as I thought, bore me down
more by his fluency than by the strength of
his reasons. As we parted without settling
the point, and were not to see one another
again for some time, I sat down to put my
arguments in writing, which I copied fair
and sent to him. He answered, and I re-
plied. Three or four letters of a side had
passed, w^hen my father happened to find
my papers and read them. Without enter-
ing into the discussion, he took occasion to
talk to me about the manner of my writing;
observed that, though I had the advantage
of my antagonist in correct spelling and
pointing (which I owed to the printing-
house), I fell far short in elegance of ex-
pression, in method and in perspicuity, of
which he convinced me by several instances.
I saw the justice of his remarks, and thence
grew more attentive to the manner in writ-
ing, and determined to endeavor at im-
provement.
About this time I met with an odd volume
of the Spectator. It was the third. I had
never before seen any of them. I bought it,
read it over and over, and was much de-
lighted with it. I thought the writing
excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate
it. With this view I took some of the papers,
and, making short hints of the sentiment in
each sentence, laid them by a few days, and
then, without looking at the book, tried to
complete the papers again, by expressing
each hinted sentiment at length, and as
fully as it had been expressed before, in any
suitable words that should come to hand.
Then I compared my Spectator with the
original, discovered some of my faults, and
corrected them. But I found I wanted a
stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting
and using them, which I thought I should
have acquired before that time if I had gone
on making verses; since the continual
occasion for words of the same import, but
of different length, to suit the measure, or
of different sound for the rhyme, would have
laid me under a constant necessity of search-
ing for variety, and also have tended to fix
that variety in my mind, and make me
master of it. Therefore I took some of the
tales and turned them into verse; and,
after a time, when I had pretty well for-
gotten the prose, turned them back again.
I also sometimes jumbled my collections of
hints into confusion, and after some weeks
endeavored to reduce them into the best
order, before I began to form the full sen-
tences and complete the paper. This was to
teach me method in the arrangement of
thoughts. By comparing my work after-
wards with the original, I discovered my
faults and amended them; but I sometimes
had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain
particulars of small import, I had been
lucky enough to improve the method or the
language, and this encouraged me to think
I might possibly in time come to be a toler-
able English writer, of which I was extremely
ambitious. My time for these exercises and
for reading was at night, after work or
before it began in the morning, or on Sun-
days, when I contrived to be in the printing-
house alone, evading as much as I could the
common attendance on public worship which
my father used to exact of me when I was
under his care, and which indeed I still
74
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
thought a duty, tlioiigh I could not, as it
seemed to me, afford tmie to practice it.
When about sixteen years of age I hap-
pened to meet with a book, written by one
Tryon, recommending a vegetable diet. I
determined to go into it. My brother, being
yet unmarried, did not keep house, but
boarded himself and his apprentices in
another family. My refusing to eat flesh
occasioned an inconveniency, and I was fre-
quently chid for my singularity. I made
myself acquainted with Tryon's manner of
preparing some of his dishes, such as boiling
potatoes or rice, making hasty pudding, and
a few others, and then proposed to my
brother that if he would give me, weekly,
half the money he paid for my board, I
would board myself. He instantly agreed
to it, and I presently found that I could
save half what he paid me. This was an
additional fund for buying books. But I
had another advantage in it. My brother
and the rest going from the printing-house
to their meals, I remained there alone, and,
dispatching presently my light repast, which
often was no more than a biscuit or a slice
of bread, a handful of raisins, or a tart from
the pastry-cook's, and a glass of water, had
trie rest of the time, till their return, for
study, in which I made the greater progress,
from that greater clearness of head and
quicker apprehension which usually attend
temperance in eating and drinking.
And now it was that, being on some
occasion made ashamed of my ignorance in
figures, which I had twice failed in learning
when at school, I took Cocker's book of
Arithmetic, and went through the whole by
myself with great ease. I also read Seller's
and Shermy's books of Navigation, and be-
came acquainted with the little geometry
they contain; but never proceeded far in
that science. And I read about this time
Locke On Human Understandings and the
Art of Thinkings by Messrs. du Port Royal. i
While I was intent on improving my
language, I met with an English grammar
(I think it was Greenwood's), at the end of
which there were two little sketches of the
arts of rhetoric and logic, the latter finishing
with a specimen of a dispute in the Socratic
' An English translation of one of the books pro-
duced by the Jansenists, of the Abbey of Port Royal,
near Paris.
method, and soon after I procured Xeno-
phon's Memorable Things of Socrates, wherein
there are many instances of the same method.
I was charmed with it, adopted it, dropped
my abrupt contradiction and positive argu-
mentation, and put on the humble inquirer
and doubter. And being then, from reading
Shaftesbury and Coirins,2 become a real
doubter in many points of our religious
doctrine, I found this method safest for
myself, and very embarrassing to those
against whom I used it; therefore I took a
delight in it, practiced it continually, and
grew very artful and expert in drawing
people, even of superior knowledge, into
concessions, the consequences of which they
did not foresee, entangling them in diffi-
culties out of which they could not extricate
themselves, and so obtaining victories that
neither myself nor my cause always de- i
served. I continued this method some few *
years, but gradually left it, retaining only
the habit of expressing myself in terms of
modest diffidence, never using, when I ad-
vanced any thing that may possibly be dis-
puted, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or
any others that give the air of positiveness
to an opinion, but rather say, I conceive
or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it
appears to me, or / should think it so or so,
for such and such reasons; or / imagine it
to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken. This
habit, I believe, has been of great advantage
to me when I have had occasion to inculcate
my opinions, and persuade men into meas-
ures that I have been from time to time
engaged in promoting; and, as the chief ends
of conversation are to inform or to be in-
formed, to please or to persuade, I wish well-
meaning, sensible men would not lessen
their power of doing good by a positive,
assuming manner, that seldom fails to dis-
gust, tends to create opposition, and to
defeat every one of those purposes for which
speech was given to us, — to wit, giving or
receiving information or pleasure. For, if
you would inform, a positive and dogmatical
manner in advancing your sentiments may
provoke contradiction and prevent a candid
attention. If you wish information and
2 Deists, the former author of Characteristics of Men,
Manners, Opinions^ Times (171 1), the latter of ^^ Dis-
course of Free-thinking (1713) and oi A Discourse of the
Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1724).
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
75
improvement from the knowledge of others,
and yet at the same time express yourself
as firmly fixed in your present opinions,
modest, sensible men, who do not love
disputation, will probably leave you undis-
turbed in the possession of your error. And
by such a manner, you can seldom hope to
recommend yourself in pleasing your hearers,
or to persuade those whose concurrence you
desire. Pope says, judiciously:
Men should be taught as if you taught them not,
And things unknown proposed as things forgot;
farther recommending to us
To speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence.
And he might have coupled with this line
that which he has coupled with another, I
think, less properly:
For want of modesty is want of sense.
If you ask. Why less properly .f" I must
repeat the lines:
Immodest words admit of no defense,
For want of modesty is want of sense.
Now, is not want of sense (where a man is so
unfortunate as to want it) some apology for
his zvant of modesty? and would not the lines
stand more justly thus.''
Immodest words admit but this defense,
That want of modesty is want of sense.
This, however, I should submit to better
judgments.
My brother had, in 1720 or 1721, begun
to print a newspaper. It was the second that
appeared in America, ^ and was called the
New England Coiirant. The only one before
it was the Boston News-Letter. I remember
his being dissuaded by some of his friends
from the undertaking, as not likely to suc-
ceed, one newspaper being, in their judg-
ment, enough for America. At this time
[1771] there are not less than five-and-
twenty. He went on, however, with the
undertaking, and after having worked in
composing the types and printing off the
sheets, I was employed to carry the papers
through the streets to the customers.
1 Really the fourth. Franklin's brother had been
printer of the second, the Boston Gazette, which com-
menced on 21 December, 1719. The Courant first
appeared on 21 August, 1721.
He had some ingenious men among his
friends, who amused themselves by writing
little pieces for this paper, which gained it
credit and made it more in demand, and these
gentlemen often visited us. Hearing their
conversations, and their accounts of the
approbation their papers were received with,
I was excited to try my hand among them;
but, being still a boy, and suspecting that
my brother would object to printing any
thing of mine in his paper if he knew it to
be mine, I contrived to disguise my hand,
and, writing an anonymous paper, I put it
in at night, under the door of the printing-
house. It was found in the morning, and
communicated to his writing friends when
they called in as usual. They read it, com-
mented on it in my hearing, and I had the
exquisite pleasure of finding it met with
their approbation, and that, in their diflferent
guesses at the author, none were named but
men of some character among us for learning
and ingenuity. I suppose now that I was
rather lucky in my judges, and that perhaps
they were not really so very good ones as
I then esteemed them.
Encouraged, however, by this, I wrote
and conveyed in the same way to the press
several more papers, which w^ere equally
approved; and I kept my secret till my
small fund of sense for such performances
was pretty well exhausted, and then I dis-
covered it, when I began to be considered a
little more by my brother's acquaintance,
and in a manner that did not quite please
him, as he thought, probably with reason,
that it tended to make me too vain. And,
perhaps, this might be one occasion of the
differences that we began to have about this
time. Though a brother, he considered
himself as my master, and me as his appren-
tice, and, accordingly, expected the same
services from me as he would from another,
while I thought he demeaned me too much
in some he required of me, who from a
brother expected more indulgence. Our
disputes were often brought before our
father, and I fancy I was either generally in
the right, or else a better pleader, because
the judgment was generally in my favor.
But my brother was passionate^ and had
often beaten me, which I took extremely
amiss; and, thinking my apprenticeship
very tedious, I was continually wishing
1(^
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
for some opportunity of shortening it, which
at length ottered in a manner unexpected. ^
One of the pieces in our newspaper on
some political point, which I have now for-
gotten, gave off^ense to the Assembly. He
was taken up, censured, and imprisoned for
a month, by the Speaker's warrant, I sup-
pose, because he would not discover his
author. I too was taken up and examined
before the council; but, though I did not
give them any satisfaction, they contented
themselves with admonishing me, and dis-
missed me, considering me, perhaps, as an
apprentice, who was bound to keep his
master's secrets.
During my brother's confinement, which
I resented a good deal, notwithstanding our
private diff^erences, I had the management
of the paper; and I made bold to give our
rulers some rubs in it, which my brother
took very kindly, while others began to
consider me in an unfavorable light, as a
young genius that had a turn for libeling
and satire. My brother's discharge was
accompanied with an order of the House (a
very odd one), that ^^ James Franklin should
no longer print the paper called the New Eng-
land Courant."
There was a consultation held in our
printing-house among his friends, what he
should do in this case. Some proposed to
evade the order by changing the name of
the paper; but my brother, seeing incon-
veniences in that, it was finally concluded on
as a better way, to let it be printed for the
future under the name of Benjamin Frank-
lin; and to avoid the censure of the Assem-
bly that might fall on him as still printing
it by his apprentice, the contrivance was
that my old indenture should be returned
to me, with a full discharge on the back of it,
to be shown on occasion, but, to secure to
him the benefit of my service, I was to sign
new indentures for the remainder of the term,
which were to be kept private. A very
flimsy scheme it was; however, it was im-
mediately executed, and the paper went on
accordingly under my name for several
months.
At length, a fresh ditt'erence arising be-
1 I fancy his harsh and tyrannical treatment of me
might be a means of impressing me with that aversion
to arbitrary power that has stuck to me through my
whole life. (Franklin's note.)
tween my brother and me, I took upon me
to assert my freedom, presuming that he
would not venture to produce the new in-
dentures. It was not fair in me to take this
advantage, and this I therefore reckon one
of the first errata of my life; but the un-
fairness of it weighed little with me, when
under the impressions of resentment for the
blows his passion too often urged him to
bestow upon me, though he was otherwise
not an ill-natured man: perhaps I was too
saucy and provoking.
When he found I would leave him, he
took care to prevent my getting employment
in any other printing-house of the town, by
going round and speaking to every master,
who accordingly refused to give me work.
I then thought of going to New York, as
the nearest place where there was a printer;
and I was rather inclined to leave Boston
when I reflected that I had already made I
myself a little obnoxious to the governing
party, and, from the arbitrary proceedings
of the Assembly in my brother's case, it was
likely it might, if I stayed, soon bring myself
into scrapes; and farther, that my indiscreet
disputations about religion began to make
me pointed at with horror by good people
as an infidel or atheist. I determined on the
point, but my father now siding with my
brother, I was sensible that, if I attempted
to go openly, means would be used to prevent
me. My friend Collins, therefore, under-
took to manage a little for me. He agreed
with the captain of a New York sloop for
my passage, under the notion of my being a
young acquaintance of his that had got a
naughty girl with child, whose friends would
compel me to marry her, and therefore I
could not appear or come away publicly.
So I sold some of my books to raise a little
money, was taken on board privately, and
as we had a fair wind, in three days I found
myself in New York, near 300 miles from
home, a boy of but seven teen,^ without the
least recommendation to, or knowledge of,
any person in the place, and with very little
money in my pocket.
My inclinations for the sea were by this
time worn out, or I might now have gratified
them. But, having a trade, and supposing
myself a pretty good workman, I oflFered
2 The time was October, 1723.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
11
my service to the printer in the place, old
Mr. William Bradford, who had been the
first printer in Pennsylvania, but removed
from thence upon the quarrel of George
Keith. He could give me no employment,
having little to do, and help enough already;
but says he: "My son at Philadelphia has
lately lost his principal hand, Aquila Rose,
by death; if you go thither, I believe he may
employ you." Philadelphia was lOO miles
farther; I set out, however, in a boat for
Amboy, leaving my chest and things to
follow me round by sea.
In crossing the bay, we met with a squall
that tore our rotten sails to pieces, prevented
our getting into the KilU and drove us upon
Long Island. In our way, a drunken Dutch-
man, who was a passenger too, fell over-
board; when he was sinking, I reached
through the water to his shock pate, and
drew him up, so that we got him in again.
His ducking sobered him a little, and he
went to sleep, taking first out of his pocket a
book, which he desired I would dry for him.
It proved to be my old favorite author, Bun-
yan's Pilgrim's Progress in Dutch, finely
printed, on good paper, with copper cuts, a
dress better than I had ever seen it wear in
its own language. I have since found that
it has been translated into most of the
languages of Europe, and suppose it has been
more generally read than any other book,
except perhaps the Bible. Honest John was
the first that I know of who mixed narration
and dialogue, a method of writing very
engaging to the reader, who, in the most
interesting parts, finds himself, as it were,
brought into the company, and present at
the discourse. De Foe, in his Crusoe, his A4oll
Flanders, Religious Courtship, Family In-
structor, and other pieces, has imitated it
with success, and Richardson has done the
same in his Pamela, etc.
When we drew near the island, we found
it was at a place where there could be no
landing, there being a great surf on the
stony beach. So we dropped anchor and
swung round towards the shore. Some
people came down to the water edge and
halloed to us, as we did to them, but the
wind was so high, and the surf so loud, that
we could not hear so as to understand each
1 Dutch for Channel, in this case the passage north
and west of Staten Island.
Other. There were canoes on the shore, and
we made signs and halloed that they should
fetch us, but they either did not understand
us, or thought it impracticable, so they went
away, and night coming on, we had no
remedy but to wait till the wind should
abate; and, in the mean time, the boatman
and I concluded to sleep, if we could; and
so crowded into the scuttle, with the Dutch-
man, who was still wet, and the spray beat-
ing over the head of our boat, leaked through
to us, so that we were soon almost as wet as
he. In this manner we lay all night with
very little rest; but, the wind abating the
next day, we made a shift to reach Amboy
before night, having been thirty hours on
the water, without victuals, or any drink
but a bottle of filthy rum, the water we
sailed on being salt.
In the evening I found myself very fever-
ish, and went in to bed; but, having read
somewhere that cold water drank plenti-
fully was good for a fever, I followed the
prescription, sweat plentifully most of the
night, my fever left me, and in the morning,
crossing the ferry, I proceeded on my
journey on foot, having fifty miles to Bur-
lington, where I was told I should find boats
that would carry me the rest of the way to
Philadelphia.
It rained very hard all the day; I was
thoroughly soaked, and by noon a good deal
tired; so I stopped at a poor inn, where I
stayed all night, beginning now to wish that
I had never left home. I cut so miserable a
figure, too, that I found, by the questions
asked me, I was suspected to be some run-
away servant, and in danger of being taken
up on that suspicion. However, I pro-
ceeded the next day, and got in the evening
to an inn, within eight or ten miles of Bur-
lington, kept by one Dr. Brown. He entered
into conversation with me while I took
some refreshment, and, finding I had read
a little, became very sociable and friendly.
Our acquaintance continued as long as he
lived. He had been, I imagine, an itinerant
doctor, for there was no town in England, or
country in Europe, of which he could not
give a very particular account. He had some
letters, and was ingenious, but much of an
unbeliever, and wickedly undertook, some
years after, to travesty the Bible in doggerel
verse, as Cotton had done Virgil. By this
7S
BKNJAMIN FRANKLIN
means he set many ot tlie facts in a very
ridiculous liiiht, and niitiht have hurt weak
minds if his work liad been published; but
It never was.
At his house I lay that night, and the next
morning reached Hurlington, but had the
mortihcation to hnd that the regular boats
were gone a little before my coming, and no
other expected to go before Tuesday, this
being Saturday; wherefore I returned to
an old woman in the town, of whom I had
bought gingerbread to eat on the water, and
I asked her advice. She invited me to lodge
at her house till a passage by water should
offer; and being tired with my foot travel-
ing, I accepted the invitation. She under-
standing I was a printer, w^ould have had
me stay at that town and follow my business,
being ignorant of the stock necessary to
begin with. She was very hospitable, gave
me a dinner of ox-cheek with great good will,
accepting only of a pot of ale in return; and
I thought myself fixed till Tuesday should
come. How^ever, walking in the evening by
the side of the river, a boat came by, which
I found was going towards Philadelphia, with
several people in her. They took me in, and,
as there was no wind, we rowed all the way;
and about midnight, not having yet seen the
city, some of the company were confident we
must have passed it, and would row no
farther; the others knew not where w^e w^ere;
so we put towards the shore, got into a creek,
landed near an old fence, with the rails of
which we made a fire, the night being cold,
in October, and there we remained till day-
light. Then one of the company knew the
place to be Cooper's Creek, a little above
Philadelphia, which we saw as soon as we
got out of the creek, and arrived there about
eight or nine o'clock on the Sunday morn-
ing, and landed at the Market-street wharf.
I have been the more particular in this
description of my journey, and shall be so
of my first entry into that city, that you
may in your mind compare such unlikely
beginnings with the figure I have since made
there. I was in my working dress, my best
clothes being to come round by sea. I was
dirty from my journey; my pockets were
stuffed out with shirts and stockings, and
I knew no soul nor where to look for lodg-
ing. I was fatigued with traveling, rowing,
and want of rest; I was very hungry; and
my whole stock of cash consisted of a Dutch
dollar, and about a shilhng in copper. The
latter I gave the people of the boat for my
passage, who at first refused it, on account
of my rowing; but I insisted on their taking
it. A man being sometimes more generous
when he has but a little money than when he
has plenty, perhaps through fear of being
thought to have but little.
Then I walked up the street, gazing about
till near the market-house I met a boy with
bread. I had made many a meal on bread,
and, inquiring where he got it, I went im-
mediately to the baker's he directed me to,
in Second-street, and asked for biscuit,
intending such as we had in Boston; but
they, it seems, were not made in Phila-
delphia. Then I asked for a three-penny
loaf, and was told they had none such. So
not considering or knowing the difference of
money, and the greater cheapness nor the
names of his bread, I bade him give me
three-penny worth of any sort. He gave
me, accordingly, three great puffy rolls. I
was surprised at the quantity, but took it,
and, having no room in my pockets, walked
off with a roll under each arm, and eating
the other. Thus I went up Market-street
as far as Fourth-street, passing by the door
of Mr. Read, my future wife's father; when
she, standing at the door, saw me, and
thought I made, as I certainly did, a most
awkward, ridiculous appearance. Then I
turned and went down Chestnut-street and
part of Walnut-street, eating my roll all the
way, and, coming round, found myself again
at Market-street wharf, near the boat I
came in, to which I went for a draught of the
river water; and, being filled wMth one of
my rolls, gave the other two to a woman and
her child that came down the river in the
boat with us, and were waiting to go farther.
Thus refreshed, I walked again up the
street, which by this time had many clean-
dressed people in it, who were all walking
the same w^ay. I joined them, and thereby
was led into the great meeting-house of the
Quakers near the market. I sat down among
them, and, after looking round awhile and
hearing nothing said, being very drowsy
through labor and want of rest the pre-
ceding night, I fell fast asleep, and con-
tinued so till the meeting broke up, when one
was kind enough to rouse me. This was,
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
79
therefore, the first house I was in, or slept
in, in Phihtdelphia.
\\ alking down ap;ain towards the river,
and looking; in the faces of people, I met a
young Quaker man whose countenance I
liked, and accosting him, requested he would
tell me where a stranger could get lodging.
We were then near the sign of the Three
Mariners. "Here," says he, "is one place
that entertains strangers, but it is not a
reputable house; if thee wilt walk with me,
I'll show thee a better." He brought me to
the Crooked Billet in Water-street. Here
I got a dinner, and, while I was eating it,
several sly questions were asked me, as it
seemed to be suspected, from my youth and
appearance, that I might be some runaway.
After dinner, my sleepiness returned, and,
being shown to a bed, I lay down without
undressing, and slept till six in the evening;
w^as called to supper, went to bed again very
early, and slept soundly till next morning.
Then I made myself as tidy as I could, and
went to Andrew Bradford the printer's.
I found in the shop the old man, his father,
whom I had seen in New York, and who,
travelmg on horseback, had got to Phila-
delphia before me. He introduced me to
his son, who received me civilly, gave me a
breakfast, but told me he did not at present
want a hand, being lately supplied w4th one;
but there was another printer in town,
lately set up, one Keimer, who, perhaps,
might employ me; if not, I should be wel-
come to lodge at his house, and he would
give me a little work to do now and then till
fuller business should offer.
The old gentleman said he would go with
me to the new printer; and when we found
him, "Neighbor," says Bradford, "I have
brought to see you a young man of your
business; perhaps you may want such a
one." He asked me a few questions, put a
composing stick in my hand to see how I
worked, and then said he would employ me
soon, though he had just then nothing for
me to do; and taking old Bradford, whom
he had never seen before, to be one of the
town's people that had a good will for him,
entered into a conversation on his present
undertaking and prospects; while Brad-
ford, not discovering that he was the other
printer's father, on Keimer's saying he
expected soon to get the greatest part of
the business into his own hands, drew him
on by artful questions and starting little
doubts, to explain all his views, what interest
he relied on, and in what manner he in-
tended to proceed. I, who stood by and
heard all, saw immediately that one of them
was a crafty old sophister, and the other a
mere novice. Bradford left me with Keimer,
who was greatly surprised when I told him
who the old man was.
Keimer's printing-house, I found, con-
sisted of an old shattered press, and one
small, worn-out font of English, which he
was then using himself, composing an Elegy
oti Aquila Rose^ before mentioned, an in-
genious young man, of excellent character,
much respected in the towm, clerk of the
Assembly, and a pretty poet. Keimer made
verses too, but very indifferently. He could
not be said to write them, for his manner
was to compose them in the types directly
out of his head. So there being no copy,
but one pair of cases, and the Elegy likely
to require all the "letter," no one could
help him. I endeavored to put his press
(w^hich he had not yet used, and of which
he understood nothing) into order fit to be
worked with; and, promising to come and
print off his Elegy as soon as he should have
got it ready, I returned to Bradford's, who
gave me a little job to do for the present,
and there I lodged and dieted. A few days
after, Keimer sent for me to print off the
Elegy. And now^ he had got another pair of
cases, and a pamphlet to reprint, on which
he set me to work.
These two printers I found poorly quali-
fied for their business. Bradford had not
been bred to it, and was very illiterate; and
Keimer, though something of a scholar, was
a mere compositor, knowing nothing of
presswork. He had been one of the French
prophets, and could act their enthusiastic
agitations. 1 At this time he did not profess
any particular religion, but something of all
on occasion; was very ignorant of the world,
and had, as I afterward found, a good deal of
the knave in his composition. He did not
like my lodging at Bradford's while I worked
with him. He had a house indeed, but
without furniture, so he could not lodge me;
1 It is supposed that he was one of the Camisards,
Protestants of southern France who were driven into
fanaticism b'y the persecution of Louis XIV.
8o
HKNJAMIN FRANKLIN
but he j^ot nic a lodjiinc; at Mr. Read's, before
mentioned, who was the owner of his liouse;
and, my chest and clothes beinii; come by
this time, 1 made rather a more respectable
appearance in the eyes of Miss Read than I
had done when she first happened to see me
eatins; my roll m the street.
I be2;an now to have some acquaintance
anions; tiie youno; people of the town, that
were lovers of readinc;, with whom I spent
my evenings very pleasantly; and gaining
money by my industry and frugality, I lived
very agreeably, forgetting Boston as much
as I could, and not desiring that any there
should know where I resided except my
friend Collins, who was in my secret, and
kept It when I wrote to him. At length, an
incident happened that sent me back again
much sooner than I had intended. I had a
brother-in-law, Robert Holmes, master of
a sloop that traded between Boston and
Delaware. He being at Newcastle, forty
miles below Philadelphia, heard there of me,
and wrote me a letter mentioning the con-
cern of my friends in Boston at my abrupt
departure, assuring me of their good will to
me, and that every thing would be accom-
modated to my mind if I would return, to
which he exhorted me very earnestly. I
wrote an answer to his letter, thanked him
for his advice, but stated my reasons for
quitting Boston fully and in such a light as
to convince him I was not so wrong as he
had apprehended.
Sir William Keith, governor of the prov-
ince, was then at Newcastle, and Captain
Holmes, happening to be in company with
him when my letter came to hand, spoke to
him of me, and showed him the letter.
The governor read it, and seemed surprised
when he was told my age. He said I ap-
peared a young man of promising parts, and
therefore should be encouraged; the printers
at Philadelphia were wretched ones; and,
if I would set up there, he made no doubt
I should succeed; for his part, he would
procure me the public business, and do me
every other service in his power. This my
brother-in-law afterwards told me in Bos-
ton, but I knew as yet nothing of it; w^hen,
one day, Keimer and I being at work to-
gether near the window, we saw the governor
and another gentleman (which proved to
be Colonel French, of Newcastle), finely
dressed, come directly across the street to
our house, and heard them at the door.
Keimer ran down immediately, thinking
it a visit to him; but the governor incjuired
for me, came up, and with a condescension
and politeness I had been quite unused to,
made me many compliments, desired to be
acquainted with me, blamed me kindly for
not having made myself known to him when
I first came to the place, and would have
me away with him to the tavern, where he
was going with Colonel French to taste, as
he said, some excellent Madeira. I was not
a little surprised, and Keimer stared like a
pig poisoned. I went, however, with the
governor and Colonel French to a tavern,
at the corner of Third-street, and over the
Madeira he proposed my setting up my
business, laid before me the probabilities
of success, and both he and Colonel French
assured me I should have their interest and
influence in procuring the public business of
both governments.! On my doubting
whether my father would assist me in it,
Sir William said he would give me a letter
to him, in which he would state the advan-
tages, and he did not doubt of prevailing
with him. So it was concluded I should
return to Boston in the first vessel, with the
governor's letter recommending me to my
father. In the mean time the intention was
to be kept a secret, and I went on working
with Keimer as usual, the governor sending
for me now and then to dine with him, a
very great honor I thought it, and conversing
with me in the most affable, familiar, and
friendly manner imaginable.
About the end of April, 1724, a little
vessel offered for Boston. I took leave of
Keimer as going to see my friends. The
governor gave me an ample letter, saying
many flattering things of me to my father,
and strongly recommending the project of
my setting up at Philadelphia as a thing
that must make my fortune. We struck on
a shoal in going down the bay, and sprung
a leak; we had a blustering time at sea, and
were obliged to pump almost continually, at
which I took my turn. We arrived safe,
however, at Boston in about a fortnight. I
had been absent seven months, and my
friends had heard nothing of me; for my
1 Pennsylvania and Delaware.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
brother Holmes was not yet returned, and
had not written about me. My unex-
pected appearance surprised the family;
all were, however, very glad to see me, and
made me welcome, except my brother. I
went to see him at his printing-house. I was
better dressed than ever while in his service,
having a genteel new suit from head to foot,
a watch, and my pockets lined with near
five pounds sterling in silver. He received
me not very frankly, looked me all over,
and turned to his work again.
The journeymen were inquisitive where
I had been, what sort of a country it was, and
how I liked it. I praised it much, and the
happy life I led in it, expressing strongly my
intention of returning to it; and, one of
them asking what kind of money we had
there, I produced a handful of silver, and
spread it before them, which was a kind of
raree-show they had not been used to, paper
being the money of Boston. Then I took
an opportunity of letting them see my
watch; and, lastly (my brother still grum
and sullen), I gave them a piece of eight^
to drink, and took my leave. This visit of
mine offended him extremely; for, when
my mother some time after spoke to him of
a reconciliation, and of her wishes to see us
on good terms together, and that we might
live for the future as brothers, he said I had
insulted him in such a manner before his
people that he could never forget or forgive
it. In this, however, he was mistaken.
My father received the governor's letter
with some apparent surprise, but said little
of it to me for some days, when Captain
Holmes returnmg he showed it to him,
asked him if he knew Keith, and what kind
of man he was; addmg his opinion that he
must be of small discretion to think of
setting a boy up in business who wanted yet
three years of being at man's estate. Holmes
said what he could in favor of the project,
but my father was clear in the impropriety
of it, and at last gave a flat denial to it.
Then he wrote a civil letter to Sir William,
thanking him for the patronage he had so
kindly offered me, but declining to assist me
1 Spanish dollar. (John Bigeiow, who first printed
the Autobiography from the original manuscript, has
"him" in this sentence, in place of "them," but ap-
parently all -editors have concurred in making the
substitution.)
as yet in setting up, I being, in his opinion,
too young to be trusted with the manage-
ment of a business so important, and for
which the preparation must be so expensive.
My friend and companion Collins, who
was a clerk in the post-office, pleased with
the account I gave him of my new country,
determined to go thither also; and, while I
waited for my father's determination, he
set out before me by land to Rhode Island,
leaving his books, which were a pretty collec-
tion of mathematics and natural philosophy,
to come with mine and me to New York,
where he proposed to wait for me.
My father, though he did not approve
Sir William's proposition, was yet pleased
that I had been able to obtain so advan-
tageous a character from a person of such
note where I had resided, and that I had
been so industrious and careful as to equip
myself so handsomely in so short a time;
therefore, seeing no prospect of an accom-
modation between my brother and me, he
gave his consent to my returning again to
Philadelphia, advised me to behave respect-
fully to the people there, endeavor to obtain
the general esteem, and avoid lampooning
and libeling, to which he thought I had too
much inclination; telling me that by steady
industry and a prudent parsimony I might
save enough by the time I was one-and-
twenty to set me up; and that, if I came
near the matter, he would help me out with
the rest. This was all I could obtain, except
some small gifts as tokens of his and my
mother's love, when I embarked again for
New York, now with their approbation and
their blessing.
The sloop putting in at Newport, Rhode
Island, I visited my brother John, who had
been married and settled there some years.
He received me very affectionately, for he
always loved me. A friend of his, one
Vernon, having some money due to him in
Pennsylvania, about thirty-five pounds cur-
rency, desired I would receive it for him,
and keep it till I had his directions what to
remit it in. Accordingly he gave me an
order. This afterwards occasioned me a
good deal of uneasiness.
At Newport we took in a number of
passengers for New York, among which were
two young women, companions, and a grave,
sensible, matron-like Quaker woman, with
13ENJAMIN FRANKLIN
her attendants. 1 had shown an ohhgin^
readiness to do her some httle services, which
Impressed her I suppose with a degree of
good will towards me; therefore, when she
saw a daily growing familiarity between me
and the two young women, which they
appeared to encourage, she took me aside,
and said: "Young man, I am concerned for
thee, as thou has no friend with thee, and
seems not to know much of the world, or
of the snares youth is exposed to; depend
upon it, those are very bad women; I can
see it in all their actions; and if thee art not
upon thy guard, they will draw thee into
some danger; they are strangers to thee, and
I advise thee, in a friendly concern for thy
welfare, to have no acquaintance with them."
As I seemed at fiist not to think so ill of them
as she did, she mentioned some things she
had observed and heard that had escaped
my notice, but now convinced me she was
right. I thanked her for her kind advice,
and promised to follow it. When we arrived
at New York, they told me where they lived,
and invited me to come and see them; but
I avoided it, and it was well I did; for the
next day the captain missed a silver spoon
and some other things, that had been taken
out of his cabin, and knowing that these
were a couple of strumpets, he got a warrant
to search their lodgings, found the stolen
goods, and had the thieves punished. So,
though we had escaped a sunken rock,
which we scraped upon in the passage, I
thought this escape of rather more im-
portance to me.
At New York I found my friend Collins,
who had arrived there some time before me.
We had been intimate from children, and
had read the same books together; but he
had the advantage of more time for reading
and studying, and a wonderful genius for
mathematical learning, in which he far out-
stripped me. While I lived in Boston, most
of my hours of leisure for conversation were
spent with him, and he continued a sober
as well as an industrious lad; was much
respected for his learning by several of the
cler;=V and other gentlemen, and seemed to
proii.ise making a good figure in life. But,
during my absence, he had acquired a habit
of sotting with brandy; and I found by his
own account, and what I heard from others,
that he had been drunk every day since his
arrival at New ^'ork, and behaved very
oddly. He had gamed, too, and lost his
money, so that I was obliged to discharge
his lodgings, and defray his expenses to and
at Philadelphia, which proved extremely
inconvenient to me.
The then governor of New York, Burnet
(son of Bishop Burnet), hearing from the
captain that a young man, one of his pas-
sengers, had a great many books, desired
he would bring me to see him. I waited
upon him accordingly, and should have taken
Collins with me, but that he was not sober.
The governor treated me with great civility,
showed me his library, which was a very
large one, and we had a good deal of con-
versation about books and authors. This
was the second governor who had done me
the honor to take notice of me, which, to a
poor boy like me, was very pleasing.
We proceeded to Philadelphia. I received
on the way Vernon's money, without which
we could hardly have finished our journey.
Collins wished to be employed in some
counting-house, but, whether they dis-
covered his dramming by his breath, or by
his behavior, though he had some recom-
mendations, he met with no success in any
application, and continued lodging and
boarding at the same house with me, and at
my expense. Knowing I had that money of
Vernon's, he was continually borrowing of
me, still promising repayment as soon as he
should be in business. At length he had got
so much of it that I w^as distressed to think
what I should do in case of being called on
to remit it.
His drinking continued, about which we
sometimes quarreled, for, when a little
intoxicated, he was very fractious. Once,
in a boat on the Delaware with some other
young men, he refused to row in his turn.
*'I will be rowed home," says he. "We will
not row you," says I. "You must, or stay
all night on the water," says he, "just as
you please." The others said: "Let us
row: what signifies it.^" But my mind
being soured with his other conduct, I con-
tinued to refuse. So he swore he would
make me row, or throw me overboard; and
coming along, stepping on the thwarts,
towards me, when he came up and struck
at me, I clapped my hand under his crotch,
and rising, pitched him head-foremost into
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
83
the river. I knew he was a good swimmer,
and so was under Httle concern about him;
but before he could get round to lay hold of
the boat, we had, with a few strokes, pulled
her out of his reach, and ever when he drew
near the boat, we asked if he would row,
striking a few strokes to slide her away from
him. He was ready to die with vexation,
and obstinately would not promise to row.
However, seeing him at last beginning to
tire, we lifted him in, and brought him home
dripping wet in the evening. We hardly
exchanged a civil word afterwards, and a
West India captain, who had a commission
to procure a tutor for the sons of a gentle-
man at Barbadoes, happening to meet with
him, agreed to carry him thither. He left
me then, promising to remit me the first
money he should receive, in order to dis-
charge the debt, but I never heard of him
after.
The breaking into this money of Vernon's
was one of the first great errata of my life,
and this affair showed that my father was
not much out in his judgment when he sup-
posed me too young to manage business of
importance. But Sir William, on reading
his letter, said he was too prudent. There
was great difference in persons, and dis-
cretion did not always accompany years, nor
was youth always without it. "And since
he will not set you up," says he, "I will do
it myself. Give me an- inventory of the
things necessary to be had from England,
and I will send for them. You shall repay
me when you are able; I am resolved to
have a good printer here, and I am sure you
must succeed." This was spoken with such
an appearance of cordiality, that I had not
the least doubt of his meaning what he said.
I had hitherto kept the proposition of my
setting up a secret in Philadelphia, and I still
kept it. Had it been known that I de-
pended on the governor, probably some
friend that knew him better would have
advised me not to rely on him, as I after-
wards heard it as his known character to
be liberal of promises which he never meant
to keep. Yet, unsolicited as he was by me,
how could I think his generous offers insin-
cere? I believed him one of the best men
in the world.
I presented him an inventory of a little
printing-house, amounting by my computa-
tion to about one hundred pounds sterling.
He liked it, but asked me if my being on the
spot in England to choose the types, and
see that every thing was good of the kind,
might not be of some advantage. "Then,"
says he, "when there, you may make
acquaintances, and establish correspondences
in the bookselling and stationery way." I
agreed that this might be advantageous.
"Then," says he, "get yourself ready to go
with Annis"; which was the annual ship,i
and the only one at that time usually passing
between London and Philadelphia. But it
would be some months before Annis sailed,
so I continued working with Keimer, fretting
about the money Collins had got from me,
and in daily apprehensions of being called
upon by Vernon, which, however, did not
happen for some years after.
I believe I have omitted mentioning that,
in my first voyage from Boston, being be-
calmed off Block Island, our people set about
catching cod, and hauled up a great many.
Hitherto I had stuck to my resolution of not
eating animal food, and on this occasion I
considered, with my master Tryon, the
taking every fish as a kind of unprovoked
murder, since none of them had, or ever
could do us any injury that might justify the
slaughter. All this seemed very reasonable.
But I had formerly been a great lover of fish,
and, when this came hot out of the frying-
pan, \t smelled admirably well. I balanced
some time between principle and inclination,
till I recollected that, when the fish were
opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their
stomachs; then thought I, "If you eat one
another, I don't see why we may n't eat
you." So I dined upon cod very heartily,
and continued to eat with other people,
returning only now and then occasionally
to a vegetable diet. So convenient a thing
it is to be a reasonable creature, since it en-
ables one to find or make a reason for every
thing one has a mind to do.
Keimer and I lived on a pretty good fa-
miliar footing, and agreed tolerably well,
for he suspected nothing of my setting up.
He retained a great deal of his old enthusi-
asms and loved argumentation. We there-
fore had many disputations. I used to work
him so with my Socratic method, and had
1 Annis was its commander; the ship was called the
London-Hope.
B4
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
trepanned hini so often by (luestions ap-
parently so distant from any point we had
in hand, and yet by degrees led to the point,
and brought him into difficulties and con-
tradictions, that at last he grew ridiculously
cautious, and would hardly answer me the
most common question, without asking
first: '' JVhat do you intend to infer from
that?*' However, it gave him so high an
opinion of my abilities in the confuting way,
that he seriously proposed my being his
colleague in a project he had of setting up a
new sect. He was to preach the doctrines,
and I was to confound all opponents. When
he came to explain with me upon the doc-
trines, I found several conundrums which I
objected to, unless I might have my way a
little too, and introduce some of mine.
Keimer wore his beard at full length,
because somewhere in the Mosaic law it is
said: *' Thou shalt not mar the corners of thy
heard."^ He likewise kept the Seventh day,
Sabbath; and these two points were essen-
tials with hjm. I disliked both; but agreed
to admit them upon condition of his adopting
the doctrine of using no animal food. "I
doubt," said he, "my constitution will not
bear that." I assured him it would, and that
he would be the better for it. He was usually
a great glutton, and I promised myself some
diversion in half starving him. He agreed
to try the practice, if I w^ould keep him
company. I did so, and w^e held it for three
months. We had our victuals dressed, and
brought to us regularly by a woman in the
neighborhood, who had from me a list of
forty dishes, to be prepared for us at differ-
ent times, in all which there was neither fish,
flesh, nor fowl, and the whim suited me the
better at this time from the cheapness of it,
not costing us above eighteen pence sterling
each per week. I have since kept several
Lents most strictly, leaving the common
diet for that, and that for the common,
abruptly, without the least inconvenience,
so that I think there is little in the advice
of making those changes by easy grada-
tions. 1 went on pleasantly, but poor
Keimer suffered grievously, tired of the
project, longed for the flesh-pots of Egypt,^
and ordered a roast pig. He invited me and
two women friends to dine with him; but,
1 Leviticus, xix, 27.
* Exodus, xvi, 3,
it being brought too soon upon table, he
could not resist the temptation, and ate the
whole before we came.
I had made some courtship during this
time to Miss Read. I had a great respect
and affection for her, and had some reason
to believe she had the same for me; but, as
I was about to take a long voyage, and we
were both very young, only a little above
eighteen, it was thought most prudent by
her mother to prevent our going too far at
present, as a marriage, if it was to take place,
would be more convenient after my return,
when I should be, as I expected, set up in
my business. Perhaps, too, she thought my
expectations not so well founded as I
imagined them to be.
My chief acquaintances at this time were
Charles Osborne, Joseph Watson, and James
Ralph, all lovers of reading. The two first
were clerks to an eminent scrivener or con-
veyancer in the town, Charles Brogden;
the other was clerk to a merchant. Watson
was a pious, sensible young man, of great
integrity; the others rather more lax in
their principles of religion, particularly
Ralph, who, as well as Collins, had been
unsettled by me, for which they both made
me suffer. Osborne was sensible, candid,
frank; sincere and affectionate to his
friends; but, in literary matters, too fond of
criticizing. Ralph was ingenious, genteel
in his manners, and extremely eloquent; I
think I never knew a prettier talker. Both
of them great admirers of poetry, and began
to try their hands in little pieces. Many
pleasant walks we four had together on Sun-
days into the woods, near Schuylkill, where
we read to one another, and conferred on
w4iat we read.
Ralph was inclined to pursue the study
of poetry, not doubting but he might be-
come eminent in it, and make his fortune by
it, alleging that the best poets must, when
they first begin to write, make as many
faults as he did. Osborne dissuaded him,
assured him he had no genius for poetry, and
advised him to think of nothing beyond the
business he was bred to; that, in the mer-
cantile way, though he had no stock, he
might, by his diligence and punctuality,
recommend himself to employment as a
factor, and in time acquire wherewith to
trade on his own account. I approve/i the
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
85
amusing one's self with poetry now and
then, so far as to improve one's language,
but no farther.
On this it was proposed that we should
each of us, at our next meeting, produce a
piece of our own composing, in order to im-
prove by our mutual observations, criticisms,
and corrections. As language and expres-
sion were what we had in view, we excluded
all considerations of invention by agreeing
that the task should be a version of the
eighteenth Psalm, which describes the
descent of a Deity. When the time of our
meeting drew nigh, Ralph called on me
first, and let me know his piece was ready.
I told him I had been busy, and, having
little inclination, had done nothing. He
then showed me his piece for my opinion,
and I much approved it, as it appeared to
me to have great merit. "Now," says he,
"Osborne never will allow the least merit in
any thing of mine, but makes a thousand
criticisms out of mere envy. He is not so
jealous of you; I wish, therefore, you would
take this piece, and produce it as yours; I
will pretend not to have had time, and so
produce nothing. We shall then see what he
will say to it." It was agreed, and I im-
mediately transcribed it, that it might
appear in my own hand.
We met; Watson's performance was read;
there were some beauties in it, but many
defects. Osborne's was read; it was much
better; Ralph did it justice; remarked some
faults, but applauded the beauties. He him-
self had nothing to produce, I was back-
ward; seemed desirous of being excused;
had not had sufficient time to correct, etc.;
but no excuse could be admitted; produce I
must. It was read and repeated; Watson
and Osborne gave up the contest, and joined
in applauding it. Ralph only made some
criticisms, and proposed some amendments;
but I defended my text. Osborne was
against Ralph, and told him he was no better
a critic than poet, so he dropped the argu-
ment. As they two went home together,
Osborne expressed himself still more strongly
in favor of what he thought my production;
having restrained himself before, as he said,
lest I should think it flattery. " But who
would have imagined," said he, "that Frank-
lin had been capable of such a performance;
such painting, such force, such fire! He
has even improved the original. In his com-
mon conversation he seems to have no
choice of words; he hesitates and blunders;
and yet, good God! how he writes!" When
we next met, Ralph discovered the trick
we had played him, and Osborne was a little
laughed at.
This transaction fixed Ralph in his resolu-
tion of becoming a poet. I did all I could
to dissuade him from it, but he continued
scribbling verses till Pope cured him.^ He
became, however, a pretty good prose
writer. More of him hereafter. But, as I
may not have occasion again to mention
the other two, I shall just remark here, that
Watson died in my arms a few years after,
much lamented, being the best of our set.
Osborne went to the West Indies, where he
became an eminent lawyer and made money,
but died young. He and I had made a
serious agreement that the one who hap-
pened first to die should, if possible, make
a friendly visit to the other, and acquaint
him how he found things in that separate
state. But he never fulfilled his promise.
The governor, seeming to like my com-
pany, had me frequently to his house, and
his setting me up was always mentioned as a
fixed thing. I was to take with me letters
recommendatory to a number of his friends,
besides the letter of credit to furnish me with
the necessary money for purchasing the press
and types, paper, etc. For these letters I was
appointed to call at different times, when
they were to be ready; but a future time was
still named. Thus he went on till the ship,
whose departure too had been several times
postponed, was on the point of sailing.
Then, when I called to take my leave and
receive the letters, his secretary, Dr. Bard,
came out to me and said the governor was
extremely busy in writing, but would be
1 Two allusions to James Ralph were inserted by
Pope in later editions of the Dunciad. The first is in
the following couplet (I, 215-6):
"And see! the very Gazetteers give o'er,
E'en Ralph repents, and Henley writes no more."
The second is the one which "cured" him (III,
165-6).
"Silence, ye Wolves! while Ralph to Cynthia howls,
And makes night hideous — Answer him, ye Owls!"
As a political writer Ralph was successful. Pope
and others agree in the accusation that he sold his
services to the highest bidder, but at least the bidding
was high, as he managed to secure a pension of £600
the year.
86
liENJAMIN FRANKLIN
down at Newcastle before tlie ship, and there
the letters would be delivered to nie.
Ralph, thoiifih married, and having one
child, had determined to accompany me in
this voyage. It was thought he intended to
establish a correspondence, and obtain goods
to sell on commission; but I found after-
wards, that, through some discontent with
his wife's relations, he purposed to leave her
on their hands, and never return again.
Having taken leave of my friends, and inter-
changed some promises with Miss Read, I
left Philadelphia in the ship, which anchored
at Newcastle. The governor was there;
but when I went to his lodging the secretary
came to me from him with the civillest
message in the world, that he could not then
see me, being engaged in business of the
utmost importance, but should send the
letters to me on board, wished me heartily
a good voyage and a speedy return, etc. I
returned on board a little puzzled, but still
not doubting
Mr.' Andrew Hamilton, a famous lawyer
of Philadelphia, had taken passage in the
same ship for himself and son, and with
Mr. Denham, a Quaker merchant, and
Messrs. Onion and Russel, masters of an
iron work in Maryland, had engaged the
great cabin; so that Ralph and I were forced
to take up with a berth in the steerage, and
none on board knowing us, were considered
as ordinary persons. But Mr. Hamilton
and his son (it was James, since governor)
returned from Newcastle to Philadelphia,
the father being recalled by a great fee to
plead for a seized ship; and, just before we
sailed, Colonel French coming on board, and
showing me great respect, I was more taken
notice of, and, with my friend Ralph, in-
vited by the other gentlemen to come into
the cabin, there being now room. Accord-
ingly, we removed thither.
Understanding that Colonel French had
brought on board the governor's dispatches,
I asked the captain for those letters that
were to be under my care. He said all were
put into the bag together and he could not
then come at them; but before we landed
in England I should have an opportunity of
picking them out; so I was satisfied for the
present, and we proceeded on our voyage.
We had a sociable company in the cabin,
and lived uncommonly well, having the
addition of all Mr. Hamilton's stores, who
had laid in plentifully. In this passage Mr.
Deniiam conti acted a friendship for me that
continued during his life. Ihe voyage was
otherwise not a pleasant one, as we had a
great deal of bad weather.
When we came into the Channel, the
captain kept his word with me, and gave me
an opportunity of examining the bag for
the governor's letters. I found none upon
which my name was put as under my care.
I picked out six or seven, that, by the hand-
writing, I thought might be the promised
letters, especially as one of them was directed
to Basket, the king's printer, and another to
some stationer. We arrived in London on
the 24th of December, 1724. I waited upon
the stationer, who came first in my way,
delivering the letter as from Governor Keith.
"I don't know such a person," says he; but,
opening the letter, "Oh! this is from Rid-
dlesden. I have lately found him to be a
complete rascal, and I will have nothing to
do with him, nor receive any letters from
him." So, putting the letter into my hand,
he turned on his heel and left me to serve
some customer. I was surprised to find these
were not the governor's letters; and after
recollecting and comparing circumstances, I
began to doubt his sincerity. I found my
friend Denham, and opened the whole affair
to him. He let me into Keith's character;
told me there was not the least probability
that he had written any letters for me; that
no one who knew him had the smallest
dependence on him; and he laughed at the
notion of the governor's giving me a letter
of credit, having, as he said, no credit to
give. On my expressing some concern about
what I should do, he advised me to endeavor
getting some employment in the way of my
business. "Among the printers here," said
he, "you will improve yourself, and when
you return to America, you will set up to
greater advantage."
We both of us happened to know, as well
as the stationer, that Riddlesden, the at-
torney, was a very knave. He had half
ruined Miss Read's father by persuading
him to be bound for him.i By this letter
it appeared there was a secret scheme on
foot to the prejudice of Hamilton (sup-
1 1.e.y to become responsible for payment of a note.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
87
posed to be then coming over with us); and
that Keith was concerned in it with Riddles-
den. Denham, who was a friend of Hamil-
ton's, thought he ought to be acquainted
with it; so, when he arrived in Enghmd,
which was soon nfter, partly from resent-
ment and ill-will to Keith and Riddlesden,
and partly from good-will to him, I waited
on him, and gave him the letter. He thanked
me cordially, the information being of im-
portance to him; and from that time he
became my friend, greatly to my advantage
afterwards on many occasions.
But what shall we think of a governor's
playing such pitiful tricks, and imposing so
grossly on a poor ignorant boy! It was a
habit he had acquired. He wished to please
everybody; and, having little to give, he
gave expectations. He was otherwise an
ingenious, sensible man, a pretty good writer,
and a good governor for the people, though
not for his constituents, the proprietaries,^
whose instructions he sometimes disregarded.
Several of our best laws were of his planning
and passed during his administration.
Ralph and I were inseparable com-
panions. We took lodgings together in
Little Britain at three shillings and six-
pence a week — as much as we could then
afford. He found some relations, but they
were poor, and unable to assist him. He
now let me know his intentions of remaining
in London, and that he never meant to return
to Philadelphia. He had brought no money
with him, the whole he could muster having
been expended in paying his passage. I
had fifteen pistoles; so he borrowed occa-
sionally of me to subsist, while he was looking
out for business. He first endeavored to get
into the playhouse, believing himself quali-
fied for an actor; but Wilkes,^ to whom
he applied, advised him candidly not to
think of that employment, as it was impos-
sible he should succeed in it. Then he pro-
posed to Roberts, a publisher in Paternoster
Row, to write for him a weekly paper like
the Spectator, on certain conditions, which
Roberts did not approve. Then he en-
deavored to get employment as a hackney
writer, to copy for the stationers and lawyers
about the Temple, but could find no vacancy.
1 immediately got into work at Palmer's,
» Proprietors, sons of William Penn.
2 A comedian.
then a famous printing-house in Bartholo-
mew Close, and here I continued near a year.
I was pretty diligent, but spent with Ralph
a good deal of my earnings in going to plays
and other places of amusement. We had
together consumed all my pistoles, and now
just rubbed on from hand to mouth. He
seemed quite to forget his wife and child,
and I, by degrees, my engagements with
Miss Read, to whom I never wrote more
than one letter, and that was to let her know
I was not likely soon to return. This was
another of the great errata of my life, which
I should wish to correct if I were to live it
over again. In fact, by our expenses, I was
constantly kept unable to pay my passage.
At Palmer's I was employed in composing
for the second edition of Wollaston's Religion
of Nature.^ Some of his reasonings not
appearing to me well founded, I wrote a
little metaphysical piece in which I made
remarks on them. It was entitled J Disser-
tation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and
Pain. I inscribed it to my friend Ralph; I
printed a small number. It occasioned my
being more considered by Mr. Palmer as a
young man of some ingenuity, though he
seriously expostulated with me upon the
principles of my pamphlet, which to him
appeared abominable. My printing this
pamphlet was another erratum. While I
lodged in Little Britain, I made an acquaint-
ance with one Wilcox, a bookseller, whose
shop was at the next door. He had an im-
mense collection of second-hand books.
Circulating libraries were not then in use;
but we agreed that, on certain reasonable
terms, which I have now forgotten, I might
take, read, and return any of his books.
This I esteemed a great advantage, and I
made as much use of it as I could.
My pamphlet by some means falling into
the hands of one Lyons, a surgeon, author of
a book entitled The hifallibility of Human
Judgment, it occasioned an acquaintance be-
tween us. He took great- notice of me,
called on me often to converse on those
subjects, carried me to the Horns, a pale-
alehouse in Lane, Cheapside, and
introduced me to Dr. Mandeville, author of
the Fable of the Bees, who had a club there,
of which he was the soul, being a most face-
3 First ed'n, 172a; second, 1-726. Copies of the
latter are not uncommon.
88
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
tious, entertaining companion. Lyons, too,
introduced nie to Dr. Penibcrton, at I^at-
son's Coffee-house, who promised to give
me an opportunity, some time or other, of
seeing Sir Isaac Newton, of which I was
extremely desirous; but this never happened.
I had brought over a few curiosities,
among which the principal was a purse made
of the asbestos, which purifies by fire. Sir
Hans Sloane heard of it, came to see me, and
invited me to his house in Bloomsbury
Square, where he showed me all his curiosi-
ties, and persuaded me to let him add that
to the number, for which he paid me hand-
somely.i
In our house there lodged a young woman,
a milliner, who, I think, had a shop in the
Cloisters. She had been genteelly bred,
was sensible and lively, and of most pleasing
conversation. Ralph read plays to her in
the evenings, they grew intimate, she took
another lodging, and he followed her. They
lived together some time; but, he being still
out of business, and her income not sufficient
to maintain them with her child, he took a
resolution of going from London, to try for
a country school, which he thought himself
well qualified to undertake, as he wrote an
excellent hand, and was a master of arith-
metic and accounts. This, however, he
deemed a business below him, and confident
of future better fortune, when he should be
unwilling to have it known that he once
was so meanly employed, he changed his
name, and did me the honor to assume
mine; for I soon after had a letter from him,
acquainting me that he was settled in a
small village (in Berkshire, I think it was,
where he taught reading and writing to ten
or a dozen boys, at sixpence each per week),
recommending Mrs. T to my care, and
desiring me to write to him, directing for
Mr. Franklin, school-master, at such a place.
He continued to write frequently, sending
me large specimens of an epic poem which
he was then composing, and desiring my
remarks and corrections. These I gave him
from time to time, but endeavored rather to
discourage his proceeding. One of Young's
Satires was then just published. I copied
and sent him a great part of it, which set in
a strong light the folly of pursuing the Muses
1 Franklin had, in fact, written to the famous col-
lector, offering to sell him the purse.
with any hope of advancement by them.2
All was in vain; sheets of the poem con-
tinued to come by every post. In the mean
time, Mrs. T , having on his account
lost her friends and business, was often in
distresses, and used to send for me, and
borrow what I could spare to help her out of
them. I grew fond of her compan}'^, and,
being at that time under no religious restraint
and presuming upon my importance to her,
I attempted familiarities (another erratum)
which she repulsed with a proper resentment,
and acquainted him with my behavior. This
made a breach between us; and when he
returned again to London, he let me know
he thought I had canceled all the obligations
he had been under to me. So I found I was
never to expect his repaying me what I lent
to him, or advanced for him. This, how-
ever, was not then of much consequence, as
he was totally unable; and in the loss of his
friendship I found myself relieved from a
burden. I now began to think of getting a
little money beforehand, and, expecting
better work, I left Palmer's to work at
Watts's, near Lincoln's Inn Fields, a still
greater printing-house. Here I continued
all the rest of my stay in London.
At my first admission into this printing-
house I took to working at press,^ imagining
I felt a want of the bodily exercise I had
been used to in America, where presswork
is mixed with composing. I drank only
water; the other workmen, near fifty in
number, were great guzzlers of beer. On
occasion, I carried up and down stairs a large
form of types in each hand, when others
carried but one in both hands. They won-
dered to see, from this and several instances,
that the W ater- American, as they called me,
was stro7iger than themselves, who drank
strong beer! We had an alehouse boy who
attended always in the house to supply the
workmen. My companion at the press
drank every day a pint before breakfast,
a pint at breakfast with his bread and cheese,
a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint
2 Edward Young published separately, as they were
written, a series of seven satires with the general title,
Love of Fame, the Universal Passion, 1 725-1 728. The
one of which Franklin copied a great part must have
been Satire IV.
3 The press which Franklin worked at Watts's was
acquired in 1841 by an American, and is now in the
Patent Office, Washington.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
89
in the afternoon about six o'clock, and
another when he had done his day's work. I
thought it a detestable custom; but it was
necessary, he supposed, to drink strong beer,
that he might be strong to labor. I en-
deavored to convince him that the bodily
strength afforded by beer could only be in
proportion to the grain or flour of the barley
dissolved in the water of which it was made;
that there was more flour in a pennyworth
of bread; and therefore, if he would eat that
with a pint of water, it would give him more
strength than a quart of beer. He drank on,
however, and had four or five shillings to pay
out of his wages every Saturday night for
that muddling liquor; an expense I was free
from. And thus these poor devils keep
themselves always under.
Watts, after some weeks, desiring to have
me in the composing-room, I left the press-
men; a new bie?ivenu or sum for drink,
being five shillings, was demanded of me
by the compositors. I thought it an im-
position, as I had paid below; the master
thought so too, and forbade my paying it.
I stood out two or three weeks, was accord-
ingly considered as an excommunicate, and
had so many little pieces of private mischief
done me, by mixing my sorts, transposing
my pages, breaking my matter, etc., etc.,
if I were ever so little out of the room, and
all ascribed to the chapeU ghost, which they
said ever haunted those not regularly ad-
mitted, that, notwithstanding the master's
protection, I found myself obliged to comply
and pay the money, convinced of the folly
of being on ill terms with those one is to live
with continually.
I was now on a fair footing with them,
and soon acquired considerable influence. I
proposed some reasonable alterations in their
chapel laws, and carried them against all
opposition. From my example, a great part
of them left their muddling breakfast of
beer, and bread, and cheese, finding they
could with me be supplied from a neighbor-
ing house with a large porringer of hot
water-gruel, sprinkled with pepper, crumbed
* Printing-houses were formerly called chapels in
England. It has been suggested that this arose from
the fact that the earliest English printer, Caxton, set
up his press in a building, inside the precincts of West-
minster Abbey, which, according to tradition, had
anciently been a chapel.
with bread, and a bit of butter in it, for the
price of a pint of beer, viz., three half-pence.
This was a more comfortable as well as
cheaper breakfast, and kept their heads
clearer. Those who continued sotting with
beer all day, were often, by not paying, out
of credit at the alehouse, and used to make
interest with me to get beer; their light, as
they phrased it, being out. I watched the
pay-table on Saturday night, and collected
what I stood engaged for them, having to pay
sometimes near thirty shillings a week on
their account. This, and my being esteemed
a pretty good riggite, that is, a jocular verbal
satirist, supported my consequence in the
society. My constant attendance (I never
making a St. Monday^) recommended me
to the master; and my uncommon quick-
ness at composing occasioned my being put
upon all work of dispatch, which was gen-
erally better paid. So I went on now very
agreeably.
My lodging in Little Britain being too
remote, I found another in Duke-street,
opposite to the Romish Chapel. It was two
pair of stairs backwards, at an Italian ware-
house.^ A widow lady kept the house; she
had a daughter, and a maid servant, and a
journeyman who attended the warehouse,
but lodged abroad. After sending to inquire
my character at the house where I last
lodged, she agreed to take me in at the
same rate, jj-. 6d. per week; cheaper, as she
said, from the protection she expected in
having a man lodge in the house. She was
a widow, an elderly woman; had been bred a
Protestant, being a clergyman's daughter,
but was converted to the Catholic religion
by her husband, whose memory she much
revered; had lived much among people of
distinction, and knew a thousand anecdotes
of them as far back as the times of Charles
the Second. She was lame in her knees with
the gout, and, therefore, seldom stirred out
of her room, so sometimes wanted company;
and hers was so highly amusing to me, that
I was sure to spend an evening with her
whenever she desired it. Our supper was
only half an anchovy each, on a very little
strip of bread and butter, and half a pint of
ale between us; but the entertainment was
^ I.e., an idle Monday.
3/.^., a shop having Italian wares.
90
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
in her conversation. My always keeping
good hours, and giving little trouble in the
family, made her unwilling to part with me;
so that, when I talked of a lodging I had
heard of, nearer my business, for two shill-
ings a week, which, intent as I now was on
saving money, made some difference, she
bid me not think of it, for she would abate
me two shillings a week for the future; so
I remained with her at one shilling and six-
pence as long as I stayed in London.
In a garret of her house there lived a
maiden lady of seventy, in the most retired
manner, of whom my landlady gave me this
account: that she was a Roman Catholic,
had been sent abroad when young, and
lodged in a nunnery with an intent of be-
coming a nun; but, the country not agree-
ing with her, she returned to England, where,
there being no nunnery, she had vowed to
lead the life of a nun, as near as might be
done in those circumstances. According!}-,
she had given all her estate to charitable
uses, reserving only twelve pounds a year
to live on, and out of this sum she still gave
a great deal in charity, living herself on
water-gruel only, and using no fire but to
boil it. She had lived many years in that
garret, being permitted to remain there
gratis by successive Catholic tenants of the
house below, as they deemed it a blessing to
have her there. A priest visited her to
confess her every day. "I have asked her,"
says my landlady, "how she, as she lived,
could possibly find so much employment for
a confessor.''" "Oh," said she, "it is im-
possible to avoid vain thoughts." I was
permitted once to visit her. She was cheer-
ful and polite, and conversed pleasantly.
The room was clean, but had no other
furniture than a mattress, a table with a
crucifix and book, a stool which she gave
me to sit on, and a picture over the chimney
of Saint Veronica displaying her handker-
chief, with the miraculous figure of Christ's
bleeding face on it, which she explained to
me with great seriousness.^ She looked
pale, but was never sick; and I give it as
another instance on how small an income
life and health may be supported.
1 The tradition is that when Jesus was on his way
to Calvary a woman whom he passed lent him her
handkerchief. He wiped his face with it, and after-
wards it was miraculously impressed with his likeness.
At Watts's printing-house I contracted
an acquaintance with an ingenious young
man, one Wygate, who, having wealthy
relations, had been better educated than
most printers; was a tolerable Latinist,
spoke French, and loved reading. I taught
him and a friend of his to swim at twice
going into the river, and they soon became
good swimmers. 1 hey introduced me to
some gentlemen from the country, who
went to Chelsea by water to see the College
and Don Saltero's curiosities.^ In our
return, at the request of the company, whose
curiosity Wygate had excited, I stripped
and leaped into the river, and swam from
near Chelsea to Blackfriars, performing on
the way many feats of activity, both upon
and under water, that surprised and pleased
those to whom they were novelties.
I had from a child been ever delighted
with this exercise, had studied and practiced
all Thevenot's^ motions and positions,
added some of my own, aiming at the grace-
ful and easy as well as the useful. All these
I took this occasion of exhibiting to the
company, and was much flattered by their
admiration; and Wygate, who was desirous
of becoming a master, grew more and more
attached to me on that account, as well as
from the similarity of our studies. He at
length proposed to me traveling all over
Europe together, supporting ourselves every-
where by working at our business. I was
once inclined to it; but, mentioning it to
my good friend Mr. Denham, with whom I
often spent an hour when I had leisure, he
dissuaded me from it, advising me to think
only of returning to Pennsylvania, which he
was now about to do.
I must record one trait of this good man's
character. He had formerly been in business
at Bristol, but failed in debt to a number of
people, compounded, and went to America.
There, by a close application to business as
a merchant, he acquired a plentiful fortune
in a few years. Returning to England in
the ship with me, he invited his old creditors
to an entertainment, at which he thanked
them for the easy composition they had
2 The "college" was probably Chelsea Hospital.
Don Saltero was the proprietor of a Chelsea coffee-
house. He had been a servant of Sir Hans Sloane,
who had given him a number of curiosities.
3 Author of a treatise on swimming.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
91
favored him with, and, when they expected
nothing but the treat, every man at the
first remove found under his plate an order
on a banker for the full amount of the unpaid
remainder, with interest.
He now told me he was about to return to
Philadelphia, and should carry over a great
quantity of goods in order to open a store
there. He proposed to take me over as his
clerk, to keep his books, in which he would
instruct me, copy his letters, and attend the
store. He added, that, as soon as I should
be acquainted with mercantile business, he
would promote me by sending me with a
cargo of flour and bread, etc., to the West
Indies, and procure me commissions from
others which would be profitable; and, if I
managed well, would establish me hand-
somely. The thing pleased me; for I w^as
grown tired of London, remembered with
pleasure the happy months I had spent in
Pennsylvania, and wished again to see it;
therefore I immediately agreed on the terms
of fifty pounds a year, Pennsylvania money;
less, indeed, than my present gettings as a
compositor, but affording a better prospect.
I now took leave of printing, as I thought,
for ever, and was daily employed in my new
business, going about \\\t\\ Mr. Denham
among the tradesmen to purchase various
articles, and seeing them packed up, doing
errands, calling upon workmen to dispatch,
etc.; and, when all was on board, I had a
few days' leisure. On one of these days, I
was, to my surprise, sent for by a great man
I knew only by name, a Sir William Wynd-
ham, and I waited upon him. He had heard
by some means or other of my swimming
from Chelsea to Blackfriars, and of my
teaching Wygate and another young man
to swim in a few hours. He had two sons
about to set out on their travels; he wished
to have them first taught swimming, and
proposed to gratify me handsomely if I
would teach them. They were not yet come
to town, and my stay was uncertain, so I
could not undertake it; but, from this
incident, I thought it likely that if I were
to remain in England and open a swimming-
school, I might get a good deal of money;
and it struck me so strongly, that, had the
overture been sooner made me, probably I
should not so soon have returned to America.
After many years, you and I had something
of more importance to do with one of these
sons of Sir William Wyndham, become Earl
of Egremont, which I shall mention in its
place.
Thus I spent about eighteen months in
London; most part of the time I w^orked
hard at my business, and spent but little
upon myself except in seeing plays and in
books. My friend Ralph had kept me
poor; he owed me about twenty-seven
pounds, which I was now never likely to
receive; a great sum out of my small earn-
ings! I loved him, notwithstanding, for he
had many amiable qualities. I had by no
means improved my fortune; but I had
picked up some very ingenious acquaintance,
whose conversation was of great advantage
to me; and I had read considerably.
We sailed from Gravesend on the 23d of
July, 1726. *****
We landed in Philadelphia on the nth
of October, where I found sundry alterations.
Keith was no longer governor, being super-
seded by Major Gordon. I met him walking
the streets as a common citizen. He seemed
a little ashamed at seeing me, but passed
without saying any thing. I should have
been as much ashamed at seeing Miss Read,
had not her friends, despairing with reason
of my return after the receipt of my letter,
persuaded her to marry another, one Rogers,
a potter, which was done in my absence.
With him, however, she was never happy,
and soon parted from him, refusing to cohabit
with him or bear his name, it being now
said that he had another wife. He was a
worthless fellow, though an excellent work-
man, which was the temptation to her
friends. He got into debt, ran away in
1727 or 1728, went to the West Indies, and
died there. Keimer had got a better house,
a shop well supplied with stationery, plenty
of new types, a number of hands, though
none good, and seemed to have a great deal
of business.
Mr. Denham took a store in Water-street,
where we opened our goods; I attended the
business diligently, studied accounts, and
grew, in a little time, expert at selling. We
lodged and boarded together; he counseled
me as a father, having a sincere regard for
me. I respected and loved him, and we
might have gone on together very happy;
but, in the beginning of February, 1727,
92
RENJAMIN FRANKLIN
when I had just passed my twenty-first year,
we both were taken ill. My distemper was
a pleurisy, which very nearly carried me off.
I suffered a p;ood deal, gave up the point in
my own mind, and was rather disappointed
when 1 found myself recovering, regretting,
in some degree, that I must now, some time
or other, have all that disagreeable work to
do over again. I forget what his distemper
was; it held him a long time, and at length
carried him off. He left me a small legacy
in a nuncupative will, as a token of his kind-
ness for me, and he left me once more to the
w'de world; for the store was taken into the
care of his executors, and my employment
under him ended.
My brother-in-law. Holmes, being now at
Philadelphia, advised my return to my
business; and Keimer tempted me, with an
offer of large wages by the year, to come
and take the management of his printing-
house, that he might better attend his
stationer's shop. I had heard a bad charac-
ter of him in London from his wife and her
friends, and was not fond of having any
more to do with him. I tried for farther
employment as a merchant's clerk; but,
not readily meeting with any, I closed again
with Keimer. I found in his house these
hands: Hugh Meredith, a Welsh Penn-
sylvanian, thirty years of age, bred to
country work; honest, sensible, had a great
deal of solid observation, was something of
a reader, but given to drink. Stephen Potts,
a young countryman of full age, bred to the
same, of uncommon natural parts, and great
wit and humor, but a little idle. These he
had agreed with at extreme low wages per
week, to be raised a shilling every three
months, as they would deserve by improving
in their business; and the expectation of
these high wages, to come on hereafter,
was what he had drawn them in with.
Meredith was to work at press. Potts at
book-binding, which he, by agreement, was
to teach them, though he knew neither one
nor t'other. John , a wild Irishman,
brought up to no business, whose service,
for four years, Keimer had purchased from
the captain of a ship*, he, too, was to be
made a pressman. George Webb, an Ox-
ford scholar, whose time for four years he
had likewise bought, intending him for a
compositor, of whom more presently; and
David Harry, a country boy, whom he
had taken apprentice.
I soon perceived that the intention of
engaging me at wages so much higher than
he had been used to give, was, to have these
raw, cheap hands formed through me; and,
as soon as I had instructed them, then they
being all articled to him, he should be able
to do without me. I went on, however, very
cheerfully, put his printing-house in order,
which had been in great confusion, and
brought his hands by degrees to mind their
business and to do it better.
It was an odd thing to find an Oxford
scholar in the situation of a bought servant.
He was not more than eighteen years of age,
and gave me this account of himself: that
he was born in Gloucester, educated at a
grammar-school there, had been distin-
guished among the scholars for some ap-
parent superiority in performing his part,
when they exhibited plays; belonged to the
Witty Club there, and had written some
pieces in prose and verse, which were printed
in the Gloucester newspapers; thence he was
sent to Oxford; where he continued about a
year, but not well satisfied, wishing of all
things to see London, and become a player.
At length, receiving his quarterly allowance
of fifteen guineas, instead of discharging his
debts he walked out of town, hid his gown
in a furze bush, and footed it to London,
where, having no friend to advise him, he
fell into bad company, soon spent his guineas,
found no means of being introduced among
the players, grew necessitous, pawned his
clothes, and wanted bread. Walking the
street very hungry, and not knowing what
to do with himself, a crimp's bill was put
into his hand, offering immediate enter-
tainment and encouragement to such as
would bind themselves to serve in America.
He went directly, signed indentures, was
put into the ship, and came over, never
writing a line to acquaint his friends what
was become of him. He was lively, witty,
good-natured, and a pleasant companion,
but idle, thoughtless, and imprudent to the
last degree.
John, the Irishman, soon ran away; with
the rest I began to live very agreeably, for
they all respected me the more, as they
found Keimer incapable of instructing them,
and that from me they learned something
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
93
daily. We never worked on Saturday, that
being Keimer's Sabbath, so I had two days
for reading. My acquaintance with in-
genious people in the town increased.
Keimer himself treated me with great
civility and apparent regard, and nothing
now made me uneasy but my debt to Ver-
non, which I was yet unable to pay, being
hitherto but a poor economist. He, however,
kindly made no demand of it.
Our printing-house often wanted sorts,
and there was no letter-founder in America;
I had seen types cast at James's in London,
but without much attention to the manner;
however, I now contrived a mold, made
use of the letters we had as puncheons,
struck the matrices in lead, and thus sup-
plied in a pretty tolerable way all deficiencies.
I also engraved several things on occasion;
I made the ink; I was warehouseman, and
everything, and, in short, quite a factotum.
But, however serviceable I might be, I
found that my services became every day of
less importance, as the other hands im-
proved in the business; and, when Keimer
paid my second quarter's wages, he let me
know that he felt them too heavy, and
thought I should make an abatement. He
grew by degrees less civil, put on more of
the master, frequently found fault, was
captious, and seemed ready for an outbreak-
ing. I went on, nevertheless, with a good
deal of patience, thinking that his encum-
bered circumstances were partly the cause.
At length a trifle snapped our connections;
for, a great noise happening near the court-
house, I put my head out of the window to
see what was the matter. Keimer, being in
the street, looked up and saw me, called
out to me in a loud voice and angry tone to
mind my business, adding some reproachful
words, that nettled me the more for their
publicity, all the neighbors who were look-
ing out on the same occasion, being witnesses
how I was treated. He came up immedi-
ately into the printing-house, continued the
quarrel, high words passed on both sides,
he gave me the quarter's warning we had
stipulated, expressing a wish that he had
not been obliged to so long a warning. I
told him his wish was unnecessary, for I
would leave him that instant; and so, taking
my hat, walked out of doors, desiring
Meredith, whom I saw below, to take care
of some things I left, and bring them to my
lodgings.
Meredith came accordingly in the evening,
when we talked my affair over. He had con-
ceived a great regard for me, and was very
unwilling that I should leave the house
while he remained in it. He dissuaded me
from returning to my native country, which
I began to think of; he reminded me that
Keimer was in debt for all he possessed;
that his creditors began to be uneasy; that
he kept his shop miserably, sold often with-
out profit for ready money, and often trusted
without keeping accounts; that he must
therefore fail, which would make a vacancy
I might profit of. I objected my want of
money. He then let me know that his
father had a high opinion of me, and, from
some discourse that had passed between
them, he was sure would advance money
to set us up, if I would enter into partnership
with him. "My time," says he, "will be
out with Keimer in the spring; by that
time we may have our press and types in
from London. I am sensible I am no work-
man; if you like it, your skill in the business
shall be set against the stock I furnish, and
we will share the profits equally."
The proposal was agreeable, and I con-
sented; his father was in town and approved
of it; the more as he saw I had great influ-
ence with his son, had prevailed on him to
abstain long from dram-drinking, and he
hoped might break him of that wretched
habit entirely, when we came to be so closely
connected. I gave an inventory to the
father, who carried it to a merchant; the
things were sent for, the secret was to be
kept till they should arrive, and in the mean
time I was to get work, if I could, at the
other printing-house. But I found no
vacancy there, and so remained idle a few
days, when Keimer, on a prospect of being
employed to print some paper money in
New Jersey, which would require cuts and
various types that I only could supply, and
apprehending Bradford might engage me
and get the job from him, sent me a very
civil message, that old friends should not
part for a few words, the effect of sudden
passion, and wishing me to return. Meredith
persuaded me to comply, as it would give
more opportunity for his improvement under
my daily instructions; so I returned, and
^4
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
\vc went on more smoothly than for some
time luforc. I he New Jersey job was
obtained, 1 contrived a copper-phite press
for it, the first that had been seen in tlie
country; I cut several ornaments and
checks for the bills. We went together to
Burlington, where I executed the whole to
satisfaction; and he received so large a
sum for the work as to be enabled thereby
to keep his head much longer above water.
At Ikirlington I made an acquaintance
with many principal people of the province.
Several of them had been appointed by the
Assembly a committee to attend the press,
and take care that no more bills were printed
than the law directed. 1 hey were therefore,
by turns, constantly with us, and generally
he who attended brought with him a friend
or two for company. My mind having been
much more improved by reading than
Keimer's, I suppose it was for that reason
my conversation seemed to be more valued.
They had me to their houses, introduced
me to their friends, and showed me much
civility; while he, though the master, was a
little neglected. In truth, he was an odd
fish, ignorant of common life, fond of rudely
opposing received opinions, slovenly to
extreme dirtiness, enthusiastic in some
points of religion, and a little knavish withal.
We continued there near three months;
and by that time I could reckon among my
acquired friends Judge Allen, Samuel Bus-
till, the secretary of the province, Isaac
Pearson, Joseph Cooper, and several of the
Smiths, members of Assembly, and Isaac
Decow, the surveyor-general. The latter
was a shrewd, sagacious old man, who told
me that he began for himself, when young,
by wheeling clay for the brickmakers;
learned to write after he was of age, carried
the chain for surveyors who taught him sur-
veying and he had now by his industry
acquired a good estate; and, says he, "1
foresee that you will soon work this man out
of his business, and make a fortune at it in
Philadelphia." He had not then the least
intimation of my intention to set up there
or anywhere. These friends were afterwards
of great use to me, as I occasionally was
to some of them. They all continued their
regard for me as long as they lived.
IBefore I enter upon my public appearance
in business, it may be well to let you know
the then state of my mind with regard to
my principles and morals, that you may see
how far those influenced the future events
of my life. My parents had early given me
religious impressions, and brought me
through my childhood piously in the Dis-
senting way. But I was scarce fifteen when,
after doubting by turns of several points,
as I found them disputed in the different
books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation
itself. Some books against Deism fell into
my hands; they were said to be the sub-
stance of sermons preached at Boyle's
Lectures. It happened that they wrought
an eflPect on me quite contrary to what was
intended by them; for the arguments of the
Deists, which were quoted to be refuted,
appeared to me much stronger than the
refutations; in short, I soon became a
thorough Deist. My arguments perverted
some others, particularly Collins and Ralph;
but each of them having afterwards wronged
me greatly without the least compunction,
and recollecting Keith's conduct towards
me (who was another freethinker), and my
own towards Vernon and Miss Read, which
at times gave me great trouble, I began to
suspect that this doctrine, though it might
be true, was not very useful. My London
pamphlet,^ which had for its motto these
lines of Dryden:
Whatever is, is right. Though purblind man
Sees but a part o' the chain, the nearest link:
His eyes not carrying to the equal beam,
That poises all above;^
and from the attributes of God, his infinite
wisdom, goodness, and power, concluded
that nothing could possibly be wrong in the
world, and that vice and virtue were empty
distinctions, no such things existing, ap-
peared now not so clever a performance as I
once thought it; and I doubted whether
some error had not insinuated itself un-
perceived into my argument, so as to infect
all that followed, as is common in meta-
physical reasonings.
' The occasion of its composition has earlier been
mentioned. It was printed in 1725. '
^ From Dryden's (Edipus, III, i (p. 184 of Vol. ^'^
of the Scott-Saintsbury ed'n). Quoted very inexact.,, ,
Franklin gives Pope's famous assertion {Essay on Man,
I, 294; IV, 145, 394). Dryden's words are:
"Whatever is, is in its causes just;
Since all things are by fate."
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
95
I grew convinced that truth, sincerity, and
integrity in dealings between man and man
were of the utmost importance to the feHcity
of life; and I formed written resolutions,
which still remain in my journal book, to
practice them ever while I lived. Revela-
tion had indeed no weight with me, as such;
but I entertained an opinion that, though
certain actions might not be bad because
they were forbidden by it, or good because
it commanded them, yet probably those
actions might be forbidden because they were
bad for us, or commanded because they were
beneficial to us, in their own natures, all the
circumstances of things considered. And
this persuasion, with the kind hand of
Providence, or some guardian angel, or
accidental favorable circumstances and situ-
ations, or all together, preserved me, through
this dangerous time of youth, and the
hazardous situations I was sometimes in
among strangers remote from the eye and
advice of my father, without any willful
gross immorality or injustice that might
have been expected from my want of
religion. 1 I say willful, because the in-
stances I have mentioned had something of
necessity in them, from my youth, inexperi-
ence, and the knavery of others. I had
therefore a tolerable character to begin
with; I valued it properly, and determined
to preserve it.
We had not been long returned to Phila-
delphia before the new types arrived from
London. We settled with Keimer, and
left him by his consent before he heard of it.
We found a house to hire near the market,
and took it. To lessen the rent, which was
then but twenty-four pounds a year, though
I have since known it to let for seventy, we
took in Thomas Godfrey, a glazier, and his
family, who were to pay a considerable part
of it to us, and we to board with them. We
had scarce opened our letters and put our
press in order, before George House, an
acquaintance of mine, brought a country-
man to see us, whom he had met in the
street inquiring for a printer. All our cash
1 Originally these words followed here: "Some fool-
ish intrigues with low women excepted, which from
the expense were rather more prejudicial to me than to
them." But Franklin crossed this out; and substi-
tuted for it in the margin the sentence which follows in
the text.
was now expended in the variety of particu-
lars we had been obliged to procure, and
this countryman's five shillings, being our
first-fruits, and coming so seasonably, gave
me more pleasure than any crown I have
since earned; and the gratitude I felt
towards House has made me often more
ready than perhaps I should otherwise have
been to assist young beginners.
There are croakers in every country,
always boding its ruin. Such a one then
lived in Philadelphia; a person of note, an
elderly man with a wise look and a very
grave manner of speaking; his name was
Samuel Mickle. This gentleman, a stranger
to me, stopped one day at my door, and
asked me if I was the young man who had
lately opened a new printing-house. Being
answered in the affirmative, he said he was
sorry for me, because it was an expensive
undertaking and the expense would be lost;
for Philadelphia was a sinking place, the
people already half bankrupts or near being
so; all appearances to the contrary, such as
new buildings and the rise of rents, being
to his certain knowledge fallacious; for
they were, in fact, among the things that
would soon ruin us. And he gave me such
a detail of misfortunes now existing, or that
were soon to exist, that he left me half
melancholy. Had I known him before I
engaged in this business, probably I never
should have done it. This man continued
to live in this decaying place, and to declaim
in the same strain, refusing for many years
to buy a house there, because all was going
to destruction; and at last I had the pleasure
of seeing him give five times as much for
one as he might have bought it for when he
first began his croaking.
I should have mentioned before, that,
in the autumn of the preceding year, I had
formed most of my ingenious acquaintance
into a club of mutual improvement which
we called the Junto;^ we met on Friday
evenings. The rules that I drew up required
that every member in his turn should pro-
duce one or more queries on any point of
Morals, Politics, or Natural Philosophy, to
be discussed by the company; and once in
three months produce and read an essay of
2 The impulse to do this Franklin may have deiived
from Cotton Mather's Essays to do Good, a book whose
influence upon him he has earlier mentioned.
96
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
his own writinp, on any subject he pleased.
Our debates were to be under the direction
of a president, and to be conducted in the
sincere spirit of injury after truth, without
fondness for dispute or desire of victory;
and, to prevent warmth, all expressions of
positiveness in opinions or direct contra-
diction were after some time made contra-
band and prohibited under small pecuniary
penalties.
The first members were Joseph Breintnal,
a copier of deeds for the scriveners, a good-
natured, friendly, middle-aged man, a great
lover of poetry, reading all he could meet
with, and writing some that was tolerable;
very ingenious in many little Nicknackeries,
and of sensible conversation.
Thomas Godfrey, a self-taught mathe-
matician, great in his way, and afterward
inventor of what is now called Hadley's
Quadrant. But he knew little out of his
way, and was not a pleasing companion;
as, like most great mathematicians I have
met with, he expected universal precision in
every thing said, or was for ever denying
or distinguishing upon trifles, to the dis-
turbance of all conversation. He soon
left us.
Nicholas Scull, a surveyor, afterward
surveyor-general, who loved books and
sometimes made a few verses.
William Parsons, bred a shoemaker, but,
loving reading, had acquired a considerable
share of mathematics, which he first studied
with a view to astrology, that he afterwards
laughed at. He also became surveyor-
general.
William Maugridge, a joiner, a most ex-
quisite mechanic, and a solid, sensible man.
Hugh Meredith, Stephen Potts, and
George Webb I have characterized before.
Robert Grace, a young gentleman of some
fortune, generous, lively, and witty; a lover
of punning and of his friends.
And William Coleman, then a merchant's
clerk, about my age, who had the coolest,
clearest head, the best heart, and the
exactest morals of almost any man I ever
met with. He became afterwards a mer-
chant of great note, and one of our provincial
judges. Our friendship continued without
interruption to his death, upward of forty
years; and the club continued almost as
long, and was the best school of philosophy,
morality, and politics that then existed in
the province; for our queries, which were
read the week preceding their discussion,
put us upon reading with attention upon the
several subjects, that we might speak more
to the purpose; and here, too, we acquired
better habits of conversation, every thing
being studied in our rules which might pre-
vent our disgusting each other. From hence
the long continuance of . the club, which
I shall have frequent occasion to speak
further of hereafter.
But my giving this account of it here is
to show something of the interest I had,
every one of these exerting themselves in
recommending business to us. Breintnal,
particularly, procured us from the Quakers
the printing forty sheets of their history,
the rest being to be done by Keimer; and
upon this we worked exceedingly hard, for
the price was low. It was a folio, pro
patria size in pica, with long primer notes.
I composed of it a sheet a day, and Mere-
dith worked it off at press; it was often
eleven at night, and sometimes later, before
I had finished my distribution for the next
day's work, for the little jobs sent in by our
other friends now and then put us back.
But so determined I was to continue doing a
sheet a day of the folio, that one night,
when, having imposed my forms, I thought
my day's work over, one of them by acci-
dent .was broken, and two pages reduced
to pi, I immediately distributed and com-
posed it over again before I went to bed;
and this industry, visible to our neighbors,
began to give us character and credit; par-
ticularly, I was told, that mention being
made of the new printing-office at the mer-
chants' Every-night club, the general opinion
was that it must fail, there being already
two printers in the place, Keimer and
Bradford; but Dr. Baird (whom you and I
saw many years after at his native place, St.
Andrews in Scotland) gave a contrary
opinion: "For the industry of that Frank-
lin," says he, "is superior to any thing I
ever saw of the kind; I see him still at work
when I go home from club, and he is at work
again before his neighbors are out of bed."
This struck the rest, and we soon after had
offers from one of them to supply us with
stationery; but as yet we did not choose to
engage in shop business.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
97
I mention this industry the more par-
ticularly and the more freely, though it
seems to be talking in my own praise, that
those of my posterity, who shall read it,
may know the use of that virtue, when they
see its effects in my favor throughout this
relation.
George Webb, who had found a female
friend that lent him wherewith to purchase
his time of Keimer, now came to offer him-
self as a journeyman to us. We could not
then employ him; but I foolishly let him
know as a secret that I soon intended to
begin a newspaper, and might then have
work for him. My hopes of success, as I
told him, were founded on this, that the
then only newspaper, printed by Bradford,
was a paltry thing, wretchedly managed,
no way entertaining, and yet was profitable
to him; I therefore thought a good paper
would scarcely fail of good encouragement.
I requested Webb not to mention it; but
he told it to Keimer, who immediately, to
be beforehand with me, published proposals
for printing one himself, on which Webb
was to be employed. I resented this; and,
to counteract them, as I could not yet begin
our paper, I wrote several pieces of entertain-
ment for Bradford's paper, under the title
of the Busy Body which Breintnal con-
tinued some months. By this means the
attention of the public was fixed on that
paper, and Keimer's proposals, which we
burlesqued and ridiculed, were disregarded.
He began his paper, however, and, after
carrying it on three quarters of a year, with
at most, only ninety subscribers, he offered
it to me for a trifle; and I, having been ready
some time to go on with it, took it in hand
directly; and it proved in a few years
extremely profitable to me.i
I perceive that I am apt to speak in the
singular number, though our partnership
still continued; the reason may be that, in
fact, the whole management of the business
lay upon me. Meredith was no compositor,
a poor pressman, and seldom sober. My
friends lamented my connection with him,
but I was to make the best of it.
Our first papers made a quite different
' Keimer's paper was called The Universal Instructor
in all Arts and Sciences and Pennsylvania Gazette.
Franklin's first issue appeared on 2 October, 1729,
with the title, The Pennsylvania Gazette.
appearance from any before in the province;
a better type, and better printed; but some
spirited remarks of my writing, on the dis-
pute then going on between Governor
Burnet and the Massachusetts Assembly,^
struck the principal people, occasioned the
paper and the manager of it to be much
talked of, and in a few weeks brought them
all to be our subscribers.
Their example was followed by many,
and our number went on growing con-
tinually. This was one of the first good
effects of my having learned a little to
scribble; another was, that the leading men,
seeing a newspaper now in the hands of one
who could also handle a pen, thought it
convenient to oblige and encourage me.
Bradford still printed the votes, and laws,
and other public business. He had printed
an address of the House to the governor,
in a coarse, blundering manner; we re-
printed it elegantly and correctly, and
sent one to every member. They were
sensible of the difference; it strengthened
the hands of our friends in the House, and
they voted us their printers for the year
ensuing.
Among my friends in the House I must
not forget Mr. Hamilton, before mentioned,
who was then returned from England, and
had a seat in it. He interested himself for
me strongly in that instance, as he did in
many others afterward, continuing his
patronage till his death.^
Mr. Vernon, about this time, put me in
mind of the debt I owed him, but did not
press me. I wrote him an ingenuous letter
of acknowledgment, craved his forbearance
a little longer, which he allowed me, and as
soon as I was able, I paid the principal with
interest, and many thanks; so that erratum
was in some degree corrected.
But now another difficulty came upon me
which I had never the least reason to expect.
Mr. Meredith's father, who was to have paid
for our printing-house, according to the
expectations given me, was able to advance
only one hundred pounds currency, which
had been paid; and a hundred more was due
2 Concerning the governor's salary. The Assembly
was insisting on its right to fix the amount, and Frank-
lin supported its "ardent spirit of liberty" and "un-
daunted courage."
> I got his son once £500. (Franklin's note.)
98
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
to the merchant, who j^rcw impatient, and
sued us all. We gave bail, but saw that, if
the money could not be raised in time, the
suit must soon come to a judgment and
execution, and our hopeful prospects must,
with us, be ruined, as the press and letters
must be sold for payment, perhaps at half
price.
In this distress two true friends, whose
kindness I have never forgotten, nor ever
shall forget while I can remember any thing,
came to me separately, unknown to each
other and without any application from me,
offering each of them to advance me all the
money that should be necessary to enable
me to take the w^hole business upon myself,
if that should be practicable; but they did
not like my continuing the partnership with
Meredith, who, as they said, was often seen
drunk in the streets, and playing at low
games in alehouses, much to our discredit.
These two friends were William Coleman
and Robert Grace. I told them I could not
propose a separation while any prospect
remained of the Merediths' fulfilling their
part of our agreement, because I thought
myself under great obligations to them for
what they had done, and would do if they
could; but, if they finally failed in their
performance, and our partnership must be
dissolved, I should then think myself at
liberty to accept the assistance of my
friends.
Thus the matter rested for some time,
when I said to my partner: "Perhaps your
father is dissatisfied at the part you have
undertaken in this affair of ours, and is
unwilling to advance for you and me what
he would for you alone. If that is the case,
tell me, and I will resign the whole to you,
and go about my business." "No," said he,
"my father has really been disappointed,
and is really unable; and I am unwilling to
distress him farther. I see this is a business I
am not fit for. I was bred a farmer, and it
was a folly in me to come to town, and put
myself, at thirty years of age, an apprentice
to learn a new trade. Many of our Welsh
people are going to settle in North Carolina
where land is cheap. I am mchned to go
with them, and follow^ my old employment.
You may find friends to assist you. If you
wmII take the debts of the company upon
you; return to my father the hundred
pound he has advanced; pay my little per-
sonal debts and give me thirty pounds and
a new saddle, I will relinquish the partner-
ship, and leave the whole in your hands."
I agreed to this proposal; it was drawn up
in writing, signed and sealed immediately.
I gave him what he demanded, and he went
soon after to Carolina, from whence he sent
me next year two long letters containing the
best account that had been given of that
country, the climate, the soil, husbandry,
etc.y for in those matters he was very ju-
dicious. I printed them in the papers, and
they gave great satisfaction to the public.
As soon as he was gone I recurred to my
two friends; and because I would not give
an unkind preference to either I took half
of what each had offered and I wanted of
one, and half of the other; paid off the
company's debts and went on with the busi-
ness in my own name, advertising that the
partnership was dissolved. I think this was
in or about the year 1729.1
About this time there was a cry among the
people for more paper money, only fifteen
thousand pounds being extant in the prov-
ince, and that soon to be sunk. The wealthy
inhabitants opposed any addition, being
against all paper currency, from an appre-
hension that it would depreciate, as it had
done in New England, to the prejudice of all
creditors. We had discussed this point in
our Junto where I w^as on the side of an
addition, being persuaded that the first
small sum struck in 1723 had done much
good by increasing the trade, employment,
and number of inhabitants in the province,
since I now saw all the old houses inhabited,
and many new ones building; whereas I
remembered well, that when I first walked
about the streets of Philadelphia, eating my
roll, I saw most of the houses in Walnut-
street, between Second and Front streets,
with bills on their doors, "To be let"; and
many likew^ise in Chestnut-street and other
streets, which made me then think the
inhabitants of the city were deserting it one
after another.
Our debates possessed me so fully of the
subject, that I wrote and printed an anony-
mous pamphlet on it, entitled The Nature and
Necessity of a Paper Currency. It was well
1 The agreement of dissolution (examined by Sparks)
shows that it occurred on 14 July, 1730.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
99
received by the common people in general;
but the rich men disliked it, for it increased
and strengthened the clamor for more money,
and they happening to have no writers
among them that were able to answer it,
their opposition slackened, and the point was
carried by a majority in the House. My
friends there who conceived I had been of
some service, thought fit to reward me by
employing me in printmg the money; a
very profitable job and a great help to me.
This was another advantage gained by my
being able to write.
The utility of this currency became by
time and experience so evident as never
afterwards to be much disputed; so that
it grew soon to fifty-five thousand pounds,
and in 1739 to eighty thousand pounds,
since which it arose during the war to up-
wards of three hundred and fifty thousand
pounds, trade, building, and inhabitants all
the while increasing, though I now think
there are limits beyond which the quantity
may be hurtful.
I soon after obtained, through my friend
Hamilton, the printing of the Newcastle
paper money, another profitable job as I
then thought it; small things appearmg
great to those in small circumstances; and
these, to me, were really great advantages
as they were great encouragements. He pro-
cured for me, also, the prmting of the laws
and votes of that government,^ which con-
tinued in my hands as long as I followed the
business.
I now opened a little stationer's shop. I
had in it blanks of all sorts, the correctest
that ever appeared among us, being assisted
in that by my friend Breintnal. I had also
paper, parchment, chapmen's books, etc.
One Whitemash, a compositor I had known
in London, an excellent workman, now came
to me, and worked with me constantly and
diligently; and I took an apprentice, the
son of Aquila Rose.
I began now gradually to pay off the debt
I was under for the printing-house. In order
to secure my credit and character as a trades-
man, I took care not only to be in reality
industrious and frugal, but to avoid all
appearances to the contrary. I dressed
plainly; I was seen at no places of idle
1 Delaware.
diversion. I never went out a-fishing or
shooting; a book, indeed, sometimes de-
bauched me from my work, but that was
seldom, snug, and gave no scandal, and, to
show that I was not above my business, I
sometimes brought home the paper I pur-
chased at the stores through the streets on
a wheelbarrow. Ihus bemg esteemed an
industrious, thriving young man, and pay-
ing duly for what I bought, the merchants
who imported stationery solicited my cus-
tom; others proposed supplying me with
books, and I went on swimmingly. In the
mean time, Keimer's credit and business
dechning daily, he was at last forced to sell
his printing-house to satisfy his creditors.
He went to Barbadoes, and there lived some
years m very poor circumstances.
His apprentice, David Harry, whom I had
instructed while I worked with him, set up
in his place at Philadelphia, having bought
his materials. I was at first apprehensive
of a powerful rival in Harry, as his friends
were very able, and had a good deal of
interest. I therefore proposed a partner-
ship to him, which he, fortunately for me,
rejected with scorn. He was very proud,
dressed like a gentleman, lived expensively,
took much diversion and pleasure abroad,
ran in debt, and neglected his business; upon
which, all business left him; and, finding
nothing to do, he followed Keimer to Bar-
badoes, taking the printing-house with him.
There this apprentice employed his former
master as a journeyman; they quarreled
often; Harry went continually behindhand,
and at length was forced to sell his types and
return to his country work in Pennsylvania.
The person that bought them employed
Keimer to use them, but in a few years he
died.
There remained now no competitor with
me at Philadelphia but the old one, Brad-
ford; who was rich and easy, did a little
printing now and then by straggling hands,
but was not very anxious about the business.
However, as he kept the post-office, it was
imagined he had better opportunities of ob-
taining news; his paper was thought a better
distributor of advertisements than mine,
and therefore had many more, which was a
profitable thing to him, and a disadvantage
to me; for, though I did indeed receive and
send papers by the post, yet the public
lOO
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
opinion was otherwise, for what I did send
was by hribinp; the riders, who took them
privately, Bradford being unkind enough to
forbid it, which occasioned some resentment
on my part; and I thought so meanly of him
for it, that, when I afterward came into his
situation, I took care never to imitate it.
I had hitherto continued to board with
Godfrey, who Hved in part of my house with
his wife and children, and had one side of
the shop for his glazier's business, though he
worked little, being always absorbed in his
mathematics. Mrs. Godfrey projected a
match for me with a relation's daughter,
took opportunities of bringing us often to-
gether, till a serious courtship on my part
ensued, the girl being in herself very deserv-
ing. The old folks encouraged me by con-
tinual invitations to supper, and by leaving
us together, till at length it was time to
explain. Mrs. Godfrey managed our little
treaty. I let her know that I expected as
much money with their daughter as would
pay off my remaining debt for the printing-
house, which I believe was not then above a
hundred pounds. She brought me word
they had no such sum to spare; I said they
might mortgage their house in the loan-
office. The answer to this, after some days,
was, that they did not approve the match;
that, on inquiry of Bradford, they had been
informed the printing business was not a
profitable one; the types would soon be
worn out, and more wanted; that S. Keimer
and D. Harry had failed one after the other,
and I should probably soon follow them; and,
therefore, 1 was forbidden the house, and
the daughter shut up.
Whether this was a real change of senti-
ment or only artifice, on a supposition of our
being too far engaged in affection to retract,
and therefore that we should steal a mar-
riage, which would leave them at liberty to
give or withhold what they pleased, I know
not; but I suspected the latter, resented it,
and went no more. Mrs. Godfrey brought
me afterward some more favorable accounts
of their disposition, and would have drawn
me on again; but I declared absolutely my
resolution to have nothing more to do with
that family. This was resented by the
Godfreys; we differed, and they removed,
leaving me the whole house, and 1 resolved
to take no more inmates.
But this affair havmg turned my thoughts
to marriage, I looked round me and made
overtures of acquaintance in other places;
but soon found that, the business of a printer
bemg generally thought a poor one, I was
not to expect money with a wife, unless
with such a one as I should not otherwise
think agreeable. In the mean time, that
hard-to-be-governed passion of youth hurried
me frequently into intrigues with low women
that fell in my way, which were attended
with some expense and great inconvenience,
besides a continual risk to my health by a
distemper which of all things I dreaded,
though by great good luck I escaped it.
A friendly correspondence as neighbors and
old acquaintances had continued between
me and Mrs. Read's family, who all had a
regard for me from the time of my first
lodging in their house. I was often invited
there and consulted in their affairs, wherein
I sometimes was of service. I pitied poor
Miss Read's unfortunate situation, who was
generally dejected, seldom cheerful, and
avoided company. I considered my giddi-
ness and inconsistency when in London as
in a great degree the cause of her unhappi-
ness, though the mother was good enough
to think the fault more her own than mine,
as she had prevented our marrymg before I
went thither, and persuaded the other match
in my absence. Our mutual affection was
revived, but there were now great objections
to our union. The match^ was indeed looked
upon as invalid, a precedmg wife being said
to be living in England; but this could not
easily be proved, because of the distance;
and, though there was a report of his death,
it was not certain. Then, though it should
be true, he had left many debts, which his
successor might be called upon to pay. We
ventured, however, over all these difficulties,
and I took her to wife, September ist, 1730.
None of the inconveniences happened that
we had apprehended; she proved a good
and faithful helpmate, assisted me much
by attending the shop; we throve together,
and have ever mutually endeavored to
make each other happy. Thus I corrected
that great erratum as well as I could.
About this time, our club meeting, not
at a tavern, but in a little room of Mr.
1 1.e.y Miss Read's marriage whileFranklin was in
London.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
lOI
Grace's, set apart for that purpose, a propo-
sition was made by me, that, since our books
were often referred to in our disquisitions
upon the queries, it might be convenient to
us to have them altogether where we met,
that upon occasion they might be consulted;
and by thus clubbing our books to a common
library, we should, while we liked to keep
them together, have each of us the advantage
of using the books of all the other members,
which would be nearly as beneficial as if
each owned the whole. It was liked and
agreed to, and we filled one end of the room
with such books as we could best spare.
The number was not so great as we expected;
and though they had been of great use, yet
some inconveniences occurring for want of
due care of them, the collection, after about
a year, was separated, and each took his
books home again.
And now I set on foot my first project of
a public nature, that for a subscription
library. I drew up the proposals, got them
put into form by our great scrivener. Brock-
den, and, by the help of my friends in the
Junto, procured fifty subscribers of forty
shillings each to begin with, and ten shil-
lings a year for fifty years, the term our
company was to continue. We afterwards
obtained a charter, the company being in-
creased to one hundred: this was the mother
of all the North American subscription
libraries, now so numerous. It is become a
great thing itself, and continually increasing.
These libraries have improved the general
conversation of the Americans, made the
common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent
as most gentlemen from other countries, and
perhaps have contributed in some degree to
the stand so generally made throughout the
colonies in defense of their privileges. ^
Though I seldom attended any public
worship, I had still an opinion of its pro-
priety, and of its utility when rightly con-
ducted, and I regularly paid my annual
subscription for the support of the only
Presbyterian minister or meeting we had
in Philadelphia. He used to visit me some-
times as a friend, and admonish me to attend
his administrations, and I was now and then
iThis concludes the portion of the Autobiography
written in 1771.
prevailed on to do so, once for five Sundays
successively. Had he been in my opinion
a good preacher, perhaps I might have con-
tinued, notwithstanding the occasion I had
for the Sunday's leisure in my course of
study; but his discourses were chiefly either
polemic arguments, or explications of the
peculiar doctrines of our sect, and were all
to me very dry, uninteresting, and unedify-
ing, since not a single moral principle was
inculcated or enforced, their aim seeming to
be rather to make us Presbyterians than
good citizens.
At length he took for his text that verse
of .the fourth chapter of Philippians: ^^ Fi-
nallyy brethren^ whatsoever things are true^
honesty just, pure, lovely, or of good report,
if there be any virtue, or any praise, think on
these things'* And I imagined, in a sermon
on such a text, we could not miss of having
some morality. But he confined himself to
five points only, as meant by the apostle, viz.:
I. Keeping holy the Sabbath day. 2. Being
diligent in reading the holy Scriptures.
3. Attending duly the public worship.
4. Partaking of the Sacrament. 5. Paying
a due respect to God's ministers. These
might be all good things; but, as they were
not the kind of good things that I expected
from that text, I despaired of ever meeting
with them from any other, was disgusted,
and attended his preaching no more. I had
some years before composed a little Liturgy,
or form of prayer, for my own private use
{viz., in 1728), entitled Articles of Belief and
Acts of Religion. I returned to the use of
this, and went no more to the public assem-
blies. My conduct might be blamable, but
I leave it, without attempting further to
excuse it; my present purpose being to relate
facts, and not to make apologies for them.
It was about this time I conceived the bold
and arduous project of arriving at moral
perfection. I wished to live without com-
mitting any fault at any time; I would con-
quer all that either natural inclination,
custom, or company might lead me into. As
I knew, or thought I knew, what was right
and wrong, I did not see why I might not
always do the one and avoid the other. But
I soon found I had undertaken a task of
more diflftculty than I had imagined. While
my care was employed in guarding against
one fault, I was often surprised by another;
I02
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
habit took tlie aclvantaj2;e of inattention;
inclination was sometimes too strong for
reason. I concluded, at length, that the
mere speculative conviction that it was our
interest to be completely virtuous, was not
sufficient to prevent our slipping; and that
the contrary habits must be broken, and
good ones acquired and established, before
we can have any dependence on a steady,
uniform rectitude of conduct. For this
purpose I therefore contrived the following
method.
In the various enumerations of the moral
virtues I had met with in my reading, I
found the catalogue more or less numerous,
as different writers included more or fewer
ideas under the same name. Temperance,
for example, was by some confined to eating
and drinking, while by others it was ex-
tended to mean the moderating every other
pleasure, appetite, inclination, or passion,
bodily or mental, even to our avarice and
ambition. I proposed to myself, for the sake
of clearness, to use rather more names, with
fewer ideas annexed to each, than a few
names with more ideas; and I included
under thirteen names of virtues all that at
that time occurred to me as necessary or
desirable, and annexed to each a short pre-
cept, which fully expressed the extent I
gave to its meaning.
7 hese names of virtues, with their pre-
cepts, were:
I. Temperance
Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. Silence
Speak not but what may benefit others or
yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3. Order
Let all your things have their places; let
each part of your business have its time.
4. Resolution
Resolve to perform what you ought; per-
form without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality
Make no expense but to do good to others
or yourself; i. e., waste nothing.
6. Industry
Lose no time; be always employed in some-
thing useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity
Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and
justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice
Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting
the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation
Avoid extremes; forbear resenting in-
juries so much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness
Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes,
or habitation.
II. Tranquillity
Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents
common or unavoidable.
12. Chastity
Rarely use venery but for health or off-
spring, never to dullness, weakness, or the
injury of your own or another's peace or
reputation. ,_
13. Humility
Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
My intention being to acquire the habitude
of all these virtues, I judged it would be well
not to distract my attention by attempting
the whole at once, but to fix it on one of them
at a time; and, when I should be master of
that, then proceed to another, and so on till
I had gone through the thirteen; and, as
the previous acquisition of some might
facilitate the acquisition of certain others, I
arranged them with that view, as they
stand above. Temperance first, as it tends
to procure that coolness and clearness of
head, which is so necessary where constant
vigilance was to be kept up, and guard
maintained against the unremitting attrac-
tion of ancient habits, and the force of per-
petual temptations. This being acquired
and established, Silence would be more easy;
and my desire being to gain knowledge at
the same time that I improved in virtue, and
considering that in conversation it was ob-
tained rather by the use of the ears than of
the tongue, and therefore wishing to break
a habit I was getting into of prattling,
punning, and joking, which only made me
acceptable to trifling company, I gave
Silence the second place. This and the
next. Order, I expected would allow me more
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
103
time for attending to my project and my
studies. Resolution^ once become habitual,
would keep me firm in my endeavors to
obtain all the subsequent virtues; Frugality
and Industry freeing me from my remaining
debt, and producing affluence and inde-
pendence, would make more easy the practice
of Sincerity and Justice, etc.y etc. Con-
ceiving, then, that, agreeably to the advice
of Pythagoras in his Golden Verses, daily
examination would be necessary, I contrived
the following method for conducting that
examination.
I made a little book,i in which I allotted
a page for each of the virtues. I ruled each
Form of
the Pages
TEMPERANCE.
EAT NOT TO DULLNESS;
DRINK NOT TO ELEVATION.
S.
M.
T.
W.
T.
F.
S.
T.
S.
*
*
*
0.
* *
*
*
*
*
*
R.
*
*
F.
*
*
I.
*
S.
J.
M.
C.
T.
C.
H.
page with red ink, so as to have seven
columns, one for each day of the week, mark-
ing each column with a letter for the day.
I crossed these columns with thirteen red
lines, marking the beginning of each line
with the first letter of one of the virtues, on
which line, and in its proper column, I might
1 On I July, 1733.
mark, by a little black spot, every fault I
found upon examination to have been com-
mitted respecting that virtue upon that day.
I determined to give a week's strict
attention to each of the virtues successively.
Thus, in the first week, my great guard was
to avoid every the least offense against
Temperance, leaving the other virtues to
their ordinary chance, only marking every
evening the faults of the day. Thus, if in
the first week I could keep my first line,
marked T, clear of spots, I supposed the
habit of that virtue so much strengthened,
and its opposite weakened, that I might
venture extending my attention to include
the next, and for the following week keep
both lines clear of spots. Proceeding thus
to the last, I could go through a course com-
plete in thirteen weeks, and four courses in
a year. And like him who, having a garden
to weed, does not attempt to eradicate all
the bad herbs at once, which would exceed
his reach and his strength, but works on one
of the beds at a time, and, having accom-
plished the first, proceeds to a second, so I
should have, I hoped, the encouraging pleas-
ure of seeing on my pages the progress I
made in virtue, by clearing successively
my lines of their spots, till in the end, by a
number of courses, I should be happy in
viewing a clean book, after a thirteen weeks*
daily examination.
This my little book had for its motto
these lines from Addison's Cato:
Here will I hold. If there 's a power above us
(And that there is, all nature cries aloud
Through all her works), He must delight in virtue;
And that which He delights in must be happy.
Another from Cicero:
0 vita Philosophia dux! 0 virtutum indagatrix
expultrixque vitiorum! Unus dies, bene et ex
prceceptis tuis actus, peccanti immortalitati est
anteponendus}
•
Another from the Proverbs of Solomon,
speaking of wisdom or virtue:
Length of days is in her right hand, and in her
left hand riches and honor. Her ways are ways
of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. — iii,
16, 17.
^0 philosophy, guide of life! O searcher after the
good and banisher of vices! One day spent well and
in accordance with your commands is to be preferred
to an immortality of sin. {Tusc. ^ucest., IV, 31.)
104
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
And conceiving; God to be the fountain of
wisdom, I thought it right and necessary to
soHcit his assistance for obtaining it; to
this end I formed the following little prayer,
which was prefixed to my tables of examina-
tion, for daily use.
0 pozvcrful Goodness! bountiful Father 1 merciful
Guide! Increase in me that wisdom which discovers
my truest interest. Strengthen my resolutions to
perform what that wisdom dictates. Accept my kind
offices to thy other children as the only return in my
•power for thy continual favors to me.
1 used also sometimes a little prayer
which I took from Thomson's Poems, viz.:
Father of light and life, thou Good Supreme!
O teach me what is good; teach me Thyself!
Save me from folh', vanity, and vice,
From every low pursuit; and fill my soul
With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure;
Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss! i
The precept of Order requiring that every
part of my business sho^dd have its allotted
time, one page in my little book contained
the following scheme of employment for
the twenty-four hours of a natural day.
The Morning
5~
Rise, wash, and ad-
Question. What
6
dress Powerful Good-
good shall I do this
7iess! Contrive day's
day?
:. business, and take the
resolution of the day;
prosecute the present
,
7
study, and breakfast.
^ 8'
9
ID
'Work.
II
Noon.
ri2i
L ^.
2'
Read, or overlook
my accounts, and dine.
3
4
^Work.
Evening
r 5-
6
Put things in their
Question. What
7
places. Supper. Mu-
good have I done ^
8
'sic or diversion, or
to-day? •
KJ
conversation. Exam-
9
ination of the day.
ID
II
12
Night ^
I
2
3
4
^ Sleep.
» The Seasons, Winter, 11. 217-221. In the fourth
line of the prayer "fill" should be "feed."
I entered upon the execution of this plan
for self-exammation, and contmued it with
occasional intermissions for some time. I
was surprised to find myself so much fuller
of faults than I had imagined; but I had
the satisfaction of seeing them dmimish.
To avoid the trouble of renewing now and
then my little book, which, by scraping out I
the marks on the paper of old faults to make
room for new ones in a new course, became
full of holes, I transferred my tables and
precepts to the ivory leaves of a memo- J
randum book, on which the Imes were drawn "
with red ink that made a durable stam, and
on those lined I marked my faults with a
black-lead pencil, which marks I could easily
wipe out with a wet sponge. After a while
I went through one course only in a year,
and afterward only one in several years, till
at length I omitted them entirely, being
employed in voyages and business abroad,
with a multiplicity of affairs that interfered;
but I always carried my little book with me.
My scheme of Order gave me the most
trouble; and I found that, though it might
be practicable where a man's business was
such as to leave him the disposition of his
time, that of a journeyman printer, for
instance, it was not possible to be exactly
observed by a master who must mix with the
world and often receive people of business
at their own hours. Order, too, with regard
to places for things, papers, etc., I found
extremely difficult to acquire. I had not
been early accustomed to it, and, having an
exceeding good memory, I was not so sensible
of the inconvenience attending want of
method. This article, therefore, cost me so
much painful attention and my faults in it
vexed me so much, and I made so little
progress in amendment, and had such fre-
quent relapses that I was almost ready to
give up the attempt, and content myself
with a faulty character in that respect, like
the man who, in buying an ax of a smith,
my neighbor, desired to have the whole of
its surface as bright as the edge. The smith
consented to grind it bright for him if he
would turn the wheel; he turned while the
smith ^pressed the broad face of the ax hard
and heavily on the stone which made the
turning of it very fatiguing. The man came
every now and then from the wheel to see
how the work went on and at length would
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
los
take his ax as it was, without farther grind-
ing. *'No," said the smith, "turn on, turn
on; we shall have it bright by and by; as
yet, it is only speckled." "Yes," says the
man, '^but I think I like a speckled ax best.''
And I believe this may have been the case
with many who, having, for want of some
such means as I employed, found the diffi-
culty of obtaining good and breaking bad
habits in other points of vice and virtue,
have given up the struggle, and concluded
that "rt speckled ax was best"; for something,
that pretended to be reason, was every now
and then suggesting to me that such extreme
nicety as I exacted of myself might be a
kind of foppery in morals, which, if it were
known, would make me ridiculous; that a
perfect character might be attended with the
inconvenience of being envied and hated;
and that a benevolent man should allow a
few faults in himself, to keep his friends in
countenance.
In truth, I found myself incorrigible with
respect to Order; and now I am grown old
and my memory bad, I feel very sensibly
the want of it. But, on the whole, though
I never arrived at the perfection I had been
so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short
of it, yet I was, by the endeavor, a better
and a happier man than I otherwise should
have been if I had not attempted it; as those
who aim at perfect writing by imitating the
engraved copies, though they never reach
the wished-for excellence of those copies,
their hand is mended by the endeavor, and
is tolerable while it continues fair and legible.
It may be well my posterity should be
informed that to this little artifice, with the
blessing of God, their ancestor owed the
constant felicity of his hfe, down to his
seventy-ninth year, in which this is written.
What reverses may attend the remainder is
in the hand of Providence; but, if they
arrive, the reflection on past happiness en-
joyed ought to help his bearing them with
more resignation. To Temperance he
ascribes his long-continued health, and what
is still left to him of a good constitution; to
Industry and Frugality, the early easiness
of his circumstances and acquisition of his
fortune, with all that knowledge that en-
abled him to be a useful citizen, and obtained
for him some degree of reputation among the
learned; to Sincerity and Justice, the confi-
dence of his country, and the honorable
employs it conferred upon him; and to the
joint influence of the whole mass of virtues,
even in the imperfect state he was able to
acquire them, all that evenness of temper,
and that cheerfulness in conversation, which
makes his company still sought for and
agreeable even to his younger acquaintances.
I hope, therefore, that some of my descend-
ants may follow the example and reap the
benefit.
In 1739 arrived among us from Ireland
the Reverend Mr. Whitefield, who had made
himself remarkable there as an itinerant
preacher. He was at first permitted to
preach in some of our churches; but the
clergy, taking a dislike to him, soon refused
him their pulpits, and he was obliged to
preach in the fields. The multitudes of all
sects and denominations that attended his
sermons were enormous, and it was matter
of speculation to me, who was one of the
number, to observe the extraordinary influ-
ence of his oratory on his hearers and how
much they admired and respected him, not-
withstanding his common abuse of them by
assuring them they were naturally half
beasts and half devils. It was wonderful to
see the change soon made in the manners of
our inhabitants. From being thoughtless
or indiff'erent about religion, it seemed as if
all the world were growing religious, so that
one could not walk through the town in an
evening without hearing psalms sung in
different families of every street.
And it being found inconvenient to assem-
ble in the open air, subject to its inclemencies,
the building of a house to meet in was no
sooner proposed, and persons appointed to
receive contributions, but sufficient sums
were soon received to procure the ground
and erect the building, which was one hun-
dred feet long and seventy broad, about the
size of Westminster Hall; and the work was
carried on with such spirit as to be finished
in a much shorter time than could have been
expected. Both house and ground were
vested in trustees expressly for the use of
any preacher of any religious persuasion
who might desire to say something to the
people at Philadelphia; the design in build-
ing not being to accommodate any par-
io6
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
ticular sect, but the inhabitants in general;
so that even if the Mufti of Constantinople
were to send a missionary to preach Mo-
hammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit
at his service.
Mr. Whitefield in leaving us, went preach-
ing all the way through the colonies, to
Georgia. The settlement of that province
had lately been begun but, instead of being
made with hardy, industrious husbandmen,
accustomed to labor, the only people fit for
such an enterprise, it was with families of
broken shop-keepers and other insolvent
debtors, many of indolent and idle habits,
taken out of the jails, who, being set down
in the woods, unqualified for clearing land,
and unable to endure the hardships of a new
settlement, perished in numbers, leaving
many helpless children unprovided for. The
sight of their miserable situation inspired
the benevolent heart of Mr, Whitefield with
the idea of building an Orphan House there,
in which they might be supported and edu-
cated. Returning northward, he preached
up this charity and made large collections,
for his eloquence had a wonderful power over
the hearts and purses of his hearers of which
I myself was an instance.
I did not disapprove of the design, but as
Georgia was then destitute of materials and
workmen and it was proposed to send them
from Philadelphia at a great expense, I
thought it would have been better to have
built the house here and brought the children
to it. This I advised; but he was resolute in
his first project, rejected my counsel and I
therefore refused to contribute. I happened
soon after to attend one of his sermons in
the course of which I perceived he intended
to finish with a collection, and I silently
resolved he should get nothing from me. I
had in my pocket a handful of copper
money, three or four silver dollars, and five
pistoles in gold. As he proceeded I began
to soften and concluded to give the coppers.
Another stroke of his oratory made me
ashamed of that and determined me to give
the silver; and he finished so admirably
that I emptied my pocket wholly into the
collector's dish, gold and all. At this sermon
there was also one of our club who, being
of my sentiments respecting the building in
Georgia and suspecting a collection might be
intended, had, by precaution, emptied his
pockets before he came from home. To-
wards the conclusion of the discourse, however,
he felt a strong desire to give and applied to
a neighbor who stood near him to borrow
some money for the purpose. The applica-
tion was unfortunately [made] to perhaps the
only man in the company who had the firm-
ness not to be affected by the preacher. His
answer was: ^^ At any other time. Friend
Hopkinson, I zvould lend to thee freely; hut
not now, for thee seems to be out of thy right
senses.''
Some of Mr. Whitefield's enemies aflPected
to suppose that he would apply these col-
lections to his own private emolument; but
I, who was intimately acquainted with him
(being employed in printing his Sermons
and Journals, etc.), never had the least sus-
picion of his integrity but am to this day
decidedly of opinion that he was in all his
conduct a perfectly honest man; and me-
thinks my testimony in his favor ought to
have the more weight as we had no religious
connection. He used, indeed, sometimes
to pray for my conversion but never had the
satisfaction of believing that his prayers
were heard. Ours was a mere civil friend-
ship, sincere on both sides, and lasted to his
death. 1
The following instance will show some-
thing of the terms on which we stood. Upon
one of his arrivals from England at Boston,
he wrote to me that he should come soon
to Philadelphia but knew not where he could
lodge when there as he understood his old
friend and host, Mr. Benezet, was removed
to Germantown. My answer was: "You
know my house; if you can make shift with
its scanty accommodations, you will be most
heartily welcome." He replied, that if I
made that kind offer for Christ's sake, I
should not miss of a reward. And I re-
turned: ''Don't let me be mistaken; it was
not for Christ's sake, but for your sake." One
of our common acquaintance jocosely re-
marked that, knowing it to be the custom
of the saints when they received any favor,
to shift the burden of the obligation from off
their own shoulders and place it in heaven,
I had contrived to fix it on earth.
The last time I saw Mr. Whitefield was
in London, when he consulted me about his
1 In 1770, at Newburyport, Massachusetts.
AUTOHIOGRAPHY
107
Orphan House concern and his purpose of
appropriating it to the establishment of a
college.
He had a loud and clear voice and articu-
lated his words and sentences so perfectly
that he might be heard and understood at
a great distance, especially as his auditories,
however numerous, observed the most exact
silence. He preached one evening from the
top of the Court-house steps, which are in
the middle of Market-street and on the west
side of Second-street which crosses it at
right angles. Both streets were filled with
his hearers to a considerable distance. Being
among the hindmost in Market-street, I
had the curiosity to learn how far he could
be heard, by retiring backwards down the
street towards the river; and I found his
voice distinct till I came near Front-street
when some noise in that street obscured it.
Imagining then a semicircle, of which my
distance should be the radius and that it
were filled with auditors, to each of whom
I allowed two square feet, I computed that
he might well be heard by more than thirty
thousand. This reconciled me to the news-
paper accounts of his having preached to
twenty-five thousand people in the fields
and to the ancient histories of generals
haranguing whole armies, of which I had
sometimes doubted.
By hearing him often, I came to distin-
guish easily between sermons newly com-
posed, and those which he had often preached
in the course of his travels. His delivery of
the latter was so improved by frequent
repetitions that every accent, every empha-
sis, every modulation of voice, was so per-
fectly well turned and well placed that
without being interested in the subject one
could not help being pleased with the dis-
course; a pleasure of much the same kind
with that received from an excellent piece of
music. This is an advantage itinerant
preachers have overthosewho are stationary,
as the latter cannot well improve their de-
livery of a sermon by so many rehearsals.
His writing and printing from time to
time gave great advantage to his enemies;
unguarded expressions, and even erroneous
opinions, delivered in preaching, might have
been afterwards explained or qualified by
supposing others that might have accom-
panied them, or they might have been
denied; but litera scripta manetA Critics
attacked his writings violently, and with so
much appearance of reason as to diminish
the number of his votaries and prevent their
increase; so that I am of opinion if he had
never written any thing he would have left
behind him a much more numerous and im-
portant sect and his reputation might in
that case have been still growing, even after
his death, as, there being nothing of his writ-
ing on which to found a censure and give
him a lower character, his proselytes would
be left at liberty to feign for him as great a
variety of excellences as their enthusiastic
admiration might wish him to have
possessed.
*******
In order of time, I should have mentioned
before, that having, in 1742, invented an
open stove for the better warming of rooms,
and at the same time saving fuel, as the fresh
air admitted was warmed in entering, I
made a present of the model to Mr. Robert
Grace, one of my early friends, who, having
an iron-furnace, found the casting of the
plates for these stoves a profitable thing, as
they were growing in demand. To promote
that demand, I wrote and published a
pamphlet, entitled Jn Account of the new-
invented Pennsylvania Fireplaces; wherein
their Construction and Manner of Operation
is particularly explained; their Advantages
above every other Method of warming Rooms
demonstrated: and all Objections that have
been raised against the Use of them answered
and obviated, etc. This pamphlet had a good
effect. Governor Thomas was so pleased
with the construction of this stove, as de-
scribed in it, that he offered to give me a
patent for the sole vending of them for
a term of years; but I declined it from a
principle which has ever weighed with me
on such occasions, viz.: That, as we enjoy
great advantages from the inventions of others,
we should be glad of an opportunity to serve
others by any invention of ours; and this we
should do freely and generously.
An 'ironmonger in London, however,
assuming a good deal of my pamphlet, and
working it up into his own and making some
small changes in the machine, which rather
hurt its operation, got a patent for it there
1 The written word endures.
io8
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
and made, as I was told, a little fortune by it.
And this is not the only instance of patents
taken out for my inventions by others,
though not always with the same success,
which I never contested, as having no desire
of profiting by patents myself, and hating
disputes. The use of these fireplaces in
very many houses, both of this and the
neighboring colonies, has been, and is, a
great saving of wood to the inhabitants.
Peace being concluded, and the associa-
tion business therefore at an end, I turned
my thoughts again to the affair of estab-
lishing an academy. 1 The first step I took
was to associate in the design a number of
active friends, of whom the Junto furnished
a good part; the next was to write and pub-
lish a pamphlet, entitled Proposals relating
to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania.
This I distributed among the principal
inhabitants gratis; and as soon as I could
suppose their minds a little prepared by the
perusal of it, I set on foot a subscription for
opening and supporting an academy: it was
to be paid in quotas yearly for five years;
by so dividing it, I judged the subscription
might be larger and I believe it was so,
amounting to no less, if I remember right,
than five thousand pounds.
In the introduction to these proposals, I
stated their publication, not as an act of
mine, but of some public-spirited gentlemen,
avoiding as much as I could, according to
my usual rule, the presenting myself to the
public as the author of any scheme for their
benefit.
The subscribers, to carry the project into
immediate execution, chose out of their
number twenty-four trustees and appointed
Mr. Francis, then attorney-general, and my-
self to draw up constitutions for the govern-
ment of the academy; which being done and
signed, a house was hired, masters engaged,
and the schools opened, I think, in the same
year, 1749.
The scholars increasing fast, the house
was soon found too small and we were look-
1 The allusions in this sentence are to a preceding
portion of the Autobiography here omitted. The
"peace" was that which followed the French war of
the middle 1740's. The "association business" was
Franklin's formation of a voluntary militia for defen-
sive purposes. And he had first attempted, unsuccess-
fully, to establish an academy in 1743.
ing out for a piece of ground properly situ-
ated, with intention to build, when Provi-
dence threw into our way a large house ready
built which, with a few alterations, might
well serve our purpose. This was the build-
ing before mentioned, erected by the hearers
of Mr. Whitefield, and was obtained for us
in the following manner.
It is to be noted that the contributions to
this building being made by people of dif-
ferent sects, care was taken in the nomina-
tion of trustees, in whom the building and
ground were to be vested, that a predomi-
nancy should not be given to any sect, lest
in time that predominancy might be a
means of appropriating the whole to the use
of such sect, contrary to the original inten-
tion. It was therefore that one of each sect
was appointed, viz., one Church-of-England
man, one Presbyterian, one Baptist, one
Moravian, etc., those, in case of vacancy by
death, were to fill it by election from among
the contributors. The Moravian happened
not to please his colleagues and on his death
they resolved to have no other of that sect.
The difficulty then was, how to avoid hav-
ing two of some other sect, by means of the
new choice.
Several persons were named, and for that
reason not agreed to. At length one men-
tioned me with the observation that I was
merely an honest man, and of no sect at all,
which prevailed with them to choose me.
The enthusiasm which existed when the
house was built had long since abated, and
its trustees had not been able to procure
fresh contributions for paying the ground-
rent and discharging some other debts the
building had occasioned, which embarrassed
them greatly. Being now a member of both
sets of trustees, that for the buildmg and
that for the academy, I had a good oppor-
tunity of negotiating with both, and brought
them finally to an agreement, by which the
trustees for the building were to cede it to
those of the academy, the latter undertaking
to discharge the debt, to keep forever open
in the building a large hall for occasional
preachers according to the original intention
and maintain a free-school for the instruction
of poor children. Writings were accordingly
drawn and on paying the debts, the trustees
of the academy were put into possession of
the premises; and by dividing the great and
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
109
lofty hall into stories, and different rooms
above and below for the several schools and
purchasing some additional ground the whole
was soon made fit for our purpose, and the
scholars removed into the building. The care
and trouble of agreeing with the workmen,
purchasing materials and superintending
the work, fell upon me; and I went through
it the more cheerfully, as it did not then
interfere with my private business, having
the year before taken a very able, industri-
ous, and honest partner, Mr. David Hall,
with whose character I was well acquainted
as he had worked for me four years. He
took off my hands all care of the printing-
office, paying me punctually my share of
the profits. This partnership continued
eighteen years, successfully for us both.
The trustees of the academy, after a while,
were incorporated by a charter from the
governor; their funds were increased by
contributions in Britain and grants of land
from the proprietaries, to which the Assem-
bly has since made considerable addition;
and thus was established the present Uni-
versity of Philadelphia. I have been con-
tinued one of its trustees from the beginning,
now near forty years, and have had the
very great pleasure of seeing a number of
the youth who have received their education
in it, distinguished by their improved abili-
ties, serviceable in public stations, and
ornaments to their country.
When I disengaged myself, as above
mentioned, from private business, I flattered
myself that, by the sufficient though moder-
ate fortune I had acquired, I had secured
leisure during the rest of my life for philo-
sophical studies and amusements. I pur-
chased all Dr. Spence's apparatus, who had
come from England to lecture here, and I
proceeded in my electrical experiments with
great alacrity; but the public, now con-
sidering me as a man of leisure, laid hold
of me for their purposes; every part of our
civil government, and almost at the same
time, imposing some duty upon me. The
governor put me into the commission of the
peace, the corporation of the city chose me
of the common council, and soon after an
alderman, and the citizens at large chose me
a burgess to represent them in Assembly.
This latter station was the more agreeable
to me, as I was at length tired with sitting
there to hear debates, in which, as clerk,
I could take no part, and which were so often
unentertaining that I was induced to amuse
myself with making magic squares or circles,
or any thing to avoid weariness; and I con-
ceived my becoming a member would enlarge
my power of doing good. I would not, how-
ever, insinuate that my ambition was not
flattered by all these promotions; it cer-
tainly was; for, considering my low begin-
ning, they were great things to me and they
were still more pleasing as being so many
spontaneous testimonies of the public good
opinion, and by me entirely unsolicited.
The office of justice of the peace I tried a
little, by attending a few courts, and sitting
on the bench to hear causes, but finding that
more knowledge of the common law than I
possessed was necessary to act in that station
with credit, I gradually withdrew from it,
excusing myself by my being obliged to
attend the higher duties of a legislator in the
Assembly. My election to this trust was
repeated every year for ten years without
my ever asking any elector for his vote or
signifying, either directly or indirectly, any
desire of being chosen. 1 On taking my seat
in the House, my son was appointed their
clerk.
The year following, a treaty being to be
held with the Indians at Carlisle, the gover-
nor sent a message to the House, proposing
that they should nominate some of their
members, to be joined with some members
of council, as commissioners for that purpose.
The House named the speaker (Mr. Norris)
and myself; and, being commissioned, we
went to Carlisle, and met the Indians
accordingly.
As those people are extremely apt to get
drunk and, when so, are very quarrelsome
and disorderly, we strictly forbade the
selling any liquor to them; and when they
complained of this restriction, we told them
that if they would continue sober during
the treaty we would give them plenty of
1 Franklin wrote, in another portion of the Auto-
biography: "I had read or heard of some public man
who made it a rule never to ask for an office, and never
to refuse one when offered to him. 'I approve,' says
I, ' of his rule, and will practice it with a small addition;
I shall never ask, never refuse, nor ever resign an office.' "
(He was answering an acquaintance who had advised
him to resign the clerkship of the Assembly in order
to avoid the risk of being turned out.)
no
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
rum wlien business was over. They promised
this and they kept their promise because
they could get no hquor, and the treaty was
conducted very orderly and concluded to
mutual satisfaction. They then claimed
and received the rum; this was in the after-
noon; they were near one hundred men,
women, and children, and were lodged in
temporary cabins built in the form of a
square, just without the town. In the even-
ing, hearing a great noise among them, the
commissioners walked out to see what was
the matter. We found they had made a
great bonfire in the middle of the square;
they were all drunk, men and women, quar-
reling and fighting. Their dark-colored
bodies half naked, seen only by the gloomy
light of the bonfire, running after and beat-
ing one another with firebrands, accom-
panied by their horrid yellings, formed a
scene the most resembling our ideas of hell
that could well be imagined; there was no
appeasing the tumult, and we retired to our
lodging. At midnight a number of them
came thundering at our door, demandmg
more rum, of which we took no notice.
The next day, sensible they had mis-
behaved in giving us that disturbance, they
sent three of their old counselors to make
their apology. The orator acknowledged
the fault, but laid it upon the rum; and
then endeavored to excuse the rum by say-
ing: " The Great Spirit^ who made all things y
made every thing for some use, and whatever
use he designed any thing for, that use it should
always be put to. Now, when he made rum,
he said, ^ Let this be for the Indians to get
drunk with,' and it must be so." And, in-
deed, if it be the design of Providence to
extirpate these savages in order to make
room for cultivators of the earth, it seems
not improbable that rum may be the ap-
pointed means. It has already annihilated
all the tribes who formerly inhabited the
sea-coast.
In 1751, Dr. Thomas Bond, a particular
friend of mine, conceived the idea of estab-
lishing a hospital in Philadelphia (a very
beneficent design, which has been ascribed
to me, but was originally his), for the recep-
tion and cure of poor sick persons, whether
inhabitants of the province or strangers.
He was zealous and active in endeavoring to
procure subscriptions for it, but the proposal
being a novelty in America, and at first not
well understood, he met with small success.
At length he came to me with the compli-
ment that he found there was no such thing
as carrying a public-spirited project through
without my being concerned in it. "For,"
says he, " I am often asked by those to whom
I propose subscribing. Have you consulted
Franklin upon this business.'' And what
does he think of it? And when I tell them
that I have not (supposing it rather out of
your line), they do not subscribe, but say
they will consider of it." I inquired into
the nature and probable utility of his scheme,
and receiving from him a very satisfactory
explanation, I not only subscribed to it my-
self, but engaged heartily in the design of
procuring subscriptions from others. Previ-
ously, however, to the solicitation, I en-
deavored to prepare the minds of the people
by writing on the subject in newspapers,
which was my usual custom in such cases
but which he had omitted.
The subscriptions afterwards were more
free and generous, but begmning to flag, I
saw they would be insufficient without some
assistance from the Assembly and therefore
proposed to petition for it, which was done.
The country members did not at first relish
the project; they objected that it could only
be serviceable to the city and therefore the
citizens alone should be at the expense of it;
and they doubted whether the citizens them-
selves generally approved of it. My allega-
tion on the contrary, that it met with such
appiobation as to leave no doubt of our
being able to raise two thousand pounds by
voluntary donations, they considered as a
most extravagant supposition, and utterly
impossible.
On this I formed my plan and, asking
leave to bring in a bill for incorporating the
contributors according to the prayer of their
petition, and granting them a blank sum of
money, which leave was obtained chiefly on
the consideration that the House could
throw the bill out if they did not like it, I
drew it so as to make the important clause a
conditional one, viz.: "And be it enacted,
by the authority aforesaid, that when the
said contributors shall have met and chosen
their managers and treasurer, and shall have
raised by their contributions a capital stock of
value (the yearly interest of which
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
III
is to be applied to the accommodating of
the sick poor in the said hospital, free of
charge for diet, attendance, advice, and
medicines), and shall make the same appear to
the satisfaction of the speaker of the Assembly
for the time being, that then it shall and may-
be lawful for the said speaker, and he is
hereby required, to sign an order on the
provincial treasurer for the payment of two
thousand pounds, in two yearly payments,
to the treasurer of the said hospital, to be
applied to the founding, building, and
finishing of the same."
This condition carried the bill through; for
the members, who had opposed the grant
and now conceived they might have the
credit of being charitable without the
expense, agreed to its passage; and then,
in soliciting subscriptions among the people,
we urged the conditional promise of the law
as an additional motive to give, since every
man's donation would be doubled; thus the
clause worked both ways. The subscrip-
tions accordingly soon exceeded the requisite
sum, and we claimed and received the public
gift, which enabled us to carry the design
into execution. A convenient and hand-
some building was soon erected; the insti-
tution has by constant experience been
found useful, and flourishes to this day;
and I do not remember any of my political
maneuvers, the success of which gave me
at the time more pleasure, or wherein, after
thinking of it I more easily excused myself
for having made some use of cunning.
It was about this time that another pro-
jector, the Rev. Gilbert Tennent, came to
me with a request that I would assist him in
procuring a subscription for erecting a new
meeting-house. It was to be for the use of a
congregation he had gathered among the
Presbyterians, who were origmally disciples
of Mr. Whitefield. Unwilling to make my-
self disagreeable to my fellow-citizens by too
frequently soliciting their contributions, I
absolutely refused. He then desired I
would furnish him with a list of the names of
persons I knew by experience to be generous
and public-spirited. I thought it would be
unbecoming in me, after their kind com-
pliance with my solicitations, to mark them
out to be worried by other beggars, and
therefore refused also to give such a list.
He then desired I would at least give him
my advice. "That I will readily do," said
I; "and, in the first place, I advise you to
apply to all those whom you know will give
something; next to those whom you are
uncertain whether they will give any thing
or not, and show them the list of those who
have given; and, lastly, do not neglect those
who you are sure will give nothing, for in
some of them you may be mistaken." He
laughed and thanked me, and said he would
take my advice. He did so, for he asked of
everybody, and he obtained a much larger
sum than he expected, with which he
erected the capacious and very elegant
meeting-house that stands in Arch-street.
Our city, though laid out with a beautiful
regularity, the streets large, straight, and
crossing each other at right angles, had the
disgrace of suffering those streets to remain
long unpaved, and in wet weather the wheels
of heavy carriages ploughed them into a
quagmire so that it was difl&cult to cross
them; and in dry weather the dust was
offensive. I had lived near what was called
the Jersey Market and saw with pain the
inhabitants wading in mud while purchasing
their provisions. A strip of ground down
the middle of that market was at length
paved with brick, so that, being once in the
market, they had firm footing, but were
often over shoes in dirt to get there. By
talking and writing on the subject, I was at
length instrumental in getting the street
paved with stone between the market and
the bricked foot-pavement, that was on
each side next the houses. This, for some
time gave an easy access to the market dry-
shod, but, the rest of the street not being
paved, whenever a carriage came out of the
mud upon this pavement it shook off and
left its dirt upon it and it was soon covered
with mire, which was not removed, the city
as yet having no scavengers.
After some inquiry, I found a poor, in-
dustrious man who was willing to undertake
keeping the pavement clean by sweeping it
twice a week, carrying off the dirt from
before all the neighbors' doors, for the sum
of sixpence per month to be paid by each
house. I then wrote and printed a paper
setting forth the advantages to the neighbor-
hood that might be obtained by this small
expense; the greater ease in keeping our
houses clean, so much dirt not being brought
112
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
in by people's feet; the benefit to the shops
by more custom, etc., etc., as buyers could
more easily get at them; and by not having,
in windy weather, the dust blown in upon
their goods, etc., etc. I sent one of these
papers to each house and in a day or two
went round to see who would subscribe an
agreement to pay these sixpences. It was
unanimously signed, and for a time well
executed. All the inhabitants of the city
were delighted with the cleanhness of the
pavement that surrounded the market, it
being a convenience to all, and this raised a
general desire to have all the streets paved,
and made the people more willing to submit
to a tax for that purpose.
After some time I drew a bill for paving
the city, and brought it into the Assembly.
It was just before I went to England, in 1757,
and did not pass till I was gone, and then
with an alteration in the mode of assess-
ment, which I thought not for the better,
but with an additional provision for lighting
as well as paving the streets, which was a
great improvement. It was by a private
person, the late Mr. John Clifton, his giving
a sample of the utility of lamps, by placing
one at his door, that the people were first
impressed with the idea of enlighting all the
city. The honor of this public benefit has
also been ascribed to me, but it belongs
truly to that gentleman. I did but follow
his example, and have only some merit to
claim respecting the form of our lamps, as
differing from the globe lamps we were at
first supplied with from London. Those we
found inconvenient in these respects: they
admitted no air below; the smoke, there-
fore, did not readily go out above, but
circulated in the globe, lodged on its inside,
and soon obstructed the light they were
intended to afford; giving, besides, the daily
trouble of wiping them clean; and an acci-
dental stroke on one of them would demolish
it, and render it totally useless. I therefore
suggested the composing them of four flat
panes, with a long funnel above to draw up
the smoke, and crevices admitting air below,
to facilitate the ascent of the smoke; by
this means they were kept clean, and did not
grow dark in a few hours, as the London
lamps do, but continued bright till morning,
and an accidental stroke would generally
break but a single pane, easily repaired.
In 1746, being at Boston I met there with
a Dr. Spence who was lately arrived from
Scotland, and showed me some electric
experiments. They were imperfectly per-
formed as he was not very expert but, being
on a subject quite new to me, they equally
surprised and pleased me. Soon after my
return to Philadelphia, our library company
received from Mr. P. CoUinson, Fellow of
the Royal Society of London, a present of a
glass tube with some account of the use of
it in making such experiments. I eagerly
seized the opportunity of repeating what I
had seen at Boston; and, by much practice,
acquired great readiness in performing those,
also, which we had an account of from
England, adding a number of new ones. I
say much practice, for my house was con-
tinually full, for some time, with people who
came to see these new wonders.
To divide a little this incumbrance among
my friends, I caused a number of similar
tubes to be blown at our glass-house, with
which they furnished themselves, so that
we had at length several performers. Among
these, the principal was Mr. Kinnersley, an
ingenious neighbor, who, being out of busi-
ness, I encouraged to undertake showing the
experiments for money, and drew up for him
two lectures, in which the experiments were
ranged in such order, and accompanied with
such explanations in such method, as that
the foregoing should assist in comprehending
the following. He procured an elegant ap-
paratus for the purpose, in which all the little
machines that I had roughly made for my-
self were nicely formed by instrument-
makers. His lectures were well attended and
gave great satisfaction, and after some time
he went through the colonies exhibiting them
in every capital town and picked up some
money. In the West India Islands, indeed,
it was with difficulty the experiments could be
made, from the general moisture of the air.
Obliged as we were to Mr. Collinson for
his present of the tube, etc.y I thought it
right he should be informed of our success
in using it, and wrote him several letters
containing accounts of our experiments.
He got them read in the Royal Society
where they were not at first thought worth
so much notice as to be printed in their
Transactions. One paper, which I wrote for
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
"3
Mr. Kinnersley, on the sameness of lightning
with electricity, I sent to Dr. Mitchel, an
acquaintance of mine and one of the mem-
bers also of that society, who wrote me word
that it had been read, but was laughed at
by the connoisseurs. The papers, however,
being shown to Dr. Fothergill, he thought
they were of too much value to be stifled,
and advised the printing of them. Mr.
Collinson then gave them to Cave for publi-
cation in his Gentleman's Magazine; but he
chose to print them separately in a pamphlet
and Dr. Fothergill wrote the preface. Cave,
it seems, judged rightly for his profit, for by
the additions that arrived afterward, they
swelled to a quarto volume which has had
five editions, and cost him nothing for copy-
money.i
It was, however, some time before those
papers were much taken notice of in England.
A copy of them happening to fall into the
hands of the Count de BufFon, a philosopher
deservedly of great reputation in France,
and, indeed, all over Europe, he prevailed
with M. Dalibard to translate them into
French, and they were printed at Paris.
The publication off'ended the Abbe Nollet,
preceptor in Natural Philosophy to the
royal family, and an able experimenter, who
had formed and published a theory of
electricity, which then had the general
vogue. He could not at first believe that
such a work came from America, and said
it must have been fabricated by his enemies
at Paris, to decry his system. Afterwards,
having been assured that there really
existed such a person as Franklin at Phila-
delphia, which he had doubted, he wrote
and published a volume of Letters, chiefly
addressed to me, defending his theory, and
denying the verity of my experiments and
of the positions deduced from them.
I once purposed answering the abbe, and
actually began the answer, but, on considera-
tion that my writings contained a description
of experiments which any one might repeat
and verify, and if not to be verified, could
not be defended; or of observations oflfered
as conjectures and not delivered dogmati-
cally, therefore not laying me under any
obligation to defend them; and reflecting
that a dispute between two persons, writing
^I.e.y money paid to the writer.
in different languages, might be lengthened
greatly by mistranslations and thence mis-
conceptions of one another's meaning, much
of one of the abbe's letters being founded
on an error in the translation, I concluded
to let my papers shift for themselves, be-
lieving it was better to spend what time I
could spare from public business in making
new experiments, than in disputing about
those already made. I therefore never
answered M. Nollet, and the event gave me
no cause to repent my silence; for my
friend M. le Roy, of the Royal Academy of
Sciences, took up my cause and refuted
him; my book was translated into the
Italian, German, and Latin languages, and
the doctrine it contained was by degrees
universally adopted by the philosophers of
Europe in preference to that of the abbe;
so that he lived to see himself the last of his
sect, except Monsieur B , of Paris, his
eleve^ and immediate disciple.
What gave my book the more sudden and
general celebrity, was the success of one of
its proposed experiments, made by Messrs.
Dalibard and de Lor at Marly, for drawing
lightning from the clouds. This engaged
the public attention everywhere. M. de
Lor, who had an apparatus for experimental
philosophy, and lectured in that branch
of science, undertook to repeat what he
called the Philadelphia Experiments; and,
after they were performed before the king
and court, all the curious of Paris flocked to
see them. I will not swell this narrative
with an account of that capital experiment,
nor of the infinite pleasure I received in the
success of a similar one I made soon after
with a kite at Philadelphia, as both are to
be found in the histories of electricity.
Dr. Wright, an English physician, when at
Paris, wrote to a friend, who was of the
Royal Society, an account of the high esteem
my experiments were in among the learned
abroad, and of their wonder that my writ-
ings had been so little noticed in England.
The Society, on this, resumed the con-
sideration of the letters that had been read
to them, and the celebrated Dr. Watson
drew up a summary account of them and of
all I had afterwards sent to England on the
subject, which he accompanied with some
Pupil.
114
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
praise of the writer. This summary was
then printed in their Iransactions; and
some members of the Society in London,
particuhirly the very ingenious Mr, Canton,
having verified the experiment of procuring
hghtning from the clouds by a pointed rod,
and acquainting them with the success, they
soon made me more than amends for the
slight with which they had before treated
me. Without my having made any applica-
tion for that honor, they chose me a member,
and voted that I should be excused the
customary payments, which would have
amounted to twenty-five guineas; and ever
since have given me their Transactions
gratis. They also presented me with the
gold medal of Sir Godfrey Copley for the
year 1753, the delivery of which was ac-
companied by a very handsome speech of
the president. Lord Macclesfield, wherein
I was highly honored.
THE WAY TO WEALTH 1
Courteous Reader,
I have heard that nothing gives an Author
so great Pleasure as to find his Works respect-
fully quoted by other learned Authors.
This Pleasure I have seldom enjoyed; for
though I have been, if I may say it without
Vanity, an eminent Author of Almanacs
annually now a full Quarter of a Century,
my Brother Authors in the same Way, for
1 Franklin says in the Autobiography. "In 1732 I
first published my Almanac, under the name of Rich-
ard Saundjrs; it was continued by me about 25 years,
commonly called Poor Richard's Almanac. I endeav-
ored to make it both entertaining and useful; and it
accordingly came to be in such demand that I reaped
considerable profit from it, vending annually near ten
thousand. And observing that it was generally read,
scarce any neighborhood in the province being without
it, I considered it as a proper vehicle for conveying
instruction among the common people, who bought
scarcely any other books; I therefore filled all the little
spaces that occurred between the remarkable days in
the calendar with proverbial sentences, chiefly such
as inculcated industry and frugality as the means of
procuring wealth, and thereby securing virtue; it being
more difficult for a man in want to act always honestly,
as, to use here one of those proverbs, // is hard for an
empty sack to stand upright.
"These proverbs, which contained the wisdom of
many ages and nations, I assembled and formed into
a connected discourse prefixed to the Almanac of I757>
as the harangue of a wise old man to the people attend-
ing an auction."
what Reason I know not, have ever been
very sparing in their Applauses, and no
other Author has taken the least Notice of
me, so that did not my Writings produce
me some solid Pudding, the great Deficiency
of Praise would have quite discouraged me.
I concluded at length, that the People
were the best Judges of my merit; for they
buy my Works; and besides, in my Rambles,
where I am not personally known, I have
frequently heard one or other of my Adages
repeated, with, as Poor Richard says, at the
End on 't; this gave me some Satisfaction,
as it showed not only that my Instructions
were regarded, but discovered likewise some
Respect for my Authority; and I own, that
to encourage the Practice of remembering
and repeating those wise Sentences, I have
sometimes quoted myself with great Gravity, d
Judge, then how much I must have been
gratified by an Incident I am going to relate
to you. I stopped my Horse lately where a
great Number of People were collected at a
Vendue of Merchant Goods. The Hour of
Sale not being come, they were conversing
on the Badness of the Times and one of the
Company called to a plain clean old Man,
with white Locks, "Pray, Father Abraham,
what think you of the Times .^ Won't these
heavy Taxes quite ruin the Country.^ How
shall we be ever able to pay them.f' What
would you advise us to.?" Father Abraham
stood up, and replied, "If you'd have my
Advice, I'll give it you in short, for A Word
to the Wise is enough, and many Words wont
fill a Bushel, as Poor Richard says." They
joined in desiring him to speak his Mind,
and gathering round him he proceeded as
follows :
"Friends," says he, "and Neighbors, the
Taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those
laid on by the Government were the only
Ones we had to pay, we might more easily
discharge them; but we have many others,
and much more grievous to some of us.
We are taxed twice as much by our Idleness, 1
three times as much by our Pride, and four
times as much by our Folly; and from these
Taxes the Commissioners cannot ease or
deliver us by allowing an Abatement. How-
ever, let us barken to good Advice, and
something may be done for us; God helps \
them that help themselves, as Poor Richard
says, in his Almanac of 1733.
THE WAY TO WEALTH
115
It would be thought a hard Government
that should tax its People one-tenth l^art of
their Time, to he employed in its Service.
But Idleness taxes many of us much more, if
we reckon all that is spent in absolute Sloth,
or doing of nothing, with that which is spent
in idle Employments or Amusements, that
amount to nothing. Sloth, by bringing on
Diseases, absolutely shortens Life. Sloth,
like Rust, consumes faster than Labor wears;
while the used Key is always bright, as Poor
Richard says. But dost thou love Life, then
do not squander Time; for that^s the stuff Life
is made of, as Poor Richard says. How much
more than is necessary do we spend in sleep,
forgetting that The Sleeping Fox catches no
Poultry, and that There will be sleeping
enough in the Grave, as Poor Richard says.
// Time be of all Things the most precious,
wasting Time must be, as Poor Richard says,
the greatest Prodigality; since, as he else-
where tells us. Lost Time is never found again;
and what we call Time enough, always proves
little enough: Let us then up and be doing,
and doing to the Purpose; so by Diligence
shall we do more with less Perplexity. Sloth
makes all Things difficult, but Industry all
easy, as Poor Richard says; and He that
riseth late must trot all Day, and shall scarce
overtake his Business at Night; while Lazi-
ness travels so slowly, that Poverty soon over-
takes him, as we read in Poor Richard, who
adds. Drive thy Business, let not that drive
thee; and Early to Bed, and early to rise,
makes a Man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
So what signifies wishing and hoping for
better Times? We may make these Times
better, if we bestir ourselves. Industry need
not wish, as Poor Richard says, and he that
lives upon Hope will die fasting. There are
no Gains without Pains; then Help Hands,
for I have no Lands, or if I have, they are
smartly taxed. And, as Poor Richard like-
wise observes, He that hath a Trade hath an
Estate; and he that hath a Calling, hath an
Office of Profit and Honor; but then the
Trade must be worked at, and the Calling
well followed, or neither the Estate nor the
Office will enable us to pay our Taxes. If
we are industrious, we shall never starve;
for, as Poor Richard says. At the working
Mans House Hunger looks in, but dares not
enter. Nor will the Bailiff or the Constable
enter, for Industry pays Debts, while Despair
increaseth them, says Poor Richard. What
though you have found no Treasure, nor
has any rich Relation left you a Legacy,
Diligence is the Mother of Goodluck as Poor
Richard says and God gives all Things to
Industry. Then plough deep, while Sluggards
sleep, and you shall have Corn to sell and to
keep, says Poor Dick. Work while it is
called To-day, for you know not how much
you may be hindered To-morrow, which
makes Poor Richard say. One to-day is worth
two To-morrows, and farther. Have you some-
what to do To-morrow, do it To-day. If you
were a Servant, would you not be ashamed
that a good Master should catch you idle?
Are you then your own Master, be ashamed
to catch yourself idle, as Poor Dick says.
When there is so much to be done for your-
self, your Family, your Country, and your
gracious King, be up by Peep of Day; Let
not the Su7i look down and say. Inglorious
here he lies. Handle your tools without
Mittens; remember that The Cat in Gloves
catches no Mice, as Poor Richard says. 'Tis
true there is much to be done, and perhaps
you are weak-handed, but stick to it steadily;
and you will see great Effects, for Constant
Dropping wears away Stones, and by Dili-
gence and Patience the Mouse ate in two the
Cable; and Little Strokes fell great Oaks, as
Poor Richard says in his Almanac, the Year
I cannot just now remember.
Methinks I hear some of you say. Must a
Man afford himself no Leisure? I will tell
thee, my friend, what Poor Richard says,
Employ thy Time well, if thou meanest to
gain Leisure; and, since thou art not sure of
a Minute, throw not away an Hour. Leisure
is Time for doing something useful; this
Leisure the diligent Man will obtain, but
the lazy Man never; so that, as Poor
Richard says, A Life of Leisure and a Life of
Laziness are two Things. Do you imagine
that Sloth will afford you more Comfort
than Labor? No, for as Poor Richard says,
Trouble springs from Idleness, and grievous
Toil from needless Ease. Many without
Labor would live by their Wits only, but they
break for want of Stock. Whereas Industry
gives Comfort, and Plenty, and Respect:
Fly Pleasures, and they II follow you. The
diligent Spinner has a large Shift; and now I
have a Sheep and a Cow, everybody bids me good
Morrow; all which is well said hy Poor Richard.
ii6
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
But with our Industry, we must likewise
be steady, settled, and careful, and oversee
our own Affairs zvith our ozvn Eyes, and not
trust too much to others; for, as Poor
Richard says:
I never saw an oft-removed Tree,
Nor yet an oft-removed Family,
That throve so well as those that settled be.
And again. Three Removes is as bad as a Fire;
and again, Keep thy Shop, and thy Shop will
keep thee; and again, // you would have your
Business done, go; if not, send. And again,
He that by the Plough would thrive,
Himself must either hold or drive.
And again, The Eye of a Master will do more
Work than both his Hands; and again. Want
of Care does us more Da7nage than Want of
Knowledge; and again. Not to oversee Work-
men, is to leave them your Purse open. Trust-
ing too much to others' Care is the Ruin of
many; for, as the Almanac says. In the
Affairs of this World, Men are saved, not by
Faith, but by the Want of it; but a Man's own
Care is profitable; for, saith Poor Dick,
Learning is to the Studious, and Riches to the
Careful, as well as Power to the Bold, and
Heaven to the Virtuous. And farther, // you
would have a faithful Servant, and one that
you like, serve yourself. And again, he ad-
viseth to Circumspection and Care, even
in the smallest Matters, because sometimes
A little Neglect may breed great Mischief;
adding, for want of a Nail the Shoe was lost;
for want of a Shoe the Horse was lost; and for
want of a Horse the Rider was lost, being
overtaken and slain by the Enemy; all for
want of Care about a Horse-shoe Nail.
So much for Industry, my Friends, and
Attention to one's own Business; but to
these we must add Frugality, if we would
make our Industry more certainly successful.
A Man may, if he knows not how to save as
he gets, keep his Nose all his Life to the Grind-
stone, and die not worth a Groat at last. A
fat Kitchen makes a lean Will, as Poor
Richard says; and
Many Estates are spent in the Getting,
Since Women for Tea forsook Spinning and Knit-
tings . .
And Men for Punch forsook Hewing and Splitting.
// you would be wealthy, says he, in another
Almanac, think of Saving as well as of Getting:
The Indies have not made Spain rich, because
her Outgoes are greater than her Incomes.
Away then with your expensive Follies,
and you will not then have so much Cause
to complain of hard Times, heavy Taxes,
and chargeable Families; for, as Poor Dick
says,
Women and Wine, Game and Deceit,
Make the Wealth small and the Wants great.
And farther. What maintains one Vice, would
bring up two Children. You may think per-
haps, that a little Tea, or a little Punch now
and then, Diet a little more costly. Clothes a
little finer, and a little Entertainment now
and then, can be no great Matter; but
remember what Poor Richard says: Many a
Little makes a Mickle; and farther, Beware
of little Expenses; A small Leak will sink a
great Ship; and again, Who Dainties love,
shall Beggars prove; and moreover, Fools
make Feasts, and wise Men eat them.
Here you are all got together at this Ven-
due of Fineries and Knicknacks. You call
them Goods; but if you do not take Care,
they will prove Evils to some of you. You
expect they will be sold cheap, and perhaps
they may for less than they cost; but if you
have no Occasion for them, they must be
dear to you. Remember what Poor Richard
says: Buy what thou hast no Need of, and ere
long thou shalt sell thy Necessaries. And again.
At a great Pennyworth pause a while. He
means, that perhaps the Cheapness is appar-
ent only, and not Real; or the bargain, by
straitening thee in thy Business, may do thee
more Harm than Good. For in another
Place he says. Many have been ruined by buy-
ing good Pennyworths. Again, Poor Richard
says, 'Tis foolish to lay out Money in a Pur-
chase of Repentance; and yet this Folly is
practiced every Day at Vendues, for want of
minding the Almanac. Wise Men, as Poor
Dick says, learn by others' Harms, Fools
scarcely by their own; hut felix quern faciunt
aliena pericula cautum.^ Many a one, for
the Sake of Finery on the Back, have gone
with a hungry Belly, and half-starved their
Families. Silks and satins, Scarlet and Vel-
1 Happy the man whom the perils of others make
cautious.
THE WAY TO WEALTH
117
vets, as Poor Richard says, put out the Kitchen
Fire.
These are not the Necessaries of Life; they
can scarcely be called the Conveniences; and
yet only because they look pretty, how many
want to have them! The artificial Wants of
Mankind thus become more numerous than
the Natural; and, as Poor Dick says, for one
poor Person, there are an hundred indigent.
By these, and other extravagancies, the Gen-
teel are reduced to poverty, and forced to
borrow of those whom they formerly des-
pised, but who through Industry and Fru-
gality have maintained their Standing; in
which Case it appears plainly, that A Plough-
man on his Legs is higher than a Gentleman on
his Knees, as Poor Richard says. Perhaps
they have had a small Estate left them,
which they knew not the Getting of; they
think, 'tis Day, and will never be Night; that
a little to be spent out of so much, js not
worth minding; a Child and a Fool, as Poor
Richard says, imagine Twenty shillings and
Twenty Years can never be spent but, always
taking out of the Meal-tub, and never putting in,
soon comes to the Bottom; as Poor Dick says,
When the fVelVs dry, they know the Worth of
Water. But this they might have known be-
fore if they had taken his Advice; // you
would know the Value of Money, go and try to
borrow some; for, he that goes a borrowing goes
a sorrowing; and indeed so does he that lends
to such People, when he goes to get it in again.
Poor Dick farther advises, and says,
Fond Pride of Dress is sure a very Curse;
E'er Fancy you consult, consult your Purse.
And again, Pride is as loud a Beggar as Want,
and a great deal more saucy. When you have
bought one fine Thing, you must buy ten
more, that your Appearance may be all of a
Piece; but Poor Dick says,' 7*1/ easier to sup-
press the first Desire, than to satisfy all that fol-
low it. And 'tis as truly Folly for the Poor
to ape the Rich, as for the Frog to swell, in
order to equal the Ox.
Great Estates may venture more,
But little Boats should keep near Shore.
'Tis, however, a Folly soon punished; for
Pride that dines on Vanity, sups on Contempt,
as Poor Richard says. And in another place.
Pride breakfasted with Plenty, dined with Pov-
erty, and supped zvith Infamy. And after all,
of what Use is this Pride of Appearance, for
which so much is risked, so much is suffered?
It cannot promote Health, or ease Pain; it
makes no Increase of Merit in the Person,
it creates Envy, it hastens Misfortune.
What is a Butterfly? At best
He's but a Caterpillar dressed.
The gaudy Fop's his Picture just,
as Poor Richard say.^.
But what Madness must it be to run in
Debt for these Superfluities! We are offered
by the Terms of this Vendue, Six Months'
Credit; and that perhaps has induced some of
us to attend it, because we cannot spare the
ready Money, and hope now to be fine with-
out it. But, ah, think what you do when you
run in Debt; you give to another Power over
your Liberty. If you cannot pay at the Time
you will be ashamed to see your Creditor;
you will be in Fear when you speak to him;
you will make poor pitiful sneaking Excuses,
and by Degrees come to lose your Veracity,
and sink into base downright lying; for, as
Poor Richard says. The second Vice is Lying,
the first is running in Debt. And again, to
the same Purpose, Lying rides upon Debt's
Back. Whereas a free-born Englishman
ought not to be ashamed or afraid to see or
speak to any Man living. But Poverty
often deprives a Man of all Spirit and Virtue:
'Tis hard for an empty Bag to stand upright,
as Poor Richard truly says.
What would you think of that Prince, or
that Government, who should issue an Edict
forbidding you to dress like a Gentleman or
a Gentlewoman, on Pain of Imprisonment
or Servitude? Would you not say, that you
were free, have a Right to dress as you please,
and that such an Edict would be a Breach of
your Privileges, and such a Government
tyrannical? And yet you are about to put
yourself under that tyranny, when you run
in Debt for such Dress! Your Creditor has
authority, at his Pleasure to deprive you of
your Liberty, by confining you in Jail for
Life, or to sell you for a Servant, if you should
should not be able to pay him! When you
have got your Bargain, you may, perhaps,
think little of Payment; but Creditors, Poor
Richard tells us, have better Memories than
Debtors; and in another Place says. Creditors
are a superstitious Sect, great Observers of set
IlS
MKNJAMIN FRANKLIN
Days and Timrs. I In- I);i\- coincs rdiind lu*-
forc vt)U arc aware, aiul tlic IXiiiand is made
before you are prepared to satisfy it. Or if
you bear your Debt in Mind, the I erm vvhuh
at Hrst seemed so long, will, as it lessens, ap-
pear extremely short. Time will seem to
have added \\ ings to his Heels as well as
Shoulders. Those have a short Le?ity saith
Poor Richardy -who ozve Money to be paid at
Easter. Then since, as he says, The Borrozver
IS a Slave to the Lender, and the Debtor to the
Creditor, disdain the Chain, preserve your
Freedom; and maintain your Independency:
Be Industrious and free; hefrugal and free. At
present, perhaps, you may think yourself in
thrivingCircumstances, and that you can bear
a little Extravagance without Injury; but,
For Age and Want, save while you may;
No Morning Sun lasts a whole Day,
as Poor Richard says. Ciain may be tem-
porary and uncertain, but ever while you
live, Expense is constant and certain; and
tis easier to build tzvo Chimneys, than to keep
one in Fuel, as Poor Richard says. So, Rather
go to bed supperless than rise in Debt.
Get what you can, and what you get hold;
'Tis the Stone that will turn all your lead into
Gold,
as Poor Richard says. And when you have
got the Philosopher's Stone, sure you will no
longer complain of bad Times, or the Dif-
ficulty of paying Taxes.
I his Doctrine, my Friends, is Reason and
Wisdom; but after all, do not depend too
much upon your own Industry, and Frugality,
and Prudence, though excellent Things, for
they may all be blasted without the Blessing
of Heaven; and therefore, ask that Blessing
humbly, and be not uncharitable to those
that at present seem to want it, but comfort
and help them. Remember, Job suffered,
and was afterwards prosperous.
And now to conclude, Experience keeps a
dear School, but Fools will learn in no other,
and scarce in that; for it is true, we may give
Advice, but we cannot give Conduct, as Poor
Richard says. However, remember this,
They that wont be counseled, cant be helped,
as Poor Richard says: and farther, that if
you will 7iot hear Reason, she'll surely rap your
Knuckles.'*
Thus the old Gentleman ended his Ha-
rangue. The People heard it, and approved
the Doctrine, and immediately practiced
the contrary, just as if it had been a common
Sermon; for the Vendue opened, and they be-
gan to buy extravagantly, notwithstanding
his Cautions and their own Fear of Taxes. I
found the good Man had thoroughly studied
my Almanacs, and digested all I had dropped
on these topics during the course of five and
twenty years. The frequent Mention he
made of me must have tired any one else,
but my Vanity was wonderfully delighted
with it, though I was conscious that not a
tenth Part of the Wisdom was my own, which
he ascribed to me, but rather the Gleanings I
had made of the Sense of all Ages and Na-
tions. However, I resolved to be the better
for the Echo of it; and though I had at first
determined to buy Stuff for a new Coat, I
went away resolved to wear my old One a
little longer. Reader, if thou wilt do the same
thy Profit will be as great as mine. I am, as
ever, thine to serve thee,
Richard Saunders.
JOHN DICKINSON (1732-1808)
Dickinson was born in Talbot County, Maryland, on 13 November, 1732. When he was eight
years old his father removed to Delaware. At eighteen he began study of the law in Phila-
delphia. Several years later (1753) he was entered at the Middle Temple, London, where he com-
pleted his legal training. He began the practice of the law at Philadelphia in 1757. He was elected
a member of the Delaware Assembly in 1760, and of the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1762, remaining
a member until 1765. He was again a member of the latter Assembly in the years 1770-1776, and a
member of the Continental Congress from 1774 ^o 1776. He also attained the rank of brigadier-general
in the Delaware militia. In 1776 he opposed the Declaration of Independence and refused to sign
that document, as a consequence of which his political influence declined in later years. Nevertheless,
he served as Governor of Delaware in 1781 and 1782, and as President (i.e., Governor) of Pennsyl-
vania from 1782 to 1785. He died in Wilmington, Delaware, on 14 February, 1808.
Dickinson was the author of a number of able state-papers and political essays (his Writings were
edited by P. L. Ford, Philadelphia, 1895). Only one of his works is still generally known, but this —
his series of twelve Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania — deserves its modest place in American lit-
erature. The letters were written in 1767 and 1768 and were published from time to time in a news-
paper of Philadelphia. They at once made a deep impression and were widely republished in other
colonial newspapers. Dickinson was concerned primarily with the question of taxation, but he wrote
as a sober and enlightened statesman, and gave his letters a value beyond their immediate occasion.
This they have by virtue not merely of their admirable style, but also of their temperate common sense
and their writer's large grasp of the general principles and problems of sovereignty. And though the
"Farmer" did not himself aim at the independence of the colonies, his letters were a powerful popular
influence making in that direction, inspired as they were by a jealous love of constitutional liberty.
M. C. Tyler has acclaimed them as "the most brilliant event in the literary history of the Revolution,"
and has gone on to explain: "Here was no reckless declaimer, no frantic political adventurer, precipi-
tating public confusion because he had nothing to lose by public confusion, and eager to run American
society upon the breakers in the hope of gathering spoils from the common wreck. On the contrary,
here was a man of powerful and cultivated intellect, with all his interest and all his tastes on the side
of order, conservatism, and peace, if only with these could be had political safety and honor." {Lit-
erary History of the American Revolution, lydS-iyS^.)
LETTERS FROM A FARMER IN
PENNSYLVANIA, TO THE IN-
HABITANTS OF THE BRITISH
COLONIES!
LETTER I
My dear Countrymen:
I am a Farmer, settled, after a variety of
fortunes, near the banks of the river Del-
aware, in the province of Pennsylvania. I
received a liberal education, and have been
engaged in the busy scenes of life; but am
now convinced that a man may be as happy
without bustle as with it. My farm is small;
1 The Letters are reprinted from a copy of the first
collective edition, published in Philadelphia, 1768.
The footnotes are Dickinson's, save for the matter in
square brackets.
my servants few, and good; I have a little
money at interest; I wish for no more; my
employment in my own affairs is easy; and
with a contented, grateful mind, undisturbed
by worldly hopes or fears, relating to my-
self, I am completing the number of days al-
lotted to me by divine goodness.
Being generally master of my time, I
spend a good deal of it in a library, which I
think the most valuable part of my small es-
tate; and being acquainted with two or three
gentlemen of abilities and learning, who hon-
or me with their friendship, I have acquired,
I believe, a greater knowledge in history, and
the laws and constitution of my country,
than is generally attained by men of my
class, many of them not being so fortunate as
I have been in the opportunities of getting
information.
119
I20
JOHN DICKINSON
From niv iiif-iiuy I was taught to love
humanity and liht-rly. liKiiiiry and experi-
ence have since confirmed my reverence for
the lessons then ^iven me, by convincing
me more fully of their truth and excellence.
Benevolence toward mankind excites wishes
for their welfare, and such wishes endear the
means of fulfilling them. These can be found
in liberty only, and therefore her sacred
cause ought to be espoused by every man, on
every occasion, to the utmost of his power.
As a charitable but poor person does not
withhold his mile, because he cannot relieve
all the distresses of the miserable, so should
not any honest man suppress his sentiments
concerning freedom, however small their
influence is likely to be. Perhaps he "may
touch some wheel "* that will have an effect
greater than he could reasonably expect.
These being my sentiments, I am encour-
aged to offer to you, my countrymen, my
thoughts on some late transactions that ap-
pear to me to be of the utmost importance to
you. Conscious of my own defects, I have
waited some time, in expectation of seeing
the subject treated by persons much better
qualified for the task; but being therein dis-
appointed, and apprehensive that longer de-
lays will be injurious, I venture at length to
request the attention of the public, praying
that these lines may be read with the same
zeal for the happiness of British America
with which they were wrote.
With a good deal of surprise I have ob-
served that little notice has been taken of an
act of parliament, as injurious in its principle
to the liberties of these colonies as the
Stamp Act was: I mean the act for suspending
the legislation of Nezv York.
I he assembly of that government com-
plied with a former act of parliament, re-
quiring certain provisions to be made for the
troops in America, in every particular, I
think, except the articles of salt, pepper, and
vinegar. In my opinion they acted impru-
dently, considering all circumstances, in not
complying so far as would have given sat-
isfaction, as several colonies did: But my
dislike of their conduct in that instance has
not blinded me so much that I cannot plainly
perceive that they have been punished in a
manner pernicious to American freedom,
and justly alarming to all the colonies.
J Pope. [Essay on Man, I, 59.)
If the British parliament has a legal au-
thority to issue an order that we shall fur-
nish a single article for the troops here, and
to compel obedience to that order, they have
the same right to issue an order for us to
supply those troops with arms, clothes,
and every necessary; and to compel obedi-
ence to that order also; in short, to lay any
burthens they please upon us. What is this
but taxing us at a certain sum, and leaving to
us only the manner of raising it.^* How is
this mode more tolerable than the Stamp
Act? Would that act have appeared more
pleasing to Americans if, being ordered there-
by to raise the sum total of the taxes, the
mighty privilege had been left to them of
saying how much should be paid for an in-
strument of writing on paper, and how much
for another on parchment.''
An act of parliament, commanding us to
do a certain thing, if it has any validity, is a
tax upon us for the expense that accrues in
complying with it; and for this reason, I be-
lieve, every colony on the continent that
chose to give a mark of their respect for Great
Britain, in complying with the act relating
to the troops, cautiously avoided the men-
tion of that act, lest their conduct should be
attributed to its supposed obligation.
The matter being thus stated, the as-
sembly of New York either had, or had not,
a right to refuse submission to that act. If
they had, and I imagine no American will
say they had not, then the parliament had
no right to compel them to execute it. If
they had not this right, they had no right to
punish them for not executing it; and there-
fore no right to suspend their legislation,
which is a punishment. In fact, if the people
of New York cannot be legally taxed but by
their own representatives, they cannot be
legally deprived of the privilege of legislation,
only for insisting on that exclusive privilege
of taxation. If they may be legally deprived
in such a case of the privilege of legislation,
why may they not, with equal reason, be de-
prived of every other privilege ? Or why may
not every colony be treated in the same man-
ner, when any of them shall dare to deny
their assent to any impositions that shall be
directed .'' Or what signifies the repeal of the
Stamp Act, if these colonies are to lose their
other privileges, by not tamely surrendering
that of taxation?
LETTERS FROM A FARMER IN PENNSYLVANIA
121
There is one consideration arising from this
suspension which is not generally attended to,
but shows its importance very clearly. It
was not necessary that this suspension should
be caused by an act of parliament. The
crown might have restrained the governor of
New York even from calling the assembly to-
gether, by its prerogative in the royal gov-
ernments. This step, I suppose, would have
been taken if the conduct of the assembly of
Nezu York had been regarded as an act of
disobedience to the crown alone; but it is re-
garded as an act of ''disobedience to the au-
thority of the British legislature, "i
This gives the suspension a consequence
vastly more affecting. It is a parliamentary
assertion of t\\t. supreme authority of the Brit-
ish legislature over these colonies, in the
point of taxation, and is intended to compel
New York into a submission to that author-
ity. It seems therefore to me as much a vio-
lation of the liberties of the people of that
province, and consequently of all these col-
onies, as if the parliament had sent a number
of regiments to be quartered upon them till
they should comply. For it is evident that
the suspension is meant as a compulsion;
and the method of compelling is totally
indifferent. It is indeed probable that the
sight of red coats, and the hearing of drums,
would have been most alarming; because
people are generally more influenced by
their eyes and ears than by their reason.
But whoever seriously considers the matter
must perceive that a dreadful stroke is
aimed at the liberty of these colonies. I
say, of these colonies; for the cause of one
is the cause of all. If the parliament may
lawfully deprive New York of any of her
rights, it may deprive any, or all the other
colonies of their rights; and nothing can pos-
sibly so much encourage such attempts as a
mutual inattention to the interests of each
other. To divide, and thus to destroy, is the
first political maxim in attacking those who
are powerful by their union. He certainly
is not a wise man who folds his arms, and re-
poses himself at home, viewing with uncon-
cern the flames that have invaded his neigh-
bor's house, without using any endeavors to
extinguish them. When Mr. Hampden s
ship-money cause, for Three Shillings and
Four-pence, was tried, all the people of Eng-
land, with anxious expectation, interested
themselves in the important decision; and
when the slightest point, touching the free-
dom of one colony, is agitated, I earnestly
wish that all the rest may, with equal ardor,
support their sister. Very much may be
said on this subject; but, I hope, more at
present is unnecessary.
With concern I have observed that two as-
semblies of this province have sat and ad-
journed, without taking any notice of this
act. It may perhaps be asked, what would
have been proper for them to do ? I am by no
means fond of inflammatory measures; I de-
test them. I should be sorry that any thing
should be done which might justly displease
our sovereign, or our mother country: But
a firm, modest exertion of a free spirit should
never be wanting on public occasions. It
appears to me that it would have been suf-
ficient for the assembly to have ordered our
agents to represent to the King's ministers
their sense of the suspending act, and to pray
for its repeal. Thus we should have borne
our testimony against it; and might therefore
reasonably expect that, on a like occasion,
we might receive the same assistance from
the other colonies.
Concordia res parvce crescunt.
Small things grow great by concord.
November 5.2
A Farmer.
LETTER XI
1 See the act of suspension.
My dear Countrymen:
I have several times, in the course of these
letters, mentioned the late act of parliament,
as being the foundation of future measures in-
jurious to these colonies; and the belief of
this truth I wish to prevail, because I think
it necessary to our safety.
A perpetual jealousy, respecting liberty, is
absolutely requisite in all free states. The
very texture of their constitution, in mixed
governments, demands it. For the cautions
with which power is distributed among the
several orders imply that each has that share
which is proper for the general welfare, and
therefore that any further acquisition must
be pernicious. Machiavel employs a whole
1 The day of King William the Third's landing.
122
JOHN DICKINSON
chapter in liis discourses' to prove that a
state, to be long Hved, must be frequently
corrected, and reduced to its first principles.
Hut, of all states that have existed, there
never was any in which this jealousy could
be more proper than in these colonies, for
the government here is not only mixed, but
dependent, which circumstance occasions a
peculiarity in its form of a very delicate
nature.
Two reasons induce me to desire that this
spirit of apprehension may be always kept
up amonn; us, in its utmost vigilance. The
first is this — that as the happiness of these
provinces indubitably consists in their con-
nection with Great Britain, any separation be-
tween them is less likely to be occasioned by
civil discords if every disgusting measure is
opposed sins^ly, and while it is new: For in
this manner of proceeding every such meas-
ure is most likely to be rectified. On the
other hand, oppressions and dissatisfactions
being permitted to accumulate — if ever the
governed throw off the load, they will do
more. A people does not reform with mod-
eration. The rights of the subject, therefore,
cannot be too often considered, explained, or
asserted: and whoever attempts to do this
shows himself, whatever may be the rash and
peevish reflections of pretended wisdom, and
pretended duty, a friend to those who in-
judiciously exercise their power, as well as to
them over whom it is so exercised.
Had all the points of prerogative claimed
by Charles the First been separately con-
tested and settled in preceding reigns, his
fate would in all probability have been very
different; and the people would have been
content with that liberty which is compat-
ible with regal authority. But he thought it
would be as dangerous for him to give up the
powers which at any time had been by usur-
pation exercised by the crown, as those that
were legally vested in it. 2 This produced an
1 Machiavel's Discourses, Bk. 3, Chap. i.
2 The author is sensible that this is putting the
gentlest construction on Charles's conduct, and that is
one reason why he chooses it. Allowances ought to
be made for the errors of those men who are acknowl-
edged to have been possessed of many virtues. The
education of this unhappy prince, and his confidence
in men not so good or wise as himself, had probably
filled him with mistaken notions of his own authority,
and of the consequences that would attend concessions
of any kind to a people who were represented to him
as aiming at too much power.
equal excess on the part of the people. For
when their passions were excited by multi-
plied grievances, they thought it would be as
dangerous for them to allow the powers that
w^ere legally vested in the crown as those
which at any time had been by usurpation
exercised by it. Acts that might by them-
selves have been upon many considerations
excused or extenuated, derived a contagious
malignancy and odium from other acts with
which they were connected. They were not
regarded according to the simple force of
each, but as parts of a system of oppression.
Every one, therefore, however small in it-
self, became alarming, as an additional evi-
dence of tyrannical designs. It was in vain
for prudent and moderate men to insist that
there was no necessity to abolish royalty.
Nothing less than the utter destruction of
monarchy could satisfy those who had suf-
fered, and thought they had reason to be-
lieve they always should suffer under it.
The consequences of these mutual distrusts
are well known: But there is no other people
mentioned in history, that I recollect, who
have been so constantly watchful of their lib-
erty, and so successful in their struggles for it,
as the English. This consideration leads me
to the second reason why I "desire that the
spirit of apprehension may be always kept
up among us in its utmost vigilance."
The first principles of government are to
be looked for in human nature. Some of the
best writers have asserted, and it seems with
wMth good reason, that "government is found-
ed on opinion.'^ ^
Custom undoubtedly has a mighty force in
producing opinion, and reigns in nothing
more arbitrarily than in public aflPairs. It
gradually reconciles us to objects even of
3 "Opinion is of two kinds, viz., opinion of interest,
and opinion of right. By opinion of interest I chiefly
understand the sense of the public advantage ivhich is
reaped from government, together with the persuasion
that the particular government which is established is
equally advantageous with any other that could be easily
settled."
"Right is of two kinds, right to power, and right to
property. What prevalence opinion of the first kind
has over mankind may easily be understood, by ob-
serving the attachment which all nations have to their
ancient government, and even to those names which
have had the sanction of antiquity. Antiquity always
begets the opinion of right." — "It is sufficiently under-
stood that the opinion of right to property is of the
greatest moment in all matters of government."
— Hume's Essays.
LETTERS FROM A FARMER IN PENNSYLVANIA
123
dread and detestation; and I cannot but
think these lines of Mr. Pope as appHcable
to vice in politics as to vice in ethics:
Vice is a monster of so horrid mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, famiUar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace}
When an act injurious to freedom has been
once done, and the people bear it, the repe-
tition of it is most likely to meet with sub-
mission. For as the mischief of the one was
found to be tolerable, they will hope that of
the second will prove so too; and they will
not regard the infamy of the last, because
they are stained with that of the first.
Indeed nations, in general, are not apt to
think until they feel; and therefore nations in
general have lost their liberty: For as vio-
lations of the rights of the governed are com-
monly not only specious'^ but small at the be-
ginning, they spread over the multitude in
such a manner as to touch individuals but
slightly. Thus they are disregarded. ^ The
power or profit that arises from these vio-
lations, centering in few persons^ is to them
considerable. For this reason the governors
having in view their particular purposes,
successively preserve an uniformity of con-
duct for attaining them. They regularly in-
crease the first injuries, till at length the
inattentive people are compelled to perceive
the heaviness of their burthens. They begin
to complain and inquire — but too late. They
find their oppressors so strengthened by
success, and themselves so entangled in ex-
amples of express authority on the part of
1 [Essay on Man, II, 217-220.]
2 Omnia mala exempla ex bonis initiis orta sunt.
[All bad precedents have arisen from good beginnings.]
Sallust, Bell. Cat. S. 50.
3 "The republic is always attacked with greater vigor
than it is defended: For the audacious and profligate,
prompted by their natural enmity to it, are easily
impelled to act by the least nod of their leaders: Whereas
the HONEST, I know not why, are generally slow and
unwilling to stir; and neglecting always the beginnings
of things, are never roused to exert themselves, but by
the last necessity: So that through irresolution and
DELAY, when they would be glad to compound at last
for their quiet, at the expense even of their honor, they
commonly lose them both."
— Cicero's Orat.for Sextius.
Such were the sentiments of this great and excellent
man, whose vast abilities, and the calamities of his
country during his time, enabled him, by mournful
experience, to form a just judgment on the conduct
of the friends and enemies of liberty.
their rulers, and of tacit recognition on their
own part, that they are quite confounded:
For millions entertain no other idea of the
legality of power than that it is founded on
the exercise of power. They voluntarily
fasten their chains, by adopting a pusillani-
mous opinion, "that there will be too much
danger in attempting a remedy," — or another
opinion no less fatal, — "that the govern-
ment has a right to treat them as it does."
They then seek a wretched relief for their
minds, by persuading themselves that to
yield their obedience is to discharge their duty.
The deplorable poverty of spirit that pros-
trates all the dignity bestowed by divine
providence on our nature — of course succeeds.
From these reflections I conclude that
every free state should incessantly watch,
and instantly take alarm on any addition
being made to the power exercised over them.
Innumerable instances might be produced to
show from what slight beginnings the most
extensive consequences have flowed: But I
shall select two only from the history oi Eng-
land.
Henry the Seventh was the first monarch
of that kingdom who established a standing
BODY OF ARMED MEN. This was a band of fifty
archers, called yeomen of the guard: And
this institution, notwithstanding the small-
ness of the number, was, to prevent dis-
content, "disguised under pretense of maj-
esty and grandeur.""* In 1684 the standing
forces were so much augmented that Rapin
says: "The king, in order to make his people
fully sensible of their new slavery, aflPected to
muster his troops, which amounted to 4,000
well armed and disciplined men." I think
our army, at this time, consists of more than
seventy regiments.
The method of taxing by excise was first
introduced amidst the convulsions of the
civil wars. Extreme necessity was pretended
for it, and its short continuance promised.
After the restoration, an excise upon beefy ale,
and other liquors was granted to the king,^ one
half in fee, the other for life, as an equivalent
for the court of wards. Upon James the Sec-
ond's accession, the parliament^ gave him
the first excise, with an additional duty on
* Rapin's History of England.
* 12 Char. II., Chaps. 23 and 24. [Statutes of the
Realm.]
« I James 11. y Chaps, i and 4. [Statutes of the Realm.]
124
JOHN DICKINSON
uinr, tobacco, and some other things. Since
the revolution it has been extended to salt,
candles, leather, hides, hops, soap, paper,
paste-boards, mill-boards, scale-boards, vel-
lum, parchment, starch, silks, calicoes, linens,
stuffs, printed, stained, etc., wire, wrought
plate, coffee, tea, chocolate, etc.
Thus a standing army and excise have,
from their first slender origins, though al-
ways hated^ always feared, always opposed, at
length swelled up to their vast present bulk,
rhese facts are sufficient to support what
I have said. 'lis true that all the mischiefs
apprehended by our ancestors from a stand-
ing army and excise have not yet happened:
But it does not follow from thence that they
zvill not happen. Ihe inside of a house may
catch fire, and the most valuable apartments
be ruined, before the flames burst out. The
question in these cases is not what evil has
actually attended particular measures — but
what evil, in the nature of thmgs, is likely to
attend them. Certain circumstances may for
some time delay effects, that zuere reasonably
expected, and that must ensue. There was a
long period after the Romans had prorogued
his command to Q. Publilius Philo,^ before
that example destroyed their liberty. All
our kmgs, from the revolution to the pres-
ent reign, have been foreigners. Their min-
isters generally continued but a short time
in authority;^ and they themselves were
mild and virtuous princes.
A bold, ambitious prince, possessed of great
abilities, firmly fixed in his throne by descent,
' In the year of the city 428, "Duo singularia htec
ei viro primum contigere; prorogatio imperii non ante
in ullo /acta, et acta honore triumphus." [These two
remarkable; things for the first time fell to the lot of
that man: t-he extension of his office, hitherto never
made in the case of any man, and, on the completion
of his term of office, a triumph.] — Livy, Bk. 8, Chaps.
23,26.
"Had the rest of the Roman citizens imitated the
example of L. ^uintius, who refused to have his con-
sulship continued to him, they had never admitted
that custom of proroguing of magistrates, and then
the prolongation of their commands in the army had
never been introduced, which very thing was at length
the ruin of that commonwealth." — Machiavel's Dis-
courses, Bk. 3, Chap. 24.
2 1 don't know but it may be said, with a good deal
of reason, that a quick rotation of ministers is very
desirable in Great Britain. A minister there has a vast
store of materials to work with. Long administrations
are rather favorable to the reputation of a people
abroad than to their liberty.
served by ministers like himself, and rendered
either venerable or terrible by the glory of his
successes, may execute what his predecessors
did not dare to attempt. Henry the Fourth
tottered, in his seat during his whole reign.
Henry the Fifth drew the strength of that
kingdom into France, to carry on his wars
there, and left the commons at home, protest-
ing "that the people were not bound to serve
out of the realm."
It is true that a strong spirit of liberty sub-
sists at present in Great Britain, but what re-
liance is to be placed in the temper of a people
when the prince is possessed of an unconsti-
tutional power, our own history can suf-
ficiently inform us. When Charles the Sec-
ond had strengthened himself by the return
of the garrison of Tangier, ^' England,^' says
Rapin "saw on a sudden an amazing rev-
olution; saw herself stripped of all her rights
and privileges, excepting such as the king
should vouchsafe to grant her: And what is
more astonishing^ the English themselves
delivered up these very rights and privileges
to Charles the Second, which they had so
passionately and, if I may say it, furiously
defended against the designs of Charles the
First." This happened only thirty-six years
after this last prince had been beheaded.
Some persons are of opinion that liberty is
not violated, but by such open acts of force;
but they seem to be greatly mistaken. I
could mention a period within these forty
years, when almost as great a change of
disposition was produced by the secret
measures of a long administration, as by
Charleses violence. Liberty, perhaps, is
never exposed to so much danger as when
the people believe there is the least; for it
may be subverted, and yet they not think
so.
Public disgusting acts are seldom practiced
by the ambitious, at the beginning of their
designs. Such conduct silences and dis-
courages the weak, and the wicked, who
would otherwise have been their advocates or
accomplices. It is of great consequence to
allow those who, upon any account, are
inclined to favor them, something specious
to say in their defense. Their power may
be fully established, though it would not be
safe for them to do whatever they please.
For there are things, which, at some times,
even slaves will not bear. Julius Ccesar, and
LETTERS FROM A FARMER IN PENNSYLVANIA
125
Oliver Cromwell, did not dare to assume the
title of king. The Grand Seignior dares not
lay a nezv tax. The king of France dares
not be a protestant. Certain popular points
may be left untouched, and yet freedom be
extinguished. The commonalty of Venice
imagine themselves free, because they are
permitted to do what they ought not. But
I quit a subject that would lead me too far
from my purpose.
By the late act of parliament taxes are to
be levied upon us, for "defraying the charge
of the administration of justice — the support
of civil government — and the expenses of de-
fending his Majesty's dominions in America'^
If any man doubts what ought to be the
conduct of these colonies on this occasion,
I would ask him these questions:
Has not the parliament expressly avowed
their intention of raising money from us
FOR CERTAIN PURPOSES? Is not this Scheme
popular in Great Britain? Will the taxes,
imposed by the late act, answer those pur-
poses? If it will, must it not take an im-
mense sum from us? If it will not, is it to he
expected that the parliament will not fully
execute their intention when it is pleasing
at home, and not opposed here? Must not
this be done by imposing new taxes? Will
not every addition, thus made to our taxes,
be an addition to the power of the British
legislature, by increasing the number of officers
employed in the collection? Will not every
additional tax therefore render it more
difficult to abrogate any of them? When a
branch of revenue is once established, does
it not appear to many people invidious and
undutiful to attempt to abolish it? If taxes,
sufficient to accomplish the intention of the
parliament, are imposed by the parliament,
what taxes will remain to be imposed by our
assemblies? If no material taxes remain to
be imposed by them, what must become of
them, and the people they represent?
"If any person considers these things, and
yet thinks our liberties are in no danger, I
wonder at that person's security. "^
One other argument is to be added which,
by itself, I hope, will be sufficient to convince
the most incredulous man on this continent
that the late act of parliament is only de-
signed to be a precedent, whereon the
1 Demosthenes's Second Philippic.
future vassalage of these colonies may be
established.
Every duty thereby laid on articles of
British manufacture, is laid on some com-
modity, upon the exportation of which from
Great Britain a drawback is payable. Those
drawbacks, in most of the articles, are exactly
double to the duties given by the late act.
The parliament therefore might, in half a
dozen lines, have raised much more money,
only by stopping the drawbacks in the hands
of the officers at home, on exportation to
these colonies, than by this solemn imposition
of taxes upon us, to be collected here. Prob-
ably the artful contrivers of this act formed
it in this manner in order to reserve to them-
selves, in case of any objections being made
to it, this specious pretense — "That the
drawbacks are gifts to the colonies, and that
the late act only lessens those gifts." But
the truth is that the drawbacks are intended
for the encouragement and promotion of
British manufactures and commerce, and
are allowed on exportation to any foreign
parts, as well as on exportation to these
provinces. Besides, care has been taken to
slide into the act some articles on which
there are no drawbacks. However, the
whole duties laid by the late act on all the
articles therein specified are so small, that
they will not amount to as much as the draw-
backs which are allowed on part of them only.
If, therefore, the sum to he obtained by the
late act had been the sole object in forming
it, there would not have been any occasion
for "the commons of Great Britain to give
and GRANT to his Majesty rates and
duties for raising a revenue in his Majesty's
dominions in America, for making a more
certain and adequate provision for defray-
ing the charges of the administration of
justice, the support of civil government, and
the expense of defending the said domin-
ions";— nor would there have been any
occasion for an expensive board of com-
missioners,2 and all the other new charges
to which we are made liable.
2 The expense of this board, I am informed, is be-
tween Four and Five Thousand Pounds Sterling a year.
The establishment of officers, for collecting the revenue
in America, amounted before to Seven Thousand Six
Hundred Pounds per annum; and yet, says the author
of I'he Regulation oj the Colonies, " the whole remittance
from all the taxes in the colonies, at an average of
thirty years, has not amounted to One Thousand Nine
126
JOHN DICKINSON
Upon tin- wholf, for my part, 1 rt-^ard
the late act as an rxprrimrnt made of our
dispnsitinn. It is a bird sent out over the
Hundred Pounds a year, and in that sum Seven or
F.ight Hundred Pounds per annum only have been
remitted from Sorlh .imerica."
The smallness of the revenue arising from the duties
in .huerica clemonstrates that they were intended only
as RF.ci'i.ATioNS OF TRADK: And can any person be
so blind to truth, so dull of apprehension in a matter
of unspeakable importance to his country, as to imag-
ine that the board of commissioners lately established
at such a charge, is instituted to assist in collecting
One Thousand ^Ninc Hundred Pounds a year, or the
trifling duties imposed by the late act? Surely every
waters, to discover whether the waves that
lately agitated this part of the world with
such violence are yet subsided. If this
adventurer trets footing here, we shall quickly
find it to be of the kind described by the
poet :
Infelix vates}
A direful foreteller of future calamities.
^A Farmer.
man on this continent must perceive that they are
established for the care of a new svstem of revenue,
which is but now begun.
» Virgil, yEneid, Bk. Ill [209 fF. The quoted phrase,
referring to Celaeno, occurs in 1. 246].
ST. JOHN DE CREVECCEUR (1735-1813)
Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur was born at Caen, France, on 31 January, 1735. His
family belonged to the gentry of the district. He was sent to a Jesuit school, but his formal education
apparently was, save perhaps in mathematics, slight, and it ended early. Probably in 1753 he went
to Salisbury, England, where he seems to have lived for a time with distant relatives. His latest biog-
rapher (Miss J. P. Mitchell) conjectures that it was the death of a young Englishwoman to whom
Crevecoeur had become engaged which caused his departure for America in 1754. He landed in Can-
ada and became a lieutenant in the French army of Montcalm. His duties were those of an engineer
and map-maker, and the latter activity involved much traveling. After the fall of Quebec (1759),
Crevecoeur came to New York. During the next several years he led a wandering life, apparently
earning his livelihood by surveying. Either upon his landing in New York or shortly thereafter he
assumed the name "John Hector St. John," a name which he kept during the period of his American
residence. In 1765 or 1766 he was naturalized a citizen of the colony of New York. Several years
later (1769) he was married to Miss Mehetable Tippet of Yonkers, and, a couple of months after this
event, he purchased a farm in Orange County, which he named Pine Hill. Here Crevecoeur lived
happily, until the outbreak and progress of the Revolution brought trouble upon him. Perplexed
and distressed by the war — he apparently thought it a lawless uprising of the vulgar mob — he sym-
pathized with the Tories, or Loyalists; and finally in 1779 he went with a son, leaving his wife and
two other children behind, to seek refuge with the British in the city of New York. There his situa-
tion was miserable, and was presently made even worse when the British imprisoned him because they
had received an anonymous letter charging that he was acting as a spy. After his release he sailed,
in the early fall of 1780, for England, where he sold his Letters to a London publisher. In the following
year he returned to France. There he turned some of his Letters into French, and they were published
as Lettres d'un Cultivateur Americain in 1784. They proved popular and were later republished with
additions. Meanwhile Crevecoeur had been appointed French consul to New York, New Jerse}^, and
Connecticut, and he held this post from 1783 to 1790. In the spring of the latter year he returned
to France on a leave of absence. He never saw America again. He took many precautions, which
were successful, to avoid personal danger through the years of the French Revolution, and lived chiefly
in France until his death in 1813. His only literary work of any consequence during this period was
his Voyage datis la haute Pensylvanie et dans CEtat de New-York, published in three volumes in Paris
in 1801.
The Letters from an American Farmer; describing certain Provincial Situations, Manners, and
Customs, not Generally Known; and conveying some Idea of the Late and Present Interior Circumstances
of the British Colonies in North America, "written for the information of a friend in England, by J.
Hector St. John, a farmer in Pennsylvania," were published in London by Thomas Davies and Lock-
yer Davis in 1782. Crevecoeur pretended to write the Dedication from "Carlisle in Pennsylvania."
While it is not, perhaps, certain that Crevecoeur was never engaged in farming in that state, still, it is
probable that the general form of his book, as well as its title, was suggested by John Dickinson's widely
known Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania. The volume (like Dickinson's) contains twelve letters.
One describes "the situation, feelings, and pleasures of an American farmer"; two others are "on
snakes and on the humming-bird" and on the "distresses of a frontiersman"; others still are con-
cerned with Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard and with Charleston, South Carolina. The French
editions of the Letters not only exhibit a number of very curious changes which Crevecoeur made to
adapt them to the taste of their new public, but also include some additional letters. The autograph
manuscripts containing these and, besides, others never published, were recently found by Mr. H.
L. Bourdin in the country house of M. le Comte Louis de Crevecoeur, near Saumur, and were in 1925
given to the public imder the title. Sketches of Eighteenth Century America. This volume is a welcome
addition to Crevecoeur's English writings, though it contains little or nothing that would be unexpected
to the reader of the Letters of 1782.
Crevecoeur complained: "Few of the writers about America have resided here, and those who have,
have not pervaded every part of the country, nor carefully examined the nature and principles of our
association." He himself had, for his day, an unusually sound knowledge of the land, "for at one
127
128
ST. JOHN DE CRKVECCEUR
time or anotlur he lucamc familiar with Canada, with Nova Scotia and St. John s, with the country
about the Kennebec and the region later known as Vermont, with Massachusetts and Connecticut,
Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, with New York and Tennsylvania and some, at least, of the south-
ern states, with parts of Ohio and Kentucky, and probably with Jamaica and Bermuda." (Miss J.
V .MitchJil ) Hence it is probable that, despite multitudinous small inaccuracies and much fabri-
cation, Crevectrur's narratives and descriptions have some real basis in fact. And they have not
only this value, but also a freshness and a charm which remain, even after one has learned something
of the author's lack of integrity and so has begun to wonder if the Letters were deliberately composed
to meet a contemporary demand for the outpourings of naive "men of feeling." When Crevecoeur
turned the Lrttrrs into French he greatly altered them so as to increase their sentimental appeal, but
this scarcely proves that he was not what he calls himself, a "farmer of feelings." As such we do best
to take him, without asking too many questions.
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
FARMER
LETTER III, WHAT IS AN AMERICAN.?!
I WISH I could be acquainted with the feel-
ings and thoughts which must agitate the
heart and present themselves to the mind of
an enlightened Englishman, when he first
lands on this continent. He must greatly
rejoice that he lived at a time to see this fair
country discovered and settled; he must
necessarily feel a share of national pride,
when he views the chain of settlements which
embellishes these extended shores. When he
says to himself, this is the work of my
countrymen, who, when convulsed by fac-
tions, afflicted by a variety of miseries and
wants, restless and impatient, took refuge
here. They brought along with them their
national genius, to which they principally
owe what liberty they enjoy, and what sub-
stance they possess. Here he sees the in-
dustry of his native country displayed in a
new manner, and traces in their works the
embryos of all the arts, sciences, and in-
genuity which flourish in Europe. Here he
beholds fair cities, substantial villages, ex-
tensive fields, an immense country filled with
decent houses, good roads, orchards, mead-
ows, and bridges, where an hundred years ago
all was wild, woody, and uncultivated!
What a train of pleasing ideas this fair
spectacle must suggest; it is a prospect which
must inspire a good citizen with the most
1 Reprinted from a copy of the first edition. The
Letter is divided into two parts, of which the second
(containing the "History of Andrew, the Hebridean")
is h;re omitted. Crevecceur's manuscript, as we now
know, was extensively corrected for the press by some
one in the employ of his publishers. He wrote very
imperfectly in English. C'Note on the Text," Sketches
of Eighteenth Century America.)
heartfelt pleasure. The difficulty consists in
the manner of viewing so extensive a scene.
He is arrived on a new continent; a modern
society offers itself to his contemplation,
different from what he had hitherto seen. It
is not composed, as in Europe, of great lords
who possess everything, and of a herd of
people who have nothing. Here are no
aristocratical families, no courts, no kings, no
bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion, no in-
visible power giving to a few a very visible
one; no great manufacturers employing thou-
sands, no great refinements of luxury. The
rich and the poor are not so far removed from
each other as they are in Europe. Some few
towns excepted, we are all tillers of the earth,
from Nova Scotia to West Florida. We are
a people of cultivators, scattered over an
immense territory, communicating with each
other by means of good roads and navigable
rivers, united by the silken bands of mild
government, all respecting the laws, without
dreading their power, because they are equi-
table. We are all animated with the spirit of
an industry which is unfettered and unre-
strained, because each person works for him-
self. If he travels through our rural districts
he views not the hostile castle, and the
haughty mansion, contrasted with the clay-
built hut and miserable cabin, where cattle
and men help to keep each other warm, and
dwell in meanness, smoke, and indigence. A
pleasing uniformity of decent competence
appears throughout our habitations. The
meanest of our log-houses is a dry and com-
fortable habitation. Lawyer or merchant
are the fairest titles our towns afford; that of
a farmer is the only appellation of the rural
inhabitants of our country. It must take
some time ere he can reconcile himself to our
dictionary, which is but short in words of
dignity, and names of honor. There, on a
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN FARMER
129
Sunday, he sees a congregation of respectable
farmers and their wives, all clad in neat
homespun, well mounted, or riding in their
own humble wagons. There is not among
them an esquire, saving the unlettered magis-
trate. There he sees a parson as simple as
his flock, a farmer who does not riot on the
labor of others. We have no princes, for
whom we toil, starve, and bleed: we are the
most perfect society now existing in the
world. Here man is free as he ought to be;
nor is this pleasing equality so transitory as
many others are. Many ages will not see
the shores of our great lakes replenished with
inland nations, nor the unknown bounds of
North America entirely peopled. Who can
tell how far it extends.? Who can tell the
millions of men whom it will feed and con-
tam.? for no European foot has as yet trav-
eled half the extent of this mighty continent!
The next wish of this traveler will be to
know whence came all these people? they are
a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French,
Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. From this
promiscuous breed, that race now called
Americans have arisen. The eastern prov-
inces must indeed be excepted, as being the
unmixed descendants of Englishmen. I have
heard many wish that they had been more
intermixed also: for my part, I am no wisher,
and think it much better as it has happened.
They exhibit a most conspicuous figure in
this great and variegated picture; they too
enter for a great share in the pleasing per-
spective displayed in these thirteen prov-
inces. I know it is fashionable to reflect on
them, but I respect them for what they have
done; for the accuracy and wisdom with
which they have settled their territory; for
the decency of their manners; for their early
love of letters; their ancient college, the first
in this hemisphere; for their industry; which
to me who am but a farmer, is the criterion of
everything. There never was a people, situ-
ated as they are, who w4th so ungrateful a
soil have done more in so short a time. Do
you think that the monarchical ingredients
which are more prevalent in other govern-
ments, have purged them from all foul stains.?
Their histories assert the contrary.
In this great American asylum, the poor of
Europe have by some means met together,
and in consequence of various causes; to
what purpose should they ask one another
what countrymen they are.? Alas, two
thirds of them had no country. Can a
wretch who wanders about, who works and
starves, whose life is a continual scene of sore
affliction or pinching penury; can that man
call England or any other kingdom his
country? A country that had no bread for
him, whose fields procured him no harvest,
who met with nothing but the frowns of the
rich, the severity of the laws, with jails and
punishments; who owned not a single foot of
the extensive surface of this planet? No!
urged by a variety of motives, here they
came. Every thing has tended to regenerate
them; new laws, a new mode of living, a new
social system; here they are become men: in
Europe they were as so many useless plants,
wanting vegetative mold, and refreshing
showers; they withered, and were mowed
down by want, hunger, and war; but now by
the power of transplantation, like all other
plants they have taken root and flourished!
Formerly they were not numbered in any
civil lists of their country, except in those of
the poor; here they rank as citizens. By
what invisible power has this surprising meta-
morphosis been performed? By that of the
laws and that of their industry. The laws,
the indulgent laws, protect them as they
arrive, stamping on them the symbol of adop-
tion; they receive ample rewards for their
labors; these accumulated rewards procure
them lands; those lands confer on them the
title of freemen, and to that title every bene-
fit is affixed which men can possibly require.
This is the great operation daily performed
by our laws. From whence proceed these
laws? From our government. Whence the
government? It is derived from the original
genius and strong desire of the people ratified
and confirmed by the crown. This is the
great chain which links us all, this is the pic-
ture which every province exhibits. Nova
Scotia excepted. There the crown has done
all; either there were no people who had
genius, or it was not much attended to: the
consequence is, that the province is very
thinly inhabited indeed; the power of the
crown in conjunction with the mosquitos
has prevented men from settling there. Yet
some parts of it flourished once, and it con-
tained a mild harmless set of people. But for
the fault of a few leaders, the whole were
banished. The greatest political error the
UO
ST. JOHN DE CREVECCEUR
crown ever coininltttcl in America, was to
cut otf men from a country which wanted
nothinu: hut men!
What attachment can a poor European
emigrant have for a country where he had
nothing? The knowledge of the language,
the love of a few kindred as poor as himself,
were the only cords that tied him: his country
is now that which gives him land, bread, pro-
tection, and consequence. Ubi panis ibi
patria, is the motto of all emigrants. What
then is the American, this new man.? He is
either an European, or the descendant of an
European, hence that strange mixture of
blood, which you will find in no other coun-
try. I could point out to you a family whose
grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife
was Dutch, whose son married a French
woman, and whose present four sons have
now four wives of different nations. He is an
American, who, leaving behind him all his
ancient prejudices and manners, receives new
ones from the new mode of life he has em-
braced, the new government he obeys, and
the new rank he holds. He becomes an
American by being received in the broad lap
of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals
of all nations are melted into a new race of
men, whose labors and posterity will one
day cause great changes in the world.
Americans are the western pilgrims, who are
carrying along with them that great mass of
arts, sciences, vigor, and industry which
began long since in the east; they will finish
the great circle. The Americans were once
scattered all over Europe; here they are in-
corporated into one of the finest systems of
population which has ever appeared, and
which will hereafter become distinct by the
power of the diflFerent climates they inhabit.
The American ought therefore to love this
country much better than that wherein either
he or his forefathers were born. Here the
rewards of his industry follow with equal
steps the progress of his labor; his labor is
founded on the basis of nature, self-interest;
can it want a stronger allurement.? Wives
and children, who before in vain demanded
of him a n.orsel of bread, now, fat and frolic-
some, gladly help their father to clear those
fields whence exuberant crops are to arise to
feed and to clothe them all; without any
part being claimed, either by a despotic
prince, a rich abbot, or a mighty lord. Here
religion demands but little of him; a small
voluntary salary to the minister, and grati-
tude to God; can he refuse these.? The
American is a new man, who acts upon new
principles; he must therefore entertain new
ideas, and form new opinions. From in-
voluntary idleness, servile dependence, pen-
ury, and useless labor, he has passed to toils
of a very diflFerent nature, rewarded by ample
subsistence. — This is an American.
British America is divided into many
provinces, forming a large association, scat-
tered along a coast 1500 miles extent and
about 200 wide. This society I would fain
examine, at least such as it appears in the
middle provinces; if it does not afford that
variety of tinges and gradations which may
be observed in Europe, we have colors
peculiar to ourselves. For instance, it is
natural to conceive that those who live near
the sea, must be very different from those
who live in the woods; the intermediate
space will afford a separate and distinct
class.
Men are like plants; the goodness and
flavor of the fruit proceeds from the peculiar
soil and exposition in which they grow. We
are nothing but what we derive from the air
we breathe, the climate we inhabit, the gov-
ernment we obey, the system of religion we
profess, and the nature of our employment.
Here you will find but few crimes; these have
acquired as yet no root among us, I wish I
was able to trace all my ideas; if my igno-
rance prevents me from describing them
properly, I hope I shall be able to delineate
a few of the outlines, which are all I propose.
Those who live near the sea, feed more on
fish than on flesh, and often encounter that
boisterous element. This renders them more
bold and enterprising; this leads them to
neglect the confined occupations of the land.
They see and converse with a variety of
people; their intercourse with mankind be-
comes extensive. The sea inspires them
with a love of traffic, a desire of transporting
produce from one place to another; and leads
them to a variety of resources which supply
the place of labor. Those who inhabit the
middle settlements, by far the most numer-
ous, must be very different; the simple culti-
vation of the earth purifies them, but the
indulgences of the government, the soft re-
monstrances of religion, the rank of inde-
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN FARMER
131
pendent freeholders, must necessarily inspire
them with sentiments, very little known in
Europe among people of the same class.
What do I say? Europe has no such class of
men; the early knowledge they acquire, the
early bargains they make, give them a great
degree of sagacity. As freemen they will be
litigious; pride and obstinacy are often the
cause of law suits; the nature of our laws and
governments may be another. As citizens it
is easy to imagine, that they will carefully
read the newspapers, enter into every politi-
cal disquisition, freely blame or censure
governors and others. As farmers they will
be careful and anxious to get as much as they
can, because what they get is their own. As
northern men they will love the cheerful cup.
As Christians, religion curbs them not in
their opinions; the general indulgence leaves
every one to think for themselves in spiritual
matters; the laws inspect our actions, our
thoughts are left to God. Industry, good
living, selfishness, litigiousness, country poli-
tics, the pride of freemen, religious indiffer-
ence, are their characteristics. If you recede
still farther from the sea, you will come into
more modern settlements; they exhibit the
same strong lineaments, in a ruder appear-
ance. Religion seems to have still less influ-
ence, and their manners are less improved.
Now we arrive near the great woods, near
the last inhabited districts; there men seem
to be placed still farther beyond the reach of
government, which m some measure leaves
them to themselves. How can it pervade
every corner; as they were driven there by
misfortunes, necessity of beginnings, desire of
acquiring large tracts of land, idleness, fre-
quent want of economy, ancient debts; the
re-union of such people does not afford a very
pleasing spectacle. When discord, want of
unity and friendship; when either drunken-
ness or idleness prevail in such remote dis-
tricts; contention, inactivity, and wretched-
ness must ensue. There are not the same
remedies to these evils as in a long established
community. The few magistrates they have,
are in general little better than the rest; they
are often in a perfect state of war; that of
man against man, sometimes decided by
blows, sometimes by means of the law; that
of man against every wild inhabitant of these
venerable woods, of which they are come to
dispossess them. There men appear to be no
better than carnivorous animals of a superior
rank, living on the flesh of wild animals when
they can catch them, and when they are not
able, they subsist on grain. He who would
wish to see America in its proper light, and
have a true idea of its feeble beginnings and
barbarous rudiments, must visit our ex-
tended line of frontiers where the last settlers
dwell, and where he may see the first labors
of settlement, the mode of clearing the earth,
in all their different appearances; where men
are wholly left dependent on their native
tempers, and on the spur of uncertain in-
dustry, which often fails when not sanctified
by the eflSicacy of a few moral rules. There,
remote from the power of example and check
of shame, many families exhibit the most
hideous parts of our society. They are a
kind of forlorn hope, preceding by ten or
twelve years the most respectable army of
veterans which come after them. In that
space, prosperity will polish some, vice and
the law will drive off the rest, who uniting
again with others like themselves will recede
still farther; making room for more industri-
ous people, who will finish their improve-
ments, convert the log-house into a conven-
ient habitation, and rejoicing that the first
heavy labors are finished, will change in a
few years that hitherto barbarous country
into a fine, fertile, well regulated district.
Such is our progress, such is the march of the
Europeans toward the interior parts of this
continent. In all societies there are oflf-
casts; this impure part serves as our pre-
cursors or pioneers; my father himself was
one of that class, but he came upon honest
principles, and was therefore one of the few
who held fast; by good conduct and temper-
ance, he transmitted to me his fair inherit-
ance, when not above one in fourteen of his
contemporaries had the same good fortune.
Forty years ago this smiling country was
thus inhabited; it is now purged, a general
decency of manners prevails throughout, and
such has been the fate of our best countries.
Exclusive of those general characteristics,
each province has its own, founded on the
government, climate, mode of husbandry,
customs, and peculiarity of circumstances.
Europeans submit insensibly to these great
powers, and become, in the course of a few
generations, not only Americans in general,
but either Pennsylvanians, Virginians, or
u^
ST. JOHN DE CREVECOEUR
provincials under some other name. Who-
ever traverses the continent must easily ob-
serve those strong; differences, which will
grow more evident in time. The inhabitants
of Canada, Massachusetts, the middle prov-
inces, the southern ones will be as different as
their climates; their only points of unity will
be those of religion and language.
As 1 have endeavored to show you how
Europeans become Americans, it may not be
disagreeable to show you likewise how the
various Christian sects introduced, wear out,
and how religious indifference becomes prev-
alent. When any considerable number of
a particular sect happen to dwell contiguous
to each other, they immediately erect a
temple, and there worship the Divinity
agreeably to their own peculiar ideas. No-
body disturbs them. If any new sect
springs up in Europe it may happen that
many of its professors will come and settle
in America. As they bring their zeal with
them, they are at liberty to make prose-
lytes if they can, and to build a meeting
and to follow the dictates of their con-
sciences; for neither the government nor
any other power interferes. If they are
peaceable subjects, and are mdustrious, what
is it to their neighbors how and in what
manner they think fit to address their prayers
to the Supreme Being .^ But if the sectaries
are not settled close together, if they are
mixed with other denominations, their zeal
will cool for want of fuel, and will be extin-
guished in a little time. Then the Americans
become as to religion, what they are as to
country, allied to all. In them the name of
Englishman, Frenchman, and European is
lost, and in like manner, the strict modes of
Christianity as practiced in Europe are lost
also. This effect will extend itself still
farther hereafter, and though this may ap-
pear to you as a strange idea, yet it is a very
true one. I shall be able perhaps hereafter to
explain myself better; in the meanwhile, let
the following example serve as my first
justification.
Let us suppose you and I to be traveling;
we observe that in this house, to the right,
lives a Catholic, who prays to God as he has
been taught, and believes in transubstantia-
tion; he works and raises wheat, he has a
large family of children, all hale and robust;
his belief, his prayers offend nobody. About
one mile farther on the same road, his next
neighbor may be a good honest plodding
(jerman Lutheran, who addresses himself to
the same God, the God of all, agreeably to
the modes he has been educated in, and be-
lieves in consubstantiation; by so doing he
scandalizes nobody; he also works in his
fields, embellishes the earth, clears swamps,
etc. What has the world to do with his
Lutheran principles? He persecutes nobody,
and nobody persecutes him, he visits his
neighbors, and his neighbors visit him.
Next to him lives a seceder, the most enthusi-
astic of all sectaries; his zeal is hot and fiery,
but separated as he is from others of the same
complexion, he has no congregation of his
own to resort to, where he might cabal and
mingle religious pride with worldly obstinacy.
He likewise raises good crops, his house is
handsomely painted, his orchard is one of the
fairest in the neighborhood. How does it
concern the welfare of the country, or of the
province at large, what this man's religious
sentiments are, or really whether he has any
at all.'' He is a good farmer, he is a sober,
peaceable, good citizen: William Penn him-
self would not wish for more. This is the
visible character, the invisible one is only
guessed at, and is nobody's business. Next
again lives a Low Dutchman, who implicitly
believes the rules laid down by the synod of
Dort. He conceives no other idea of a cler-
gyman than that of an hired man; if he does
his work well he will pay him the stipulated
sum; if not he will dismiss him, and do with-
out his sermons, and let his church be shut up
for years. But notwithstanding this coarse
idea, you will find his house and farm to be
the neatest in all the country; and you will
judge by his wagon and fat horses, that he
thinks more of the affairs of this world than
of those of the next. He is sober and labori-
ous, therefore he is all he ought to be as to the
affairs of this life; as for those of the next, he
must trust to the great Creator. Each of
these people instruct their children as well as
they can, but these instructions are feeble
compared to those which are given to the
youth of the poorest class in Europe. Their
children will therefore grow up less zealous
and more indifferent in matters of religion
than their parents. The foolish vanity, or
rather the fury of making Proselytes, is
unknown here; they have no time, the
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN FARMER
133
seasons call for all their attention, and thus
in a few years, this mixed neighborhood will
exhibit a strange religious medley, that will
be neither pure Catholicism nor pure Cal-
vinism. A very perceptible indifference even
in the first generation, will become apparent;
and it may happen that the daughter of the
Catholic will marry the son of the seceder,
and settle by themselves at a distance from
their parents. What religious education will
they give their children .'' A very imperfect
one. If there happens to be in the neigh-
borhood any place of worship, we will sup-
pose a Quaker's meeting; rather than not
show their fine clothes, they will go to it, and
some of them may perhaps attach them-
selves to that society. Others will remain in
a perfect state of indifference; the children of
these zealous parents will not be able to tell
what their religious principles are, and their
grandchildren still less. The neighborhood
of a place of worship generally leads them to
it, and the action of going thither, is the
strongest evidence they can give of their
attachment to any sect. The Quakers are
the only people who retain a fondness for
their own mode of worship; for be they ever
so far separated from each other, they hold a
sort of communion with the society, and
seldom depart from its rules, at least in this
country. Thus all sects are mixed as well as
all nations; thus religious indifference is im-
perceptibly disseminated from one end of the
continent to the other; which is at present
one of the strongest characteristics of the
Americans. Where this will reach no one can
tell, perhaps it may leave a vacuum fit to
receive other systems. Persecution, religious
pride, the love of contradiction, are the food
of what the world commonly calls religion.
These motives have ceased here; zeal in
Europe is confined; here it evaporates in the
great distance it has to travel; there it is a
grain of powder inclosed, here it burns
away in the open air, and consumes without
effect.
But to return to our back settlers. I must
tell you that there is something in the
proximity of the woods, which is very singu-
lar. It is with men as it is with the plants
and animals that grow and live in the forests;
they are entirely different from those that
live in the plains. I will candidly tell you all
my thoughts but you are not to expect that I
shall advance any reasons. By living in or
near the woods, their actions are regulated by
the wildness of the neighborhood. The
deer often come to eat their grain, the wolves
to destroy their sheep, the bears to kill their
hogs, the foxes to catch their poultry. This
surrounding hostility immediately puts the
gun into their hands; they watch these
animals, they kill some; and thus by defend-
ing their property, they soon become pro-
fessed hunters; this is the progress; once
hunters, farewell to the plough. The chase
renders them ferocious, gloomy, and un-
sociable; a hunter wants no neighbor, he
rather hates them, because he dreads the
competition. In a little time their success in
the woods makes them neglect their tillage.
They trust to the natural fecundity of the
earth, and therefore do little; carelessness in
fencing often exposes what little they sow to
destruction; they are not at home to watch;
in order therefore to make up the deficiency
they go oftener to the woods. That new
mode of life brings along with it a new set of
manners, which I cannot easily describe.
These new manners being grafted on the old
stock, produce a strange sort of lawless
profligacy, the impressions of which are in-
delible. The manners of the Indian natives
are respectable, compared with this European
medley. Their wives and children live in
sloth and inactivity; and having no proper
pursuits, you may judge what education the
latter receive. Their tender minds have
nothing else to contemplate but the example
of their parents; like them they grow up a
mongrel breed, half civilized, half savage,
except nature stamps on them some constitu-
tional propensities. That rich, that voluptu-
ous sentiment is gone that struck them so
forcibly; the possession of their freeholds no
longer conveys to their minds the same
pleasure and pride. To all these reasons you
must add, their lonely situation, and you
cannot imagine what an effect on manners
the great distances they live from each other
has! Consider one of the last settlements in
its first view: of what is it composed.?
Europeans who have not that suflScient share
of knowledge they ought to have, in order to
prosper; people who have suddenly passed
from oppression, dread of government, and
fear of laws, into the unlimited freedom of the
woods. This sudden change must have a
134
Sr. JOHN OK CRF.VKCrEUR
very Krcat t-rtVct on most nuii, and on that
class particularly. Hating of wild meat,
whatever you may think, tends to alter their-
temper: thouuh all the proof 1 can adduce, is,
that I have seen it: and having no place of
worship to resort to, what little society this
might ati\)rd is denied them. The Sunday
meetings, exclusive of religious benefits, were
the only social bonds that might have in-
spired them with some degree of emulation in
neatness. Is it then surprising to see men
thus situated, immersed in great and heavy
labors, degenerate a little.^ It is rather a
wonder the effect is not more diffusive. The
Moravians and the Quakers are the only
instances in exception to what I have ad-
vanced. The first never settle singly, it is a
colony of the society which emigrates; they
carry with them their forms, worship, rules,
and decency: the others never begin so hard,
they are always able to buy improvements, in
which there is a great advantage, for by that
time the country is recovered from its first
barbarity. Thus our bad people are those
who are half cultivators and half hunters;
and the worst of them are those who have
degenerated altogether into the hunting
state. As old ploughmen and new men of
the woods, as Europeans and new-made
Indians, they contract the vices of both; they
adopt the moroseness and ferocity of a
native without his mildness, or even his
industry at home. If manners are not re-
fined, at least they are rendered simple and
inoffensive by tilling the earth; all our wants
are supplied by it, our time is divided be-
tween labor and rest, and leaves none for
the commission of great misdeeds. As
hunters it is divided between the toil of the
chase, the idleness of repose, or the indul-
gence of inebriation. Hunting is but a licen-
tious idle life, and if it does not always per-
vert good dispositions; yet, when it is united
with bad luck, it leads to want: want stimu-
lates that propensity to rapacity and in-
justice, too natural to needy men, which is
the fatal gradation. After this explanation
of the effects which follow by living in the
woods, shall we yet vainly flatter ourselves
with the hope of converting the Indians.''
We should rather begin with converting our
back-settlers; and now if I dare mention the
name of religion, its sweet accents would be
lost in the immensity of these woods. Men
thus placed are not fit either to receive or
remember its mild instructions; they want
temples and ministers, but as soon as men
cease to remain at home, and begin to lead
an erratic life, let them be either tawny or
white, they cease to be its disciples.
Thus have I faintly and imperfectly en-
deavored to trace our society from the sea
to our woods! yet you must not imagine that
every person who moves back, acts upon the
same principles, or falls into the same de-
generacy. Many families carry with them
all their decency of conduct, purity of morals,
and respect of religion; but these are scarce,
the power of example is sometimes irresist-
ible. Even among these back-settlers, their
depravity is greater or less, according to
what nation or province they belong. Were
I to adduce proofs of this, I might be accused
of partiality. If there happens to be some
rich intervals, some fertile bottoms, in those
remote districts, the people will there prefer
tilling the land to hunting, and will attach
themselves to it; but even on these fertile
spots you may plainly perceive the inhabit-
ants to acquire a great degree of rusticity and
selfishness.
It is in consequence of this straggling situa-
tion, and the astonishing power it has on
manners, that the back-settlers of both the
Carolinas, Virginia, and many other parts,
have been long a set of lawless people; it has
been even dangerous to travel among them.
Government can do nothing in so extensive a
country, better it should w4nk at these irregu-
larities, than that it should use means incon-
sistent w^ith its usual mildness. Time will
efface those stains: in proportion as the great
body of population approaches them they
will reform, and become polished and sub-
ordinate. Whatever has been said of the
four New England provinces, no such de-
generacy of manners has ever tarnished their
annals; their back-settlers have been kept
wnthin the bounds of decency, and govern-
ment, by means of wise laws, and by the
influence of religion. What a detestable idea
such people must have given to the natives of
the Europeans! They trade with them, the
worst of people are permitted to do that
which none but persons of the best characters
should be employed in. They get drunk
with them, and often defraud the Indians.
Their avarice, removed from the eves of their
LETFERS FROM AN AMERICAN FARMER
135
superiors, knows no bounds; and aided by
the little superiority of knowledge, these
traders deceive them, and even sometimes
shed blood. Hence those shockmg viola-
tions, those sudden devastations which have
so often stained our frontiers, when hundreds
of innocent people have been sacrificed for
the crimes of a few. It was in consequence
of such behavior, that the Indians took the
hatchet against the Virginians in 1774. Thus
are our first steps trod, thus are our first trees
felled, in general, by the most vicious of our
people; and thus the path is opened for the
arrival of a second and better class, the true
American freeholders; the most respectable
set of people in this part of the world: re-
spectable for their industry, their happy
independence, the great share of freedom
they possess, the good regulation of their
families, and for extending the trade and
the dominion of our mother country.
Europe contains hardly any other distinc-
tions but lords and tenants; this fair country
alone is settled by freeholders, the possessors
of the soil they cultivate, members of the
government they obey, and the framers of
their own laws, by means of their representa-
tives. This is a thought which you have
taught me to cherish; our difference from
Europe, far from diminishing, rather adds to
our usefulness and consequence as men and
subjects. Had our forefathers remained
there, they would only have crowded it, and
perhaps prolonged those convulsions which
had shook it so long. Every industrious
European who transports himself here, may
be compared to a sprout growing at the foot
of a great tree; it enjoys and draws but a
little portion of sap; wrench it from the
parent roots, transplant it, and it will become
a tree bearing fruit also. Colonists are
therefore entitled to the consideration due to
the most useful subjects; a hundred families
barely existing in some parts of Scotland,
will here in six years, cause an annual expor-
tation of 10,000 bushels of wheat: 100
bushels being but a common quantity for an
industrious family to sell, if they cultivate
good land. It is here then that the idle may
be employed, the useless become useful, and
the poor become rich; but by riches I do not
mean gold and silver, we have but little of
those metals; I mean a better sort of wealth,
cleared lands, cattle, good hous^^s, good
clothes, and an increase of people to enjoy
them.
There is no wonder that this country has so
many charms, and presents to Europeans so
many temptations to remain in it. A trav-
eler in Europe becomes a stranger as soon as
he quits his own kingdom; but it is other-
wise here. We know, properly speaking, no
strangers; this is every person's country; the
variety of our soils, situations, climates, gov-
ernments, and produce, hath something
which must please everybody. No sooner
does an European arrive, no matter of what
condition, than his eyes are opened upon the
fair prospect; he hears his language spoke, he
retraces many of his own country manners,
he perpetually hears the names of families
and towns with which he is acquainted; he
sees happiness and prosperity in all places
disseminated; he meets with hospitality,
kindness, and plenty everywhere; he beholds
hardly any poor, he seldom hears of punish-
ments and executions; and he wonders at the
elegance of our towns, those miracles of m-
dustry and freedom. He cannot admire
enough our rural districts, our convenient
roads, good taverns, and our many accom-
modations; he involuntarily loves a country
where everything is so lovely. When in
England, he was a mere Englishman; here he
stands on a larger portion of the globe, not
less than its fourth part, and may see the
productions of the north, in iron and naval
stores; the provisions of Ireland, the grain of
Egypt, the indigo, the rice of China. He
does not find, as in Europe, a crowded
society, where every place is over-stocked;
he does not feel that perpetual collision of
parties, that diflRculty of beginning, that con-
tention which oversets so many. There is
room for everybody in America; has he any
particular talent, or industry.'' he exerts it in
order to procure a livelihood, and it succeeds.
Is he a merchant.^ the avenues of trade are
infinite; is he eminent in any respect.'' he will
be employed and respected. Does he love a
country life.^ pleasant farms present them-
selves; he may purchase what he wants, and
thereby become an American farmer. Is he
a laborer, sober and industrious? he need
not go many miles, nor receive many in-
formations before he will be hired, well fed at
the table of his employer, and paid four or
five times more than he can get in Europe.
136
ST. JOHN DE CRKVECCEUR
Does he want uncultivated lands? thousands
of acres present themselves, which he may
purchase cheap. Whatever he his talents or
inclinations, if they are moderate, he may
satisfy them. I do not mean that every one
who comes will prow rich in a little time; no,
but he may procure an easy, decent mainten-
ance, by his industry. Instead of starving
he will be fed, instead of being idle he will
have employment; and these are riches
enough for such men as come over here.
The rich stay in Europe, it is only the mid-
dling and the poor that emigrate. Would
you wish to travel in independent idleness,
from north to south, you will find easy access,
and the most cheerful reception at every
house; society without ostentation, good
cheer without pride, and every decent diver-
sion which the country affords, with little
expense. It is no wonder that the European
who has lived here a few years, is desirous to
remain; Europe with all its pomp, is not to
be compared to this continent, for men of
middle stations, or laborers.
An European, when he first arrives, seems
limited in his intentions, as well as in his
views; but he very suddenly alters his scale;
two hundred miles formerly appeared a very
great distance, it is now but a trifle; he no
sooner breathes our air than he forms
schemes, and embarks in designs he never
would have thought of in his own country.
There the plenitude of society confines many
useful ideas, and often extinguishes the most
laudable schemes which here ripen into
maturity. Thus Europeans become Ameri-
cans.
But how is this accomplished in that crowd
of low, indigent people, who flock here every
year from all parts of Europe.'' I will tell
you; they no sooner arrive than they im-
mediately feel the good eflPects of that plenty
of provisions we possess: they fare on our
best food, and they are kindly entertained;
their talents, character, and peculiar industry
are immediately inquired into; they find
countrymen everywhere disseminated, let
them come from whatever part of Europe.
Let me select one as an epitome of the rest;
he is hired, he goes to work, and works
moderately; instead of being employed by a
haughty person, he finds himself with his
equal, placed at the substantial table of the
farmer, or else at an inferior one as good; his
wages are high, his bed is not like that bed of
sorrow on which he used to lie: if he behaves
with propriety, and is faithful, he is caressed,
and becomes as it were a member of the
family. He begins to feel the effects of a sort
of resurrection; hitherto he had not lived, but
simply vegetated; he now feels himself a man,
because he is treated as such; the laws of his
own country had overlooked him in his in-
significancy; the laws of this cover him with
their mantle. Judge what an alteration
there must arise in the mind and thoughts of
this man; he begins to forget his former servi-
tude and dependence, his heart involuntarily
swells and glows; this first swell inspires him
with those new thoughts which constitute an
American. What love can he entertain for a
country where his existence was a burthen to
him; if he is a generous good man, the love of
this new adoptive parent will sink deep into
his heart. He looks around, and sees many a
prosperous person, who but a few years be-
fore was as poor as himself. This encourages
him much, he begins to form some little
scheme, the first, alas, he ever formed in his
life. If he is wise he thus spends two or three
years, in which time he acquires knowledge,
the use of tools, the modes of working the
lands, felling trees, etc. This prepares the
foundation of a good name, the most useful
acquisition he can make. He is encouraged,
he has gained friends; he is advised and
directed, he feels bold, he purchases some
land; he gives all the money he has brought
over, as well as what he has earned, and
trusts to the God of harvests for the discharge
of the rest. His good name procures him
credit. He is now possessed of the deed, con-
veying to him and his posterity the fee simple
and absolute property of two hundred acres
of land, situated on such a river. What an
epoch in this man's life! He is become a
freeholder, from perhaps a German boor —
he is now an American, a Pennsylvanian, an
English subject. He is naturalized, his name
is enrolled with those of the other citizens of
the province. Instead of being a vagrant, he
has a place of residence; he is called the
inhabitant of such a county, or of such a
district, and for the first time in his life
counts for something; for hitherto he has
been a cypher. I only repeat what I have
heard many say, and no wonder their hearts
should glow, and be agitated with a multi-
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN FARMER
137
tude of feelings, not easy to describe. From
nothing to start into being; from a servant to
the rank of a master; from being the slave of
some despotic prince, to become a free man,
invested with lands, to which every muni-
cipal blessing is annexed! What a change
indeed! It is in consequence of that change
that he becomes an American. This great
metamorphosis has a double effect, it extin-
guishes all his European prejudices, he for-
gets that mechanism of subordination, that
servility of disposition which poverty had
taught him; and sometimes he is apt to
forget too much, often passing from one ex-
treme to the other. If he is a good man, he
forms schemes of future prosperity, he pro-
poses to educate his children better than he
has been educated himself; he thinks of
future modes of conduct, feels an ardor to
labor he never felt before. Pride steps in
and leads him to everything that the laws do
not forbid: he respects them; with a heart-
felt gratitude he looks toward the east,
toward that insular government from whose
wisdom all his new felicity is derived, and
under whose wings and protection he now
lives. These reflections constitute him the
good man and the good subject. Ye poor
Europeans, ye, who sweat, and work for the
great — ye, who are obliged to give so many
sheaves to the church, so many to your lords,
so many to your government, and have
hardly any left for yourselves — ye, who are
held in less estimation than favorite hunters
or useless lap-dogs — ye, who only breathe
the air of nature, because it cannot be with-
held from you; it is here that ye can conceive
the possibility of those feelings I have been
describing; it is here the laws of naturaliza-
tion invite every one to partake of our great
labors and felicity, to till unrented, untaxed
lands! Many, corrupted beyond the power
of amendment, have brought with them all
their vices, and disregarding the advantages
held to them, have gone on in their former
career of iniquity, until they have been over-
taken and punished by our laws. It is not
every emigrant who succeeds; no, it is only
the sober, the honest, and industrious: happy
those to whom this transition has served as a
powerful spur to labor, to prosperity, and to
the good establishment of children, born in
the days of their poverty; and who had no
other portion to expect but the rags of their
parents, had it not been for their happy
emigration. Others again, have been led
astray by this enchanting scene; their new
pride, instead of leading them to the fields,
has kept them in idleness; the idea of possess-
ing lands is all that satisfies them — though
surrounded with fertility, they have mol-
dered away their time in inactivity, misin-
formed husbandry, and ineffectual endeav-
ors. How much wiser, in general, the
honest Germans than almost all other
Europeans; they hire themselves to some of
their wealthy landsmen, and in that appren-
ticeship learn everything that is necessary.
They attentively consider the prosperous in-
dustry of others, which imprints in their
minds a strong desire of possessing the same
advantages. This forcible idea never quits
them, they launch forth, and by dint of
sobriety, rigid parsimony, and the most per-
severing industry, they commonly succeed.
Their astonishment at their first arrival from
Germany is very great — it is to them a
dream; the contrast must be powerful indeed;
they observe their countrymen flourishing
in every place; they travel through whole
counties where not a word of English is
spoken; and in the names and the language
of the people, they retrace Germany. They
have been an useful acquisition to this con-
tinent, and to Pennsylvania in particular; to
them it owes some share of its prosperity: to
their mechanical knowledge and patience it
owes the finest mills in all America, the best
teams of horses, and many other advantages.
The recollection of their former poverty and
slavery never quits them as long as they
live.
The Scotch and the Irish might have lived
in their own country perhaps as poor, but
enjoying more civil advantages, the eflPects of
their new situation do not strike them so
forcibly, nor has it so lasting an eflPect.
From whence the difference arises I know
not, but out of twelve families of emigrants
of each country, generally seven Scotch will
succeed, nine German, and four Irish. The
Scotch are frugal and laborious, but their
wives cannot work so hard as German
women, who on the contrary vie with their
husbands, and often share with them the
most severe toils of the field, which they
understand better. They have therefore
nothing to struggle against, but the common
138
ST. JOHN DE CREVECCEUR
casualties of nature. I'lie Irish do not
prosper so well; they love to drink and to
(piarrel; they are litigious, and soon take to
tile Run. which is the ruin of everything; they
seem beside to labor under a greater degree
of ignorance in husbandry than the others;
perhaps it is that their industry had less
scope, and was less exercised at home. I
have heard many relate, how the land w^as
parceled out in that kingdom; their ancient
conquest has been a great detriment to them,
by over-setting their landed property. I he
lands possessed by a few, are leased down ad
infinitum, and the occupiers often pay five
guineas an acre. The poor are worse lodged
there than anywhere else in Europe; their
potatoes, which are easily raised, are perhaps
an inducement to laziness: their wages are
too low, and their whisky too cheap.
There is no tracing observations of this
kind, without making at the same time very
great allowances, as there are everywhere to
be found a great many exceptions. The
Irish themselves, from different parts of that
kingdom, are very different. It is difficult to
account for this surprising locality, one
would think on so small an island an Irish-
man must be an Irishman: yet it is not so,
they are different in their aptitude to, and in
their love of labor.
The Scotch on the contrary are all indus-
trious and saving; they want nothing more
tiian a field to exert themselves in, and they
are commonly sure of succeeding. The
only difficulty they labor under is, that
technical American knowledge which re-
quires some time to obtain; it is not easy
for those who seldom saw a tree, to conceive
how it is to be felled, cut up, and split into
rails and posts.
As I am fond of seeing and talking of
prosperous families, I intend to finish this
letter by relating to you the history of an
honest Scotch Hebridean,i who came here in
1774, which wdl show you in epitome what
the Scotch can do, wherever they have room
for the exe.tion of their industry. Whenever
I hear of any new settlement, I pay it a visit
once or twice a year, on purpose to observe
the different steps each settler takes, the
gradual improvements, the different tempers
of each family, on which their prosperity in a
1 This narrative is not here reprinted.
great nature depends; their different modifi-
cations of industry, their ingenuity, and con-
trivance; for being all poor, their life requires
sagacity and prudence. In the evening I
love to hear them tell their stories, they
furnish me with new ideas; I sit still and
listen to their ancient misfortunes, observing
in many of them a strong degree of gratitude
to God, and the government. Many a well
meant sermon have I preached to some of
them. When I found laziness and inatten-
tion to prevail, who could refrain from wish-
ing well to these new countrymen, after hav-
ing undergone so many fatigues. Who could
withhold good advice? What a happy
change it must be, to descend from the high,
sterile, bleak lands of Scotland, where every-
thing is barren and cold, to rest on some
fertile farms in these middle provinces!
Such a transition must have afforded the
most pleasing satisfaction.
The following dialogue passed at an out-
settlement, where I lately paid a visit:
Well, friend, how do you do now; I am
come fifty odd miles on purpose to see you;
how do you go on with your new cutting and
slashing.'' Very well, good Sir, we learn the
use of the ax bravely, we shall make it out;
we have a belly full of victuals every day, our
cows run about, and come home full of milk,
our hogs get fat of themselves in the woods:
Oh, this is a good country! God bless the
king, and William Penn; we shall do very
well by and by, if we keep our healths. Your
log-house looks neat and light, where did you
get these shingles.? One of our neighbors is
a New England man, and he showed us how
to split them out of chestnut-trees. Now for
a barn, but all in good time, here are fine
trees to build with. Who is to frame it, sure
you don't understand that work yet? A
countryman of ours who has been in America
these ten years, offers to wait for his money
until the second crop is lodged in it. What
did you give for your land? Thirty-five
shillings per acre, payable in seven years.
How many acres have you got? An hundred
and fifty. That is enough to begin with; is
not your land pretty hard to clear? Yes, Sir,
hard enough, but it would be harder still if it
were ready cleared, for then we should have
no timber, and I love the woods much; the
land is nothing without them. Have not you
found out any bees yet? No, Sir; and if we
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN FARMER
139
had we should not know what to do with
them. I will tell you by and by. You are
very kind. Farewell, honest man, God
prosper you; whenever you travel toward
, inquire for J. S. He will entertain you
kindly, provided you bring him good tidings
from your family and farm. — In this manner
I often visit them, and carefully examine
their houses, their modes of ingenuity, their
different ways; and make them all relate all
they know, anid describe all they feel. These
are scenes which I believe you would willingly
share with me. I well remember your
philanthropic turn of mind. Is it not better
to contemplate under these humble roofs, the
rudiments of future wealth and population,
than to behold the accumulated bundles of
litigious papers in the office of a lawyer? To
examine how the world is gradually settled,
how the howling swamp is converted into a
pleasing meadow, the rough ridge into a fine
field; and to hear the cheerful whistling, the
rural song, where there was no sound heard
before, save the yell of the savage, the screech
of the owl, or the hissing of the snake? Here
an European, fatigued with luxury, riches,
and pleasures, may find a sweet relaxation in
a series of interesting scenes, as affecting as
they are new. England, v/hich now contains
so many domes, so many castles, was once
like this; a place woody and marshy; its
inhabitants, now the favorite nation for arts
and commerce, were once painted like our
neighbors. The country will flourish in its
turn, and the same observations will be made
which I have just delineated. Posterity will
look back with avidity and pleasure, to
trace, if possible, the era of this or that
particular settlement.
Pray, what is the reason that the Scots are
in general more religious, more faithful, more
honest, and industrious than the Irish ? I do
not mean to insinuate national reflections,
God forbid! It ill becomes any man, and
much less an American; but as I know men
are nothing of themselves, and that they owe
all their difl^'^rent modifications either to
government or other local circumstances,
there must be some powerful causes which
constitute this great national diflPerence.
Agreeable to the account which several
Scotchmen have given me of the north of
Britain, of the Orkneys, and the Hebride
Islands, they seem, on many accounts, to be
unfit for the habitation of men; they appear
to be calculated only for great sheep pastures.
Who then can blame the inhabitants of these
countries for transporting themselves hither?
This great continent must in time absorb the
poorest part of Europe; and this will happen
in proportion as it becomes better known;
and as war, taxation, oppression, and misery
increase there. The Hebrides appear to be
fit only for the residence of malefactors, and
it would be much better to send felons there
than either to Virginia or Maryland. What
a strange compliment has our mother country
paid to two of the finest provinces in Amer-
ica! England has entertained in that respect
very mistaken ideas; what was intended as a
punishment, is become the good fortune of
several; many of those who have been trans-
ported as felons, are now rich, and strangers
to the stings of those wants that urged them
to violations of the law: they are become
industrious, exemplary, and useful citizens.
The English government should purchase the
most northern and barren of those islands; it
should send over to us the honest, primitive
Hebrideans, settle them here on good lands,
as a reward for their virtue and ancient
poverty; and replace them with a colony of
her wicked sons. The severity of the climate,
the inclemency of the seasons, the sterility of
the soil, the tempestuousness of the sea,
would afflict and punish enough. Could
there be found a spot better adapted to
retaliate the injury it had received by their
crimes? Some of those islands might be con-
sidered as the hell of Great Britain, where all
evil spirits should be sent. Two essential
ends would be answered by this simple op-
eration. The good people, by emigration,
would be rendered happier; the bad ones
would be placed where they ought to be. In
a few years the dread of being sent to that
wintry region would have a much stronger
effect than that of transportation. — This is
no place of punishment; were I a poor, hope-
less, breadless Englishman, and not re-
strained by the power of shame, I should be
very thankful for the passage. It is of very
little importance how, and in what manner
an indigent man arrives; for if he is but sober,
honest, and industrious, he has nothing more
to ask of heaven. Let him go to work, he
will have opportunities enough to earn a
comfortable support, and even the means of
140
ST. JOHN DE CRftVECCEUR
procuring some land; which ought to be the
utmost wish of ovitv person who has health
and hands to work. I knew a man who came
to this country, in the Hteral sense of the
expression, stark naked; I think he was a
Frenchman, and a sailor on board an English
man-of-war. i^eing discontented, he had
stripped himself and swam ashore; where,
finding clothes and friends, he settled after-
wards at Maraneck, in the county of Chester,
in the province of New York: he married and
left a good farm to each of his sons. I knew
another person who was but twelve years old
when he was taken on the frontiers of
Canada, by the Indians; at his arrival at
Albany he was purchased by a gentleman,
who generously bound him apprentice to a
tailor. He lived to the age of ninety, and
left behind him a fine estate and a numerous
family, all well settled; many of them I am
acquainted with. — Where is then the in-
dustrious European who ought to despair."*
After a foreigner from any part of Europe
is arrived, and become a citizen; let him de-
voutly listen to the voice of our great parent,
which says to him: "Welcome to my shores,
distressed European; bless the hour in which
thou didst see my verdant fields, my fair
navigable rivers, and my green mountains!
— If thou wilt work, I have bread for thee; if
thou wilt be honest, sober, and industrious, I
have greater rewards to confer on thee —
ease and independence. I will give thee
fields to feed and clothe thee; a comfortable
fireside to sit by, and tell thy children by
what means thou hast prospered; and a
decent bed to repose on. I shall endow thee
beside with the immunities of a freeman. It
thou wilt carefully educate thy children,
teach them gratitude to God, and reverence
to that government, that philanthropic gov-
ernment, which has collected here so many
men and made them happy. I will also pro-
vide for thy progeny; and to every good man
this ought to be the most holy, the most
powerful, the most earnest wish he can pos-
sibly form, as well as the most consolatory
prospect when he dies. Go thou and work
and till; thou shalt prosper, provided thou
be just, grateful, and industrious."
THOMAS PAINE (1737-1809)
Paine's father was a Quaker who earned a scanty living from a small farm and from a shop in
which he followed the trade of stay-making. Thomas was born in Thetford, England, on 29 January,
1737. His formal education was negligible, and when he was thirteen years old he began to learn his
father's trade — one which he disliked, and from which he soon tried to escape by going to sea. But a
sailor's life apparently proved worse than a stay-maker's, and by 1756 he was in London following that
trade, and, at the same time, attending scientific lectures and learning something of mechanics. In
this direction he was remarkably apt and, given different circumstances, he might have launched him-
self on a career of mechanical invention which would almost certainly have brought him fame, and
perhaps wealth. Famous he was to become, but from other activities, and meanwhile he continued a
stay-maker until, not long after his marriage in 1759, he failed in the shop which he had set up at Sand-
wich. In the following year his wife died. In 1761 he was appointed an exciseman; four years later
he was discharged; then, after an interval of school-teaching, he was reappointed, only to be discharged
once more in 1774. In the mean time he had gone into the tobacco-trade, and had married again
(1771). But the business failed, and in 1774, for unknown reasons, he and his wife formally separated.
Thus far his life had been a series of failures, and he was duly prepared to emigrate. Franklin, whom
he had come to know, thought with his usual sagacity that Paine might be useful in America; and for
America he sailed, with letters from Franklin, in October, 1774. I" Philadelphia he began his career
as a man of letters, and discovered in himself those powers of incisive thought and down-right utterance
with which presently he was to astonish the colonies. In January, 1776, he published Common Sense.
It has been said that George III and Common Sense were the real authors of the Revolution. Almost
over night, and almost alone, Paine changed the aims of the colonists from resistance to independence.
Justly Common Sense has been described as "one of the most powerful and influential pamphlets ever
published in the English language." Paine's biographer (M. D. Conway) estimated that scarcely
less than 500,000 copies were sold — an extraordinary number — which can only mean that the pam-
phlet's fiery message was read everywhere. And from these sales Paine, though still a poor man, derived
no profit, because he gave the profits to the cause he preached. And for that cause he continued to
labor whole-heartedly to the end, serving in the army, aiding the Congress, helping to secure money
and supplies from France, and, above all, continuing to write. The course of the Revolution was
punctuated by successive numbers of The American Crisis — essays in which he wonderfully portrayed
the American cause as a consecrated battle of the angels against the forces of evil, essays which again
and again put fresh strength and determination into Washington's army and held the revolutionists
constant to their purpose. The first Crisis was read to the army just before the Battle of Trenton,
and it has been well said that Paine deserves no small share of the credit for the victories which fol-
lowed. The opening words of the essay which those soldiers heard may best show the reason: "These
are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis,
shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of
man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us,
that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem
too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper
price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as Freedom should not
be highly rated."
With the conclusion of the war, Paine's work for America was practically completed. His nature
was intensely partisan; once his simple convictions had been reached, he could fight for them with
perfect vigor and tenacity; but he understood too little of average human nature to be useful in govern-
ment. He could not meet others on their own ground, he could not temporize and patiently undertake
half-measures, he was incapable of compromise. Hence there was no place for him in the task of
framing the Constitution and welding the colonies into a nation. This he may have recognized. He
regarded himself as a citizen, not of any country, but of the world, and perhaps began, with some rea-
son, to think of himself as the liberator of mankind. He had for some time been anxious to revisit
England; — might he not hope to undermine tyranny there? He sailed for France in 1787, and did not
return to America until 1802. Those were eventful years both for Europe and for Paine. He pub-
141
u
THOMAS PAINE
lislicd Thr fiinhts of Man his answir to Hiitkc's Rrflrctions on the Rrvolution in France— \n 1791 and
17CJ:. lor rhis lu- was prosecuted, and convicted of lihcl. Hut already he was in France— owinp,
at least in part, to the sonnii advice of \\ iMiam Blake -and had heen elected a deputy to the Trench
Convention. Me remained true, of course, to his repuhlican principles, and, in alliance with the Girond-
ists, attempted to carry those principles out mercifully. He attacked the kmg, not the man, and
labored bravely to save the life of Louis X\'I. "I'm of the Scotch parson's opinion," he had said,
"when he prayed against Louis XIV, 'Lord, shake him over the mouth of hell, but don't let him drop.'"
For his eHorts he was thrown into prison, where he suffered from a dangerous illness, and he escaped
the guilh)tine only by a lucky accident. It was in these blood-stained years of fanaticism and cruelty,
and as a manifesto against French atheism, that he wrote and published The Jge of Reason (1793,
1795). a powerful and perhaps still influential attack upon revealed religion and a confident exposition
of deism.
.After his return to .America to spend his last years here (he died in New York on 8 January, 1809),
Paine's life was embittered by fears of poverty and by defamation and persecution at the hands of
those whose independence he had done so much to gain. By The Rights of Man and his vaguely under-
stood share in the French Revolution he had aroused the enmity of all those who had grown suspi-
cious of or hostile to genuine democracy, and, much worse, by The Age of Reason he had aroused the
hatred of orthodo.x Christians everywhere. Atheist, he was called, in days when that was still a ter-
rible accusation, and his pious opponents did not scruple to hound him with other malicious lies con-
cerning his beliefs, his character, and his manner of life, until they built around him a hideous legend
which has persisted almost until our own time. Many unlovely things may truthfully be said about
Paine. He had no delicacy, no tact, no personal pride; his mind was not profound; he suffered the
limitations of his age — its misplaced confidence in reason, its innocence of historical sense; he was
hasty of judgment and self-conceited; and the indictment could be further e.xtended; but, none the
less, he was also a brave, unselfish man, who devoted freely his life, his e.xtraordinary talents, and his
purse to the cause of human freedom. And to his memory Air'. For as in Adam all sinned, and as in
the first electors all men obeyed; as in the
one all mankind were subjected to Satan,
and in the other to sovereignty; as our
innocence was lost in the first, and our
authority in the last; and as both disable
us from re-assuming some former state and
privilege, it unansw^erably follows that
original sin and hereditary succession are
parallels. Dishonorable rank! inglorious
connection! yet the most subtle sophist
cannot produce a juster simile.
As to usurpation, no man will be so hardy
23 to defend it; and that William the Con-
queror was an usurper is a fact not to be
contradicted. The plain truth is, that the
antiquity of English monarchy will not bear
looking into.
But it is not so much the absurdity as the
evil of hereditary succession which concerns
mankind. Did it insure a race of good and
wise men it would have the seal of divine
authority, but as it opens a door to the
joolishy the wicked, and the improper, it hath
in it the nature of oppression. Men who
look upon themselves born to reign, and
others to obey, soon grow insolent. Selected
from the rest of mankind, their minds are
early poisoned by importance; and the
world they act in differs so materially from
the world at large, that they have but little
opportunity of knowing its true interests,
and wh.en they succeed to the government
are frequently the most ignorant and unfit
of any throughout the dominions.
Another evil which attends hereditary
succession is that the throne is subject to be
possessed by a minor at any age; all which
time the regency acting under the cover of a
king have every opportunity and inducement
to betray their trust. The same national
misfortune happens when a king worn out
with age and infirmity enters the last stage
of human weakness. In both these cases
the public becomes a prey to every mis-
creant who can tamper successfully with the
follies either of age or infancy.
The most plausible plea which hath ever
been offered in favor of hereditary succession
is that it preserves a nation from civil wars;
and were this true, it would be weighty;
whereas it is the most bare-faced falsity ever
imposed upon mankind. The whole history
of England disowns the fact. Thirty kings
and two minors have reigned in that dis-
tracted kingdom since the conquest, in
which time there has been (including the
revolution!) no less than eight civil wars and
nineteen Rebellions. Wherefore instead of
making for peace, it makes against it, and
destroys the very foundation it seems to
stand upon.
The contest for monarchy and succession
between the houses of York and Lancaster
laid England in a scene of blood for many
years. Twelve pitched battles besides skir-
mishes and sieges were fought between
Henry and Edward. Twice was Henry
1 Of i688.
COMMON SENSE
149
prisoner to Edward, who in his turn was
prisoner to Henry. And so uncertain is the
fate of war and the temper of a nation, when
nothing but personal matters are the ground
of a quarrel, that Henry was taken in tri-
umph from a prison to a palace, and Edward
obliged to fly from a palace to a foreign
land; yet, as sudden transitions of temper
are seldom lasting, Henry in his turn was
driven from the throne, and Edward re-
called to succeed him. The parliament
always following the strongest side.
This contest began in the reign of Henry
the Sixth, and was not entirely extinguished
till Henry the Seventh, in whom the families
were united. Including a period of 67
years, viz., from 1422 to 1489.
In short, monarchy and succession have
laid (not this or that kingdom only) but the
world in blood and ashes. 'Tis a form of
government which the word of God bears
testimony against, and blood will attend it.
If we inquire into the business of a King,
we shall find that in some countries they
may have none; and after sauntering away
their lives without pleasure to themselves
or advantage to the nation, withdraw from
the scene, and leave their successors to
tread the same idle round. In absolute
monarchies the whole weight of business
civil and military lies on the King; the chil-
dren of Israel in their request for a king
urged this plea, "that he may judge us, and
go out before us and fight our battles."
But in countries where he is neither a Judge
nor a General, as in England, a man would
be puzzled to know what is his business.
The nearer any government approaches to
a Republic, the less business there \s for a
King. It is somewhat difficult to find a
proper name for the government of England.
Sir William Meredith calls it a Republic;
but in its present state it is unworthy of the
name, because the corrupt influence of the
Crown, by having all the places in its dis-
posal, hath so eflfectually swallowed up the
power, and eaten out the virtue of the House
of Commons (the Republican part in the
constitution), that the government of Eng-
land is nearly as monarchical as that of
France or Spain. Men fall out with names
without understanding them. For 'tis the
Republican and not the Monarchical part of
the constitution of England which English-
men glory in, viz., the liberty of choosing an
House of Commons from out of their own
body — and it is easy to see that when Re-
publican virtues fail, slavery ensues. Why
is the constitution of England sickly, but
because monarchy hath poisoned the Re-
public; the Crown hath engrossed the
Commons.
In England a King hath little more to do
than to make war and give away places;
which, in plain terms, is to impoverish the
nation and set it together by the ears. A
pretty business indeed for a man to be
allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a
year for, and worshiped into the bargain!
Of more worth is one honest man to society,
and in the sight of God, than all the crowned
ruflfians that ever lived.
III. THOUGHTS ON THE PRESENT STATE OF
AMERICAN AFFAIRS
In the following pages I oflFer nothing
more than simple facts, plain arguments,
and common sense: and have no other pre-
liminaries to settle with the reader than that
he will divest himself of prejudice and pre-
possession, and suffer his reason and his
feelings to determine for themselves: that
he will put on, or rather that he will not put
off, the true character of a man, and gener-
ously enlarge his views beyond the present
day.
Volumes have been written on the subject
of the struggle between England and Amer-
ica. Men of all ranks have embarked in the
controversy, from different motives, and
with various designs; but all have been
ineffectual, and the period of debate is
closed. Arms as the last resource decide
the contest; the appeal was the choice of
the King, and the Continent has accepted
the challenge.
It hath been reported of the late Mr.
Pelham (who though an able minister was
not without his faults) that on his being
attacked in the House of Commons on the
score that his measures were only of a
temporary kind, replied, 'Uhey will last my
time.'' Should a thought so fatal and un-
manly possess the Colonies in the present
contest, the name of ancestors will be re-
membered by future generations with
detestation.
The Sun never shined on a cause of greater
ISO
THOMAS PAINE
worth. 'Tis not the affair of a City, a
County, a Province, or a Kingdom; but of a
Continent— of at least one eighth part of
the habitable Globe. 'Tis not the concern
of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are
virtually involved in the contest, and will
be more or less affected even to the end of
time, by the proceedings now. Now is the
seed-time of Continental union, faith, and
honor. The least fracture now will be like a
name engraved with the point of a pin on
the tender rind of a young oak; the wound
would enlarge with the tree, and posterity
read it in full grown characters.
By referring the matter from argument to
arms, a new era for politics is struck — a new
method of thinking hath arisen. All plans,
proposals, etc., prior to the nineteenth of
April, i. ., to the commencement of hostili-
ties,i are like the almanacs of the last year;
which though proper then, are superseded
and useless now. Whatever was advanced
by the advocates on either side of the ques-
tion then, terminated in one and the same
point, viz., a union with Great Britain; the
only difference between the parties was the
method of effecting it; the one proposing
force, the other friendship; but it hath so
far happened that the first hath failed, and
the second hath withdrawn her influence.
As much hath been said of the advantages
of reconciliation, which, like an agreeable
dream, hath pas.sed away and left us as we
were, it is but right that we should examine
the contrary side of the argument, and
inquire into some of the many material
injuries which these Colonies sustain, and
always will sustain, by being connected
with and dependent on Great Britain. To
examine that connection and dependence,
on the principles of nature and common
sense, to see what we have to trust to, if
separated, and what we are to expect, if
dependent.
I have heard it asserted by some, that as
America has flourished under her former
connection with Great Britain, the same
connection is necessary towards her future
happiness, and will always have the same
effect. Nothing can be more fallacious than
this kind of argument. We may as well
assert that because a child has thrived upon
> In 1775, at Lexington.
milk, that it is never to have meat, or that
the first twenty years of our lives is to
become a precedent for the next twenty.
But even tiiis is admitting more than is
true; for I answer roundly, that America
would have flourished as much, and probably
much more, had no European power taken
any notice of her. The commerce by which
she hath enriched herself are the necessaries
of life, and will always have a market while
eating is the custom of Europe.
But she has protected us, say some. That
she hath engrossed us is true, and defended
the Continent at our expense as well as her
own, is admitted; and she would have
defended Turkey from the same motive,
viz.y for the sake of trade and dominion.
Alas! we have been long led away by
ancient prejudices and made large sacrifices
to superstition. We have boasted the pro-
tection of Great Britain, without considering
that her motive was interest not attachment;
and that she did not protect us from our
enemies on our account; but from her enemies
on her own account, from those who had no
quarrel with us on any other account, and
who will always be our enemies on the same
account. Let Britain waive her pretensions
to the Continent, or the Continent throw
off the dependence, and we should be at
peace with France and Spain, were they at
war with Britain. The miseries of Hanover
last war ought to warn us against connec-
tions.
It hath lately been asserted in parliament
that the Colonies have no relation to each
other but through the Parent Country, i. e.,
that Pennsylvania and the Jerseys, and so
on for the rest, are sister Colonies by the
way of England; this is certainly a very
roundabout way of proving relationship,
but it is the nearest and only true way of
proving enmity — or enemyship, if I may so
call it. France and Spain never were, nor
perhaps ever will be, our enemies as Ameri-
cans, but as our being the subjects of Great
Britain.
But Britain is the parent country, say
some. Then the more shame upon her
conduct. Even brutes do not devour their
young, nor savages make war upon their
families; wherefore, the assertion, if true,
turns to her reproach; but it happens not to
be true, or only partly so, and the phrase
COMMON SENSE
151
parent or mother country hath been jesuitically
adopted by the King and his parasites, with
a low papistical design of gaining an unfair
bias on the credulous weakness of our minds.
Europe, and not England, is the parent
country of America. 1 his new World hath
been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of
civil and religious liberty from every part of
Europe. Hither have they fled, not from
the tender embraces of the mother, but from
the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far
true of England, that the same tyranny
which drove the first emigrants from home,
pursues their descendants still.
In this extensive quarter of the globe, we
forget the narrow limits of three hundred
and sixty miles (the extent of England) and
carry our friendship on a larger scale; we
claim brotherhood with every European
Christian, and triumph in the generosity of
the sentiment.
It is pleasant to observe by what regular
gradations we surmount the force of local
prejudices, as we enlarge our acquaintance
with the World. A man born in any town in
England divided into parishes, will naturally
associate most with his fellow parishioners
(because their interests in many cases will
be common) and distinguish him by the
name of neighbor; if he meet him but a few
miles from home, he drops the narrow idea
of a street, and salutes him by the name
of townsman; if he travel out of the county
and meet him in any other, he forgets the
minor divisions of street and town, and calls
him country many i. e.y countyman: but if in
their foreign excursions they should associate
in Erance, or any other part of Europe, their
local remembrance would be enlarged into
that of Englishmen. And by a just parity
of reasoning, all Europeans meeting in
America, or any other quarter of the globe,
are countrymen; for England, Holland,
Germany, or Sweden, when compared with
the whole, stand in the same places on the
larger scale, which the divisions of street,
town, and county do on the smaller ones;
distinctions too limited for Continental
minds. Not one third of the inhabitants,
even of this province [Pennsylvania], are of
English descent. Vv'^herefore, I reprobate
the phrase of Parent or Mother Country
applied to England only, as being false,
selfish, narrow, and ungenerous.
Hut, admitting that we were all of English
descent, what does it amount to? Nothing.
Britain, being now an open enemy, extin-
guishes every other name and title: and to
say that reconciliation is our duty, is truly
farcical. The first king of England, of the
present line (William the Conqueror) was a
Frenchman, and half the peers of England
are descendants from the same country;
wherefore, by the same method of reasoning,
England ought to be governed by France.
Much hath been said of the united strength
of Britain and the Colonies, that in conjunc-
tion they might bid defiance to the world:
But this is mere presumption; the fate of
war is uncertain, neither do the expressions
mean any thing; for this continent would
never suffer itself to be drained of inhabit-
ants, to support the British arms in either
Asia, Africa, or Europe.
Besides, what have we to do with setting
the world at defiance? Our plan is com-
merce, and that, well attended to, will
secure us the peace and friendship of all
Europe; because it is the interest of
all Europe to have America a free port.
Her trade will always be a protection,
and her barrenness of gold and silver
secure her from invaders. 1
I challenge the warmest advocate for
reconciliation to show a single advantage
that this continent can reap by being con-
nected with Great Britain. I repeat the
challenge; not a single advantage is de-
rived. Our corn will fetch its price in any
market in Europe, and our imported goods
must be paid for, buy them where we will.
But the injuries and disadvantages which
we sustain by that connection are without
number; and our duty to mankind at large,
as well as to ourselves, instruct us to re-
nounce the alliance: because, any submission
to, or dependence on. Great Britain, tends
directly to involve this Continent in Euro-
pean wars and quarrels, and set us at variance
with nations who would otherwise seek our
friendship, and against whom we have
neither anger nor complaint. As Europe is
1 Paine and Jefferson were not only friends, but very
similar to each other in much of their political thought.
Here, in a paragraph, is the key to the foreign policy
which Jefferson later sought to pursue. And every-
thing in this and the immediately following paragraphs
Jefferson not only might have said, but did later say.
1^2
THOMAS PAINE
our market (or trade, we oupht to form no
partial connection with any part of it. It is
the true interest of America to steer clear of
Kiiropean contentions, which she never can
do while, by her dependence on Britain,
she is made the makeweight in the scale of
liritish politics.
Europe is too thickly planted with King-
doms to be long at peace, and v/henever a
war breaks out between England and any
foreign power, the trade of America goes to
ruin, because of her comiection zvith Britain.
The next war may not turn out like the last,
and should it not, the advocates for recon-
ciliation now will be wishing for separation
then, because neutrality in that case would
be a safer convoy than a man of war. Every-
thing that is right or reasonable pleads for
separation. The blood of the slain, the
weeping voice of nature cries, 'Tis time to
PART. Even the distance at which the
Almighty hath placed England and America
is a strong and natural proof that the author-
ity of the one over the other was never the
design of Heaven. The time likewise at
which the Continent was discovered, adds
weight to the argument, and the manner in
which it was peopled increases the force of it.
The Reformation was preceded by the dis-
covery of America: As if the Almighty gra-
ciously meant to open a sanctuary to the
persecuted in future years, when home should
afford neither friendship nor safety.
The authority of Great Britain over this
continent is a form of government which,
sooner or later, must have an end: And a
serious mind can draw no true pleasure by
looking forward, under the painful and
positive conviction that what he calls "the
present constitution" is merely temporary.
As parents, we can have no joy, knowing
that this government is not sufficiently last-
ing to insure any thing which we may
bequeath to posterity: And by a plain
method of argument, as we are running the
next generation into debt, we ought to do
the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly
and pitifully. In order to discover the line
of our duty rightly, we should take our
children in our hand, and fix our station a
few years farther into life; that eminence
will present a prospect which a few present
fears and prejudices conceal from our sight.
Though I would carefully avoid giving un-
necessary offense, yet I am inclined to believe
that all those who espouse the doctrine of
reconciliation may be included within the
following descriptions:
Interested men, who are not to be trusted,
weak men who cannot see, prejudiced men
who will not see, and a certain set of moder-
ate men who think better of the European
world than it deserves; and this last class,
by an ill-judged deliberation, will be the
cause of more calamities to this Continent
than all the other three.
It is the good fortune of many to live
distant from the scene of present sorrow;
the evil is not sufficiently brought to their
doors to make them feel the precariousness
with which all American property is pos-
sessed. But let our imaginations transport
us a few moments to Boston; that seat of
wretchedness will teach us wisdom, and
instruct us for ever to renounce a power in
whom we can have no trust. The inhabit-
ants of that unfortunate city who but a few
months ago were in ease and affluence, have
now no other alternative than to stay and
starve, or turn out to beg. Endangered by
the fire of their friends if they continue
within the city, and plundered by the
soldiery if they leave it, in their present
situation they are prisoners without the
hope of redemption, and in a general attack
for their relief they would be exposed to the
fury of both armies.
Men of passive tempers look somewhat
lightly over the offenses of Great Britain,
and, still hoping for the best, are apt to call
out, Carney come, we shall he Jriends again
for all this. But examine the passions and
feelings of mankind: bring the doctrine of
reconciliation to the touchstone of nature,
and then tell me whether you can hereafter
love, honor, and faithfully serve the power
that hath carried fire and sword into your
land.'' If you cannot do all these, then are
you only deceiving yourselves, and by your
delay bringing ruin upon posterity. Your
future connection with Britain, whom you
can neither love nor honor, will be forced
and unnatural, and being formed only on
the plan of present convenience, will in a
little time fall into a relapse more wretched
than the first. But if you say, you can still
pass the violations over, then I ask, hath
your house been burned.'' Hath your prop-
COMMON SENSE
153
erty been destroyed before your face? Are
your wife and children destitute of a bed to
lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a
parent or a child by their hands, and your-
self the ruined and wretched survivor? If
you have not, then are you not a judp;e of
those who have. But if you have, and can
still shake hands with the murderers, then
are you unworthy the name of husband,
father, friend, or lover, and whatever may
be your rank or title in life, you have the
heart of a coward, and the spirit of a syco-
phant.
This is not inflaming or exaggerating
matters, but trying them by those feelings
and affections which nature justifies, and
without w^hich we should be incapable of
discharging the social duties of life, or
enjoying the felicities of it. I mean not to
exhibit horror for the purpose of provoking
revenge, but to awaken us from fatal and
unmanly slumbers, that we may pursue
determinately some fixed object. 'Tis not
in the power of Britain or of Europe to
conquer America, if she doth not conquer
herself by delay and timidity. The present
winter is worth an age if rightly employed,
but if lost or neglected the whole Continent
will partake of the misfortune; and there
is no punishment which that man doth not
deserve, be he who, or what, or where he
will, that may be the means of sacrificing a
season so precious and useful,
'Tis repugnant to reason, to the universal
order of things, to all examples from former
ages, to suppose that this Continent can
long remain subject to any external power.
The most sanguine in Britain doth not
think so. The utmost stretch of human
wisdom cannot, at this time, compass a
plan, short of separation, which can promise
the continent even a year's security. Recon-
ciliation is nozv a fallacious dream. Nature
hath deserted the connection, and art cannot
supply her place. For, as Milton wisely
expresses, "never can true reconcilement
grow where wounds of deadly hate have
pierced so deep."
Every quiet method for peace hath been
ineffectual. Our prayers have been re-
jected with disdain; and hath tended to
convince us that nothing flatters vanity or
confirms obstinacy in Kings more than
repeated petitioning — and nothing hath
contributed more than that very measure
to make the Kings of Europe absolute.
Witness Denmark and Sweden. Wherefore,
since nothing but blows will do, for God's
sake let us come to a final separation, and
not leave the next generation to be cuttmg
throats under the violated unmeaning names
of parent and child.
To say they will never attempt it again is
idle and visionary; we thought so at the
repeal of the stamp act, yet a year or two
undeceived us; as well may we suppose
that nations which have been once defeated
will never renew the quarrel.
As to government matters, 'tis not in the
power of Britain to do this continent justice:
the business of it will soon be too weighty
and intricate to be managed with any toler-
able degree of convenience by a power so
distant from us, and so very ignorant of us;
for if they cannot conquer us, they cannot
govern us. To be always running three or
four thousand miles with a tale or a petition,
waiting four or five months for an answer,
which, when obtained, requires five or six
more to explain it in, will in a few years be
looked upon as folly and childishness. There
was a time when it was proper, and there is a
proper time for it to cease.
Small islands not capable of protecting
themselves are the proper objects for govern-
ment^ to take under their care; but there is
something absurd in supposing a Continent
to be perpetually governed by an island. In
no instance hath nature made the satellite
larger than its primary planet; and as Eng-
land and America, with respect to each other,
reverse the common order of nature, it is
evident that they belong to different systems.
England to Europe: America to itself.
I am not induced by motives of pride,
party, or resentment to espouse the doctrine
of separation and independence; I am
clearly, positively, and conscientiously per-
suaded that it is the true interest of this
Continent to be so; that everything short
of that is mere patchwork, that it can afford
no lasting felicity — that it is leaving the
sword to our children, and shrinking back
at a time when a little more, a little further,
would have rendered this Continent the
glory of the earth.
1 In some later editions "kingdoms." (Conway.)
»54
rilOMAS PAINK
As Hrit;iiii h;itli not m;mittstc'cl tlic least
inclination towards a compromise, we may
be assured that no terms can be obtained
worthy the acceptance of the Continent, or
any ways eciual to tlie expense of blood and
treasure we have been already put to.
The object contended for ought always to
bear some just proportion to the expense.
The removal of North, or the whole detest-
able junto, is a matter unworthy the millions
we have expended. A temporary stoppage
of trade was an inconvenience, which would
have sufficiently balanced the repeal of all
the acts complained of, had such repeals
been obtained; but if the whole Continent
must take up arms, if every man must be a
soldier, 'tis scarcely worth our while to fight
against a contemptible ministry only.
Dearly, dearly do we pay for the repeal of
the acts, if that is all we fight for; for, in a
just estimation, 'tis as great a folly to pay a
Hunker-hill price for law as for land. As I
have always considered the independency
of this continent as an event which sooner
or later must arrive, so from the late rapid
progress of the Continent to maturity, the
event cannot be far off. Wherefore, on the
breaking out of hostilities, it was not worth
the while to have disputed a matter which
time would have finally redressed, unless we
meant to be in earnest: otherwise it is like
wasting an estate on a suit at law, to regulate
the trespasses of a tenant whose lease is just
expiring. No man was a warmer wisher
for a reconciliation than myself, before the
fatal nineteenth of April, 1775, but the
moment the event of that day was made
known, I rejected the hardened, sullen-
tempered Pharaoh of England for ever; and
disdain the wretch, that with the pretended
title of Father of his people can unfeel-
ingly hear of their slaughter, and com-
posedly sleep with their blood upon his soul.
But admitting that matters were now
made up, what would be the event.'' I
answer, the ruin of the Continent. And
that for several reasons.
First. The powers of governing still re-
maining in the hands of the King, he will
have a negative over the whole legislation
of this Continent. And as he hath shown
himself such an inveterate enemy to liberty,
and discovered such a thirst for arbitrary
power, is he, or is he not, a proper person to
say to these colonies. You shall make no laws
but what I please!? And is there any inhabi-
tant of America so ignorant as not to know
that, according to what is called the present
constitutioiiy this Continent can make no laws
but what the king gives leave to; and is
there any man so unwise as not to see that
(considering what has happened) he will
suffer no law to be made here but such as
suits his purpose.'' We may be as effectually
enslaved by the want of laws in America, as
by submitting to laws made for us in Eng-
land. After matters are made up (as it is
called) can there be any doubt, but the
w^hole power of the crown will be exerted to
keep this continent as low and humble as
possible.'' Instead of going forward we shall
go backward, or be perpetually quarreling,
or ridiculously petitioning. We are already
greater than the King wishes us to be, and
will he not hereafter endeavor to make us
less.^ To bring the matter to one point. Is
the powder who is jealous of our prosperity,
a proper power to govern us? Whoever
says No, to this question, is an Independent,
for independency means no more than this,
whether we shall make our own laws, or,
whether the King, the greatest enemy this
continent hath, or can have, shall tell us
there shall be no laws but such as I like.
But the King, you will say, has a negative
in England; the people there can make no
laws without his consent. In point of right
and good order, it is something very ridicu-
lous that a youth of twenty-one (which hath
often happened) shall say to several millions
of people older and wiser than himself, "I
forbid this or that act of yours to be law."
But in this place I decline this sort of reply,
though I will never cease to expose the
absurdity of it, and only answer that England
being the King's residence, and America not
so, makes quite another case. The King's
negative here is ten times more dangerous
and fatal than it can be in England; for
there he will scarcely refuse his consent to a
bill for putting England into as strong a
state of defense as possible, and in America
he would never suffer such a bill to be passed.
America is only a secondary object in the
system of British politics. England consults
the good of this country no further than it
answers her own purpose. Wherefore, her
own interest leads her to suppress the growth
COMMON SENSE
155
of ours in every case which doth not promote
her advantage, or in the least interferes
with it. A pretty state we sliould soon be
in under such a second-hand government,
considering what has happened! Men do
not change from enemies to friends by the
alteration of a name: And in order to show
that reconciliation now is a dangerous
doctrine, I affirm, that it would be policy i7i
the King at this time to repeal the acts, for the
sake of reinstating himself in the government
of the provinces; In order that he may
ACCOMPLISH BY CRAFT AND SUBTLETY, IN
THE LONG RUN, WHAT HE CANNOT DO BY
FORCE AND VIOLENCE IN THE SHORT ONE.
Reconciliation and ruin are nearly related.
Secondly. That as even the best terms
which we can expect to obtain can amount
to no more than a temporary expedient, or
a kind of government by guardianship,
which can last no longer than till the Colonies
come of age, so the general face and state of
things in the interim will be unsettled and
unpromising. Emigrants of property will
not choose to come to a country whose form
of government hangs but by a thread, and
who is every day tottering on the brink of
commotion and disturbance; and numbers
of the present inhabitants would lay hold of
the interval to dispose of their effects, and
quit the Continent.
But the most powerful of all arguments
is, that nothing but independence, i. e.y a
Continental form of government, can keep
the peace of the Continent and preserve it
inviolate from civil wars. I dread the event
of a reconciliation with Britain now, as it is
more than probable that it will be followed
by a revolt some where or other, the conse-
quences of which may be far more fatal than
all the malice of Britain.
Thousands are already ruined by British
barbarity; thousands more will probably
suffer the same fate. Those men have other
feelings than us who have nothing suffered.
All they now possess is liberty; what they
before enjoyed is sacrificed to its service,
and, having nothing more to lose, they
disdain submission. Besides, the general
temper of the Colonies towards a British
government will be like that of a youth who
is nearly out of his time; they will care very
little about her: And a government which
cannot preserve the peace is no government
at all, and in that case we pay our money
for nothing; and pray what is it that Britain
can do, whose power will be wholly on paper,
should a civil tumult break out the very day
after reconciliation? I have heard some
men say, many of whom I believe spoke
without thinking, that they dreaded an
independence, fearing that it would produce
civil wars: It is but seldom that our first
thoughts are truly correct, and that is the
case here; for there is ten times more to
dread from a patched up connection than
from independence. I make the sufferer's
case my own, and I protest, that were I
driven from house and home, my property
destroyed, and my circumstances ruined,
that as a man, sensible of injuries, I could
never relish the doctrine of reconciliation, or
consider myself bound thereby.
The Colonies have manifested such a
spirit of good order and obedience to Conti-
nental government, as is sufficient to make
every reasonable person easy and happy on
that head. No man can assign the least
pretense for his fears, on any other grounds,
than such as are truly childish and ridiculous,
viz.., that one colony will be striving for
superiority over another.
Where there are no distinctions there can
be no superiority; perfect equality affords
no temptation. The Republics of Europe
are all (and we may say always) in peace.
Holland and Switzerland are without wars,
foreign or domestic: Monarchical govern-
ments, it is true, are never long at rest: the
crown itself is a temptation to enterprising
ruffians at home; and that degree of pride
and insolence ever attendant on regal
authority, swells into a rupture with foreign
powers in instances where a republican gov- .
ernment, by being formed on more natural
principles, would negotiate the mistake.
If there is any true cause of fear respecting
independence, it is because no plan is yet
laid down. Men do not see their way out.
Wherefore, as an opening into that business,
I offer the following hints; at the same time
modestly affirming that I have no other
opinion of them myself, than that they
may be the means of giving rise to some-
thing better. Could the straggling thoughts
of individuals be collected, they would fre-
quently form materials for wise and able
men to improve into useful matter.
156
THOMAS PAINE
Let the assemblies be nnniinl, with a presi-
dent only. 1 be representation more equal,
their business wholly domestic, and subject
to the authority of a Continental Congress.
Let each Colony be divided into six, eight,
or ten, convenient districts, each district
to send a proper number of Delegates to
Congress, so that each Colony send at least
thirty. The whole number in Congress will
be at least 390. Each congress to sit
and to choose a President by the following
method. When the Delegates are met, let
a Colony be taken from the whole thirteen
Colonies by lot, after which let the Congress
choose (by ballot) a president from out of the
Delegates of that Province. In the next
Congress, let a Colony be taken by lot from
twelve only, omitting that Colony from
which the president was taken in the former
Congress, and so proceeding on till the
whole thirteen shall have had their proper
rotation. And in order that nothing may
pass into a law but what is satisfactorily
just, not less than three-fifths of the Con-
gress to be called a majority. He that will
promote discord, under a government so
equally formed as this, would have joined
Lucifer in his revolt.
But as there is a peculiar delicacy from
whom, or in what manner, this business
must first arise, and as it seems most agree-
able and consistent that it should come from
some intermediate body between the gov-
erned and the governors, that is, between
the Congress and the People, let a Conti-
nental Conference be held in the following
manner, and for the following purpose:
A Committee of twenty-six members of
congress, t'zV., Two for each Colony. Two
Members from each House of Assembly, or
Provincial Convention; and five Representa-
tives of the people at large, to be chosen in
the capital city or town of each Province,
for, and in behalf of the whole Province, by
as many qualified voters as shall think
proper to attend from all parts of the Prov-
ince for that purpose; or, if more convenient,
the Representatives may be chosen in two
or three of the most populous parts thereof.
In this conference, thus assembled, will be
united the two grand principles of business,
knozvledge and power. The Members of
Congress, Assemblies, or Conventions, by
having had experience in national concerns,
will be able and useful counselors, and the
whole, being empowered by the people, vv^ill
have a truly legal authority.
The conferring members being met, let
their business be to frame a Continental
Charter, or Charter of the United Colonies
(answering to what is called the Magna
Charta of England), fixing the number and
manner of choosing Members of Congress,
Members of Assembly, with their date of
sitting; and drawing the line of business
and jurisdiction between them: Always re-
membering, that our strength is Continental,
not Provincial. Securing freedom and prop-
erty to all men, and above all things, the
free exercise of religion, according to the
dictates of conscience; with such other
matter as it is necessary for a charter to
contain. Immediately after which, the said
conference to dissolve, and the bodies which
shall be chosen conformable to the said
charter, to be the Legislators and Governors
of this Continent for the time being: Whose
peace and happiness, may God preserve.
Amen.
Should any body of men be hereafter
delegated for this or some similar purpose.
I offer them the following extracts from that
wise observer on Governments, Dragonetti.
"The science," says he, "of the Politician
consists in fixing the true point of happiness
and freedom. Those men would deserve the
gratitude of ages, who should discover a
mode of government that contained the
greatest sum of individual happiness, with
the least national expense." (Dragonetti
on Virtues and Rezvard.)
But where, say some, is the King of
America? I'll tell you, friend, he reigns
above, and doth not make havoc of mankind
like the Royal Brute of Great Britain. ^ Yet
that we may not appear to be defective even
in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set
apart for proclaiming the Charter; let it be
brought forth placed on the Divine Law, the
Word of God; let a crown be placed thereon,
by which the world may know, that so far
1 Common Sense was published anonymously be-
cause, as Paine said in a prefatory note to the third
edition, "the Object for Attention is the Doctrine itself ,
not the Man." At first it was commonly thought that
Franklin was the author, and a lady reproached him
for this reference to the British sovereign, to which
Franklin replied that had he been indeed the author
he would not so have insulted the brute creation.
COMMON SENSE
157
as we approve of monarchy, that in America
the law is king. For as in absolute govern-
ments the King is law, so in free countries
the law ought to be king; and there ought
to be no other. But lest any ill use should
afterwards arise, let the Crown at the con-
clusion of the ceremony be demolished, and
scattered among the people whose right it is.
A government of our own is our natural
right: and when a man seriously reflects on
the precariousness of human affairs, he will
become convinced that it is infinitely wiser
and safer to form a constitution of our own
in a cool deliberate manner, while we have
it in our power, than to trust such an interest-
ing event to time and chance. If we omit
it now, some Massanello^ may hereafter
arise, who, laying hold of popular dis-
quietudes, may collect together the desperate
and the discontented, and by assuming to
themselves the powers of government, finally
sweep away the liberties of the Continent
like a deluge. Should the government of
America return again into the hands of
Britain, the tottering situation of things will
be a temptation for some desperate adven-
turer to try his fortune; and in such a case,
what relief can Britain give.'' Ere she could
hear the news, the fatal business might be
done; and ourselves suffering like the
wretched Britons under the oppression of
the Conqueror. Ye that oppose independ-
ence now, ye know not what ye do: ye are
opening a door to eternal tyranny, by keep-
ing vacant the seat of government. There
are thousands and tens of thousands, who
would think it glorious to expel from the
Continent that barbarous and hellish power,
which hath stirred up the Indians and the
Negroes to destroy us; the cruelty hath a
double guilt, it is dealing brutally by us,
and treacherously by them.
1 Thomas Anello, otherwise Massanello, a fisherman
of Naples, who after spiriting up his countrymen in the
public market place against the oppression of the
Spaniards, to whom the place was then subject,
prompted them to revolt, and in the space of a day
became King. (Paine's note.)
To talk of friendship with those in whom
our reason forbids us to have faith, and our
affections wounded through a thousand
pores instruct us to detest, is madness and
folly. Every day wears out the little re-
mains of kindred between us and them; and
can there be any reason to hope, that as the
relationship expires, the affection will in-
crease, or that we shall agree better when
we have ten times more and greater concerns
to quarrel over than ever?
Ye that tell us of harmony and reconcilia-
tion, can ye restore to us the time that is
past.^* Can ye give to prostitution its
former innocence.'' neither can ye reconcile
Britain and America. The last cord now
is broken, the people of England are present-
ing addresses against us. There are injuries
which nature cannot forgive; she would
cease to be nature if she did. As well can
the lover forgive the ravisher of his mistress,
as the Continent forgive the murders of
Britain. The Almighty hath implanted in
us these unextinguishable feelings for good
and wise purposes. They are the Guardians
of his Image in our hearts. They distinguish
us from the herd of common animals. The
social compact would dissolve, and justice
be extirpated from the earth, or have only
a casual existence, were we callous to the
touches of affection. The robber and the
murderer would often escape unpunished,
did not the injuries which our tempers
sustain provoke us into justice.
O! ye that love mankind! Ye that dare
oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant,
stand forth! Every spot of the old world
is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath
been hunted round the Globe. Asia and
Africa have long expelled her. Europe
regards her like a stranger, and England
hath given her warning to depart. O!
receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an
asylum for mankind. 2
2 There is a fourth section, entitled Of the Present
Ability of America, with some Miscellaneous Reflections,
which is here omitted. Paine also added an Appendix
to later editions.
THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743-1826)
Jefferson was born on 13 April, 1743, at his father's farm-house on the north hank of the Rivanna
a few miles from Charlottesville, Virginia. His father died when he was fourteen years old, and left
iiim, with a fair fortune, virtually free to determine his own course in life. He proceeded with the
sound education which his father had designed him to have, and, after a few more years of work wkh
a good classical scholar, entered William and Mary College (1760). Williamsburg was then the capi-
tal city, or rather village, of Virginia, and offered many opportunities for distraction and dissipation,
but Jefferson was fortunately thrown with a few cultured and talented men, who did much to make
jiim a close and capable student, devoted to the reading and collecting of books. In later life he owned
what was probably the largest and most valuable private library then in America; — about 2,000 vol-
umes of which (rather less than one-fifth) may now be seen in the Library of Congress. After two years
at the College, Jefferson proceeded to study the law under George Wythe, and was admitted to the
bar in 1767. He found himself almost at once with a good practice, which kept him busy until, as
he says, "the Revolution shut up the Courts of Justice." From the beginning of active trouble with
England he assumed a position of prominence in Virginia as an advocate of the rights of the colonists,
and he was made a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, where his ability was at once recog-
nized and his influence strongly felt. He was again sent to the following session, in the course of which
it fell to him to draft the Declaration of Independence. In the fall of 1776 he withdrew from the Con-
gress to become a member of the Virginia House of Representatives, where he succeeded in reforming
the legal procedure and laws of the state, and in abolishing primogeniture. He was unsuccessful in
his attempt to provide a system of public education and a public library, and in his effort to eman-
cipate the slaves, but he succeeded in modifying the state-support of the Episcopal Church, and so
paved the way for disestablishment in 1779, and for the adoption of his bill for complete religious free-
dom in 1786. This bill — the first of its kind ever enacted by a popular legislature — would of itself
suffice to give Jefferson immortality in the annals of human liberty.
From June, 1779, until June, 1781, Jefferson was the war-time Governor of Virginia. During
the remainder of that year and in the following year he wrote his only book, Notes on Virginia (first
printed in Paris, 1784). In September, 1782, he was saddened by the death of his wife (he had mar-
ried Martha Skelton in 1772). During the months of her illness he had been unwilling to leave her,
and had refused several urgent demands upon him for public service. But now he was, perhaps, anx-
ious to be busy, and he soon became a member of the Congress. In 1784 he was appointed a Minister
Plenipotentiary to help Franklin and John Adams effect commercial agreements with European nations.
The mission was on the whole unsuccessful, but Jefferson remained in Paris (in 1785 succeeding Frank-
lin as Minister) until the fall of 1789, and so witnessed the beginnings of the French Revolution.
Immediately upon his arrival in America, Washington appointed him Secretary of State — a post which
he held with an increasing sense of difficulty as party conflicts began to develop, and which he resigned
at the end of four years. From 1797 until 1801 he was Vice President of the United States, and from
1801 until 1809 President. Then from his retirement at Monticello he observed the administrations
of two close friends and fellow-Republicans who followed him in the presidency, Madison (1809-1817)
and Monroe (1817-1825). During these years his vast correspondence, the entertainment of an
unceasing stream of visitors, and the management of his estates occupied the greater part of his time,
but he also found it possible to revive his long-cherished plan of founding a university for Virginia,
and succeeded in establishing the institution while there was yet time for him to impress his ideas and
standards upon it during its earliest years. This cost him much effort, much diplomatic negotiation,
and some money, the last of which he could ill afford, as he was embarrassed by heavy debts in the
last years of his life. He died on 4 July, 1826.
John Adams, who, by a strange coincidence, died a few hours later on the same day, had once
remarked upon "the curious felicity of expression" which distinguished Jefferson's writings. His
praise was just, though its justice has not always been recognized. For this there are reasons both
good and bad— too many to be summarized here. But this may be said: The literary excellence of
such pieces as the Declaration and the Character of IVashington cannot be disputed. They need no
bolstering praise, and they make one feel that there must be fit companion-pieces concealed in the
158
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
159
voluminous mass of their author's writinjis. But if a search be undertaken it is likely to bring disap-
pointment. It will meet with its reward, but one purchased not without difficulty. In this Jeffer-
son's writings are curiously like the man himself, as is aptly shown by the impression of him which
Senator Maclay recorded after his appearance in 1790 before a committee of the Senate: "Jefferson
is a slender man; has rather the air of stiffness in his manner. His clothes seem too small for him.
He sits in a lounging manner, on one hip commonly, and with one of his shoulders elevated much above
the other. His face has a sunny aspect. His whole figure has a loose, shackling air. He had a ram-
bling, vacant look, and nothing of that firm collected deportment which I expected would dignify
the presence of a secretary or minister. I looked for gravity, but a laxity of manner seemed shed about
him. He spoke almost without ceasing; but even his discourse partook of his personal demeanor.
It was loose and rambling; and yet he scattered information wherever he went, and some even bril-
liant sentiments sparkled from him."
The truth is that Jtfferson rose to greatness as a man of letters in only a very few of his com-
positions, and yet that hints of his powers are scattered widely in them. Moreover, the man himself
and his ideas are of the utmost significance in our intellectual and literary history, and the labor spent
in coming to know both is well spent. In his political opinions Jefferson was a follower of English
thinkers of the seventeenth century. Probably he learned something from James Harrington's Oceania;
certainly he learned much from Algernon Sydney and John Locke. He deeply hated tyranny and
all the outward symbols of power; he was confident of the fundamental integrity of average human
nature, and felt that at least the great majority of men would always think and act reasonably if only
they were sufficiently trusted. Like Franklin and other contemporaries, he was a believer in the
progress of the race, and confessed that he "liked the dreams of the future better than the history of
the past." Yet he was no doctrinaire, but showed himself a practical statesman in his readiness to
compromise wnth abstract principle whenever the concrete situations before him made that demand.
THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION
OF THE THIRTEEN UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA,^
When, in the course of human events, it
becomes necessary for one people to dissolve
the political bands which have connected
them with another, and to assume among
the powers of the earth the separate and
equal station to which the laws of nature
and of nature's God entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind requires
that they should declare the causes which
impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident:
1 On II June, 1776, the Continental Congress ap-
pointed Jefferson, John Adams, Franklin, Roger Sher-
man, and Robert R. Livingston a committee to draft
a declaration of the colonies' independence. The other
members asked Jefferson to undertake the task, and
he consented. The resulting Declaration is here
printed in the form in which the committee submitted
it to the Congress — i.e., substantially as Jefferson wrote
it, but embodying two small verbal changes made by
Adams and five made by Franklin. In addition, it
embodies nineteen changes (including three new para-
graphs) made by Jefferson in revising his first rough
draft. It is probable, though not certain, that Adams
and Franklin suggested some of these changes. The
portions of Jefferson's Declaration which the Congress
struck out are printed in italic letters, and substituted
words inserted by the Congress are given in footnotes.
Thus the Declaration as finally adopted can be read
by omitting all italicized words and including those in
the footnotes.
that all men are created equal; that they
are endowed by their Creator with inherent
and inalienable'^ rights; that among these
are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;
that to secure these rights, governments
are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the gov-
erned; that whenever any form of govern-
ment becomes destructive of these ends, it
is the right of the people to alter or to abolish
it, and to institute new go%^ernment, laying
its foundation on such principles, and or-
ganizing its powers in such form, as to them
shall seem most likely to effect their safety
and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dic-
tate that governments long established
should not be changed for light and transient
causes; and accordingly all experience hath
shown that mankind are more disposed to
suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to
right themselves by abolishing the forms to
which they are accustomed. But when a
long train of abuses and usurpations, begun
at a distinguished period and pursuing in-
variably the same object, evinces a design
to reduce them under absolute despotism,
it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off
such government, and to provide new
guards for their future security. Such has
been the patient sufferance of these colonies,
2 certain unalienable.
i6o
HOMAS JEFFERSON
and such is now the necessity which con-
strains them to rxpungf^ their former sys-
tems of ^oNcrnment. The history of the
present King of (Jreat Britain is a history of
unremitting- injuries and usurpations, among
which appears no solitary fact to contradict
the uniform tenor of the rest, but all have^ in
direct object the estabhshment of an abso-
lute tyranny over these states. lo prove
this, let facts be submitted to a candid
world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith
yet unsullied by falsehood.
He has refused his assent to laws the most
wholesome and necessary for the public
good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass
laws of immediate and pressing importance,
unless suspended in their operation till his
assent should be obtained; and, when so
suspended, he has neglected utterly'^ to attend
to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the
accommodation of large districts of people,
unless those people would relinquish the
right of representation in the legislature; a
right inestimable to them, and formidable
to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies
at places unusual, uncomfortable, and
distant from the depository of their public
records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing
them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses
repeatedly and continually for opposing
with manly firmness his invasions on the
rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time after such
dissolutions to cause others to be elected,
whereby the legislative powers, incapable
of annihilation, have returned to the people
at large for their exercise, the state remaining
in the meantime exposed to all the dangers
of invasion from without and convulsions
within.
He has endeavored to prevent the popula-
tion of these states; for that purpose ob-
structing the laws for naturalization of
foreigners, refusing to pass others to encour-
age their migrations hither, and raising the
conditions of new appropriations of lands.
> alter.
* repeated.
' having.
* utterly neglected.
He has suffered^ the administration of
justice totally to cease in some of these states,^
refusing his assent to laws for establishing
judiciary powers.
He has made our judges dependent on his
will alone for the tenure of their offices, and
the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices
by a self-assumed power^ and sent hither
swarms of new officers to harass our people
and eat out their substance.
He has kept among 'us in times of peace
standing armies and ships of war^ without
the consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the military
independent of, and superior to, the civil
power.
He has combined with others to subject us
to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions
and unacknowledged by our laws, giving
his assent to their acts of pretended legisla-
tion for quartering large bodies of armed
troops among us; for protecting them by a
mock-trial from punishment for any murders
which they should commit on the inhabit-
ants of these states; for cutting off our
trade with all parts of the world; for impos-
ing taxes on us without our consent; for
depriving us"^ of the benefits of trial by jury;
for transporting us beyond seas to be tried
for pretended offenses; for abolishing the
free system of English laws in a neighboring
province, establishing therein an arbitrary
government, and enlarging its boundaries,
so as to render it at once an example and
fit instrument for introducing the same
absolute rule into these states^\ for taking
away our charters, abolishing our most
valuable laws, and altering fundamentally
the forms of our governments; for suspend-
ing our own legislatures, and declaring
themselves invested with power to legislate
for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, with-
drawing his governors,, and declaring us out
of his allegiance and protection.'^
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our
coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the
lives of our people.
6 obstructed. « by.
' in many cases.
8 colonies.
» by declaring us out of his protection and waging
war against us.
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
i6i
He is at this time transporting large
armies of foreign mercenaries to complete
the works of death, desolation, and tyranny
already begun with circumstances of cruelty
and perfidy^ unworthy the head of a civilized
nation.
He has constrained others^ taken captive/
on the high seas to bear arms against their
country, to become the executioners of their
friends and brethren, or to fall themselves
by their hands.
He has^ endeavored to bring on the
inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless
Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare
is an undistinguished destruction of all ages,
sexes, and conditions of existence.
He has incited treasonable insurrections of
our fellow-citizens, with the allurements of
forfeiture and confiscation of property.
He has waged cruel war against human
nature itself, violating its most sacred rights
of life and liberty in the persons of a distant
people who never offended him, captivating
and carrying them into slavery in another
hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their
transportation thither. This piratical war-
fare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the
warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain.
Determined to keep open a market where men
should be bought and sold, he has prostituted
his negative for suppressing every legislative
attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable
commerce. And that this assemblage of
horrors might want no fact of distinguished
die, he is now exciting those very people to
rise in arms among us, and to purchase that
liberty of which he has deprived them, by
murdering the people upon whom he also
obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes
committed against the liberties of one people
with crimes which he urges them to commit
against the lives of another.
In every stage of these oppressions we
have petitioned for redress in the most
humble terms; our repeated petitions have
been answered only by repeated injury. A
prince whose character is thus marked by
1 scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and
totally.
2 our fellow-citizens. {This paragraph is printed in
the position to which the Congress shifted it. In Jeffer-
son's draft it stands below the second following paragraph^
beginning, He has incited treasonable insurrections,
etc.)
' excited domestic insurrections amongst us and has.
every act which may define a tyrant is unfit
to be the ruler of 2^ people who mean to be
free. Future ages will scarcely believe that the
hardiness of one man adventured, within the
short compass of twelve years only, to build a
foundation so broad and undisguised for
tyranny over a people fostered and fixed in
principles of freedom.
Nor have we been wanting in attentions
to our British brethren. We have warned
them from time to time of attempts by their
legislature to extend a^ jurisdiction over
these our states.^ We have reminded them
of the circumstances of our emigration and
settlement here, no one of which could warrant
so strange a pretension; that these were
effected at the expense of our own blood and
treasure, unassisted by the wealth or the
strength of Great Britain; that in constituting
indeed our several forms of government, we
had adopted one common king, thereby laying
a foundation for perpetual league and amity
with them; but that submission to their par-
liament was no part of our constitution, nor
ever in idea, if history may be credited; and
we^ appealed to their native justice and
magnanimity as well as to^ the ties of our
common kindred to disavow these usurpa-
tions which were likely to^ interrupt our
connections^ and correspondence. They, too,
have been deaf to the voice of justice and of
consanguinity, and when occasions have been
given them, by the regular course of their laws,
of removing from th'eir councils the disturbers
of our harmony, they have, by their free elec-
tion, re-established them in power. At this
very time, too, they are permitting their chief
magistrate to send over not only soldiers of our
common blood, but Scotch and foreign mer-
cenaries to invade and destroy us. These
facts have given the last stab to agonizing
affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce
for ever these unfeeling brethren. We must
endeavor to forget our former love for them and
to hold them as we hold the rest of mankind^
enemies in war, in peace friends. We might
have been a free and a great people together;
but a communication of grandeur and of
* free.
* an unwarrantable.
« us.
^ have.
8 and we have conjured them by.
» would inevitably.
10 connections.
1 6.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
jreedom, it seems, is belozu their dignity. Be
it sn, since they will have it. The road in
happiness and to glory is open to us too. He
^vill climb it apart from them, and^ acquiesce
in the necessity wliicli denounces our eternal
separation.-
\Ve, therefore, the Representatives of the
United States of America, in General Con-
gress asseiiibled,2 Jo, in the name, and by
authority of the good people of these states,
reject and renounce all allegiance and subjec-
tion to the Kings oj Great Britain and all
others who may hereafter claim by, through, or
under them; zue utterly dissolve all political
connection which may heretofore have sub-
sisted between us and the people or Parliament
of Great Britain; and, finally, we do assert
and declare these colonies to be free and in-
dependent States,* and that as free and
independent states, they have full power to
levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances,
establish commerce, and to do all other acts
and things which independent states may of
right do. And for the support of this
declaration,-^ we mutually pledge to each
other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred
honor.
FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS"
Friends and Fellow-Citizens:
Called upon to undertake the duties of the
first executive office of our country, I avail
myself of the presence -of that portion of
my fellow-citizens which is here assembled
to express my grateful thanks for the favor
> We must, therefore,
2 and hold tht:m, as we hold the rest of mankind,
enemies in war, in peace friends.
' appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for
the rectitude of our intentions.
* colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these
united colonies are and of right ought to be free and
independent states; that t.hey are absolved from all
allegiance to the British Crown; and that ail political
connection between them and the state of Great Brit-
ain is and ought to be totally dissolved;
' with a firm reliance on the protection of divine
Providence.
•Delivered 4 March, 1 801. An extraordinarily
bitter conflict of opinion preceded Jefferson's presi-
dency, and his election was looked upon by himself and
his followers as a veritable, though fortunately peace-
ful, revolution — a triumph of simple republicanis^T»
over monarchical ambition. It has been remarked
that the fundamental nature of the change which had
taken place would scarcely be guessed by the unin-
structed reader of this Address. Jefferson did not re-
with which they have been pleased to look
towards me, to declare a smcere conscious-
ness that the task is above my talents, and
that I approach it with those anxious and
awful presentiments which the greatness of
the charge, and the weakness of my powers,
so justly inspire. A rising nation, spread
over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all
the seas with the rich productions of their
industry, engaged in commerce with nations
who feel power and forget right, advancing
rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of
mortal eye; when I contemplate these
transcendent objects, and see the honor,
the happiness, and the hopes of this beloved
country committed to the issue and the
auspices of this day, I shrink from the
contemplation, and humble myself before
the magnitude of the undertaking. Utterly,
indeed, should I despair, did not the presence
of many whom I here see, remind me that,
in the other high authorities provided by
our Constitution, I shall find resources of
wisdom, of virtue, and of zeal, on which to
rely under all difficulties. To you, then,
gentlemen, who are charged with the sover-
eign functions of legislation, and to those
associated with you, I look with encourage-
ment for that guidance and support which
may enable us to steer with safety the vessel
in which we are all embarked, amidst the
conflicting elements of a troubled world.
During the contest of opinion through
which we have passed, the animation of
discussions and of exertions has sometimes
worn an aspect which might impose on
strangers unused to think freely, and to
speak and to write what they think; but
this being now decided by the voice of the
nation, announced according to the rules of
the Constitution, all will of course arrange
themselves under the will of the law, and
unite in common efforts for the common
good. All too will bear in mind this sacred
principle, that though the will of the majority
is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be
rightful, must be reasonable; that the
minority possess their equal rights, which
equal laws must protect, and to violate
veal his full mind, nor deliver an exultant manifesto,
because it was now his purpose, as the unquestioned
victor, not only to treat his opponents tolerantly, but
also to try to win the whole country to united support
of the Republic.
FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS
163
which would be oppression. Let us, then,
fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and
one mind, let us restore to social intercourse
that harmony and affection without which
liberty, and even life itself, are but dreary
things. And let us reflect that, having
banished from our land that religious in-
tolerance under which mankind so long bled
and suffered, we have yet gained little, if
we countenance a political intolerance, as
despotic as wicked, and capable of as bitter
and bloody persecutions. During the throes
and convulsions of the ancient world, ^
during the agonized spasms of infuriated
man, seeking through blood and slaughter
his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful
that the agitation of the billows should
reach even this distant and peaceful shore;
that this should be felt and feared by some,
and less by others, and should divide opin-
ions as to measures of safety; but every
difference of opinion is not a difference of
principle. We have called by different
names brethren of the same principle. We
are all Republicans; we are all Federalists.
If there be any among us who wish to dis-
solve this Union, or to change its Republican
form, let them stand undisturbed as monu-
ments of the safety with which error of
opinion may be tolerated, where reason is
left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that
some honest men fear that a Republican
government cannot be strong; that this
government is not strong enough. But
would the honest patriot, in the full tide
of successful experiment, abandon a govern-
ment which has so far kept us free and firm,
on the theoretic and visionary fear that
this government, the world's best hope,
may, by possibility, want energy to preserve
itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the
contrary, the strongest government on
earth. I believe it the only one where every
man, at the call of the law, would fly to the
standard of the law, and would meet the
invasions of the public order as his own
personal concern. Sometimes it is said that
man cannot be trusted with the government
of himself. Can he then be trusted with the
government of others? Or, have we found
angels in the form of kings, to govern him?
Let history answer this question.
1 /.., during the French Revolution.
Let us, then, with courage and confidence,
pursue our own Federal and Republican
principles; our attachment to union and
representative government. Kmdly sepa-
rated by nature and a wide ocean from
the exterminating havoc of one-(juarter of
the globe; too high-minded to endure the
degradations of the others; possessing a
chosen country, with room enough for our
descendants to the thousandth and thou-
sandth generation; entertaining a due sense
of our equal right to the use of our own
faculties, to the acquisitions of our own
industry, to honor and confidence from our
fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth,
but from our actions and our sense of them;
enlightened by a benign religion, professed
indeed and practiced in various forms, yet
all of them inculcating honesty, truth,
temperance, gratitude, and the love of man;
acknowledging and adoring an overruling
Providence, which, by all its dispensations,
proves that it delights in the happiness of
man here, and his greater happiness here-
after; with all these blessings, what more is
necessary to make us a happy and prosper-
ous nation? Still one thing more, fellow-
citizens, a wise and frugal government which
shall restrain men from injuring one another,
shall leave them free to regulate their own
pursuit of industry and improvement, and
shall not take from the mouth of labor
the bread it has earned. This is the sum
of good government; and this is necessary
to close the circle of our felicities.
About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the
exercise of duties which comprehend every-
thing dear and valuable to you, it is proper
you should understand what I deem the
essential principles of this government, and
consequently those which ought to shape
Its administration. I will compress them
within the narrowest compass they will
bear, stating the general principle, but not
all its limitations. Equal and exact justice
to all men, of whatever state or persuasion,
religious or political; peace, commerce, and
honest friendship with all nations, entangling
alliances with none; the support of the
State governments in all their rights, as the
most competent administrations for our
domestic concerns, and the surest bulwarks
against anti-Republican tendencies; the
preservation of the general government In
164
THOMAS JEFFERSON
its whole constitutional vipor, as the sheet-
anchor of our pence at home, and safety
abrcKul; a jealous care of the rij^ht of elec-
tion hy the people, a mild and safe corrective
of abuses which are lopped by the sword of
revolution where peaceable remedies are
unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the
decisions of the majority, the vital principle
of republics, from which [there] is no appeal
but to force, the vital principle and immedi-
ate parent of despotism; a well-disciplined
militia, our best reliance in peace, and for
the first moments of war, till regulars may
relieve them; the supremacy of the civil
over the military authority; economy in the
public expense, that labor may be lightly
burdened; the honest payment of our debts
and sacred preservation of the public faith;
encouragement of agriculture, and of com-
merce as its handmaid; the diffusion of
information, and arraignment of all abuses
at the bar of the public reason; freedom of
religion; freedom of the press; and freedom
of person, under the protection of the habeas
corpus; and trial by juries .impartially
selected. These principles form the bright
constellation which has gone before us, and
guided our steps through an age of revolu-
tion and reformation. The wisdom of our
sages, and blood of our heroes, have been
devoted to their attainment; they should
be the creed of our political faith, the text of
civic instruction, the touchstone by which
to try the services of those we trust; and
should we wander from them, in moments
of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace
our steps and to regain the road which alone
leads to peace, liberty, and safety.
I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post
you have assigned me. With experience
enough in subordinate stations to know the
difficulties of this, the greatest of all, I have
learned to expect that it will rarely fall to the
lot of imperfect man to retire from this
station with the reputation and the favor
which bring him into it. Without preten-
sions to that high confidence you reposed in
our first and greatest revolutionary charac-
ter, whose pre-eminent services had entitled
him to the first place in his country's love,
and had destined for him the fairest page
in the volume of faithful history, I ask so
much confidence only as may give firmness
and eflPect to the legal administration of your
affairs. I shall often go wrong through
defect of judgment. When right, I shall
often be thought wrong by those whose
positions will not command a view of the
whole ground. I ask your indulgence for
my own errors, which will never be inten-
tional; and your support against the errors
of others, who may condemn what they
would not, if seen in all its parts. The
approbation implied by your suffrage is a
great consolation to me for the past; and
my future solicitude will be to retain the
good opinion of those who have bestowed
it in advance, to conciliate that of others,
by doing them all the good in my power,
and to be instrumental to the happiness and
freedom of all.
Relying, then, on the patronage of your
good-will, I advance with obedience to the
work, ready to retire from it whenever you
become sensible how much better choice it
is in your power to make. And may that
Infinite Power which rules the destinies of
the universe lead our councils to what is
best, and give them a favorable issue for
your peace and prosperity.
CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON^
You say that in taking General Washing-
ton on your shoulders, to bear him harmless
through the federal coalition, you encounter
a perilous topic. I do not think so. You
have given the genuine history of the course
of his mind through the trying scenes in
which it was engaged, and of the seductions
by which it was deceived, but not depraved.
I think I knew General Washington inti-
mately and thoroughly; and were I called
on to delineate his character, it should be
in terms like these.
His mind was great and powerful, w^ithout
being of the very first order; his penetration
1 From a letter written to Walter Jones, 2 January,
1 8 14. Jones had written a paper deploring the low
condition of newspapers and attributing it to violent
and malignant party spirit. He apparently included
in his paper some mention of Washington as an in-
stance of a man deceived by unscrupulous federalist
machinations, but fundamentally true to republican
principles and loyal to the Constitution. And he re-
garded this as "perilous" because he wondered if
Washington's last years did not prove that he had be-
come a convinced anti-republican — no longer a national
leader, but the head of a party opposed to the Con-
stitution.
CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON
165
stronp;, thousli not so acute as that of a
Newton, Bacon, or Locke; and as far as he
saw, no judgment was ever sounder. It
was slow in operation, being Httle aided by
invention or imagination, but sure in con-
clusion. Hence the common remark of his
officers, of the advantage he derived from
councils of war, where, hearing all sugges-
tions, he selected whatever was best; and
certainly no General ever planned his
battles more judiciously. But if deranged
during the course of the action, if any mem-
ber of his plan was dislocated by sudden
circumstances, he was slow in re-adjustment.
The consequence was that he often failed in
the field, and rarely against an enemy in
station, as at Boston and York. He was
incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers
with the calmest unconcern. Perhaps the
strongest feature in his character was pru-
dence, never acting until every circum-
stance, every consideration, was maturely
weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but,
when once decided, going through with his
purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His
integrity was most pure, his justice the most
inflexible I have ever known, no motives of
interest or consanguinity, of friendship or
hatred, being able to bias his decision. He
was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a
wise, a good, and a great man. His temper
was naturally high toned; but reflection and
resolution had obtained a firm and habitual
ascendancy over it. If ever, however, it
broke its bonds, he was most tremendous in
his wrath. In his expenses he was honorable,
but exact; liberal in contributions to what-
ever promised utility; but frowning and
unyielding on all visionary projects and all
unworthy calls on his charity. His heart
was not warm in its affections; but he
exactly calculated every man's value, and
gave him a solid esteem proportioned to it.
His person, you know, was fine, his stature
exactly what one would wish, his deport-
ment easy, erect, and noble; the best horse-
man, of his age, and the most graceful figure
that could be seen on horseback. Although
in the circle of his friends, where he might be
unreserved with safety, he took a free share
in conversation, his colloquial talents were
not above mediocrity, possessing neither
copiousness of ideas, nor fluency of words.
In public, when called on for a sudden
opinion, he was unready, short, and em-
barrassed. Yet he wrote readily, rather
diffusely, in an easy and correct style. This
he had acquired by conversation with the
world, for his education was merely reading,
writing, and common arithmetic, to which
he added surveying at a later day. His time
was employed in action chiefly, reading
little, and that only in agriculture and Eng-
lish history. His correspondence became
necessarily extensive, and, with journalizing
his agricultural proceedings, occupied most
of his leisure hours within doors. On the
whole, his character was, in its mass, per-
fect, in nothing bad, in few points indiffer-
ent; and it may truly be said that never
did nature and fortune combine more per-
fectly to make a man great, and to place
him in the same constellation with whatever
worthies have merited from man an ever-
lasting remembrance. For his was the
singular destiny and merit of leading the
armies of his country successfully through
an arduous war, for the establishment of its
independence; of conducting its councils
through the birth of a government, new in
its forms and principles, until it had settled
down into a quiet and orderly train; and
of scrupulously obeying the laws through
the whole of his career, civil and military,
of which the history of the world furnishes
no other example.
How, then, can it be perilous for you to
take such a man on your shoulders .f* I am
satisfied the great body of republicans think
of him as I do. We were, indeed, dissatisfied
with him on his ratification of the British
treaty. But this was short-lived. We knew
his honesty, the wiles with which he was
encompassed, and that age had already
begun to relax the firmness of his purposes;
and I am convinced he is more deeply seated
in the love and gratitude of the republicans
than in the Pharisaical homage of the
federal monarchists. For he was no mon-
archist from preference of his judgment.
The soundness of that gave him correct
views of the rights of man, and his severe
justice devoted him to them. He has often
declared to me that he considered our new
constitution as an experiment on the practic-
ability of republican government, and with
what dose of liberty man could be trusted
for his own good; that he was determined
l6(j
IHOMAS jKMKRSON
the experiment should li;i\e ;i r;iir trial, and
would lose tin- List tlroj-i of his hlood in sup-
port of it. And these declarations he re-
peated to me the oftcner and more pointedly,
because he knew my suspicions of Colonel
Hamilton's views, and probably had heard
from him the same declarations which I had,
to wit, "that the British constitution, with
its unequal rejiresentation, corruption and
other existing abuses, was the most perfect
government which had ever been established
on earth, and that a reformation of those
abuses would make it an impracticable
government/' I do believe that General
Washington had not a firm confidence in
the durability of our government. He was
naturally distrustful of men, and inclined to
gloomy apprehensions; and I was ever
persuaded that a belief that we must at
length end in something like a British con-
stitution, had some weight in his adoption
of the ceremonies of levees, birthdays, pomp-
ous meetings with Congress, and other forms
of the same chara:ter, calculated to prepare
us gradually for a change which he believed
possible, and to let it come on with as little
shock as might be to the public mind.
1 hesc are my opinions of General Wash-
ington, which I would vouch at the judg-
ment-seat of Ciod, having been formed on
an acquaintance of thirty years. 1 served
with him in the Virginia legislature from
1769 to the Revolutionary war, and again,
a short time in Congress, until he left us to
take command of the army. During the
war and after it we corresponded occasion-
ally, and in the four years of my continuance
in the office of Secretary of State our inter-
course was daily, confidential, and cordial.
After I retired from that office, great and
malignant pains were taken by our federal
monarchists, and not entirely without
effect, to make him view me as a theorist,
holding French principles of government,
which would lead infallibly to licentiousness
and anarchy. And to this he listened the
more easily, from my known disapprobation
of the British treaty. I never saw him after-
wards, or these malignant insinuations
should have been dissipated before his just
judgment, as mists before the sun. I felt
on his death, with my countrymen, that
"verily a great man hath fallen this day in
Israel."
ALEXANDER HAMILTON (1757-1804)
Hamilton was born on ii January, 1757, on the island of Nevis, British West Indies. His father
was a Scotch merchant, his mother probably a Frenchwoman. Their union is thought to have been
informal, and the father soon disappeared, not to be heard from until many years later, when he wrote
to his son from South America, and received money from him. The mother is said to have died while
her child was still very young, and he was brought up by maternal relatives living on the island of
Santa Cruz. Those relatives put him, at the age of twelve, in the employ of a merchant to earn his
living. During the next four years he gave such evident signs of ability that friends raised a fund
to enable him to go to America for a liberal education. In the fall of 1772 he arrived in Boston, and
made his way to New Jersey to prepare himself for college. In the following year he sought to enter
the college at Princeton, but — his plans being considered impracticable by President Witherspoon —
he turned instead to King's (now Columbia) College in New York. The youth was precocious, self-
confident, and ambitious. He wrote to a friend that he would willingly risk his life, though not his
character, to exalt his station, and he added: "I wish there was a war!" The war was now approach-
ing, and Hamilton, after some hesitation, made up his mind that the "sacred rights" of the colonists
"are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity
itself, and can never be erased by mortal power." He threw aside his studies, spoke and wrote elo-
quently against British rule, and was soon welcomed by New Yorkers as an able and helpful patriot.
In 1776 he joined the war as commander of a New York artillery company, and in the following year
he was made a member of Washington's staff. It was a swift rise in the world, and he made the most
of it by cultivating influential friends. In 1780 he consolidated it by marrying Elizabeth, daughter of
the wealthy and socially secure General Philip Schuyler. Beyond doubt he cherished a true affection
for his wife, though not one sufficiently constant to prevent infidelity, and not one which he had per-
mitted himself to encourage without thought for his career.
Hamilton quitted the army immediately after the siege of Yorktown, and proceeded to study the
law in New York. He was admitted to practice in 1782. His private work was soon interrupted,
however, by appointment to office. He was made a receiver of taxes, then a delegate to the Continental
Congress, then a member of the New York legislature, and, in 1787, a delegate to the Convention which
framed the federal Constitution. Before this there had been signs that, following his establishment
of his social position, he considered it safe to exhibit his imperious nature and his distrust of "the peo-
ple." He was an admirer of the British form of government, and he now laid before the Convention a
plan which would have insured a strong, centralized, aristocratic government for America. He pro-
posed what was, in everything but name, a constitutional monarchy, under which the states would
have tended practically to disappear; and in his advocacy of his plan he avowed his belief in hereditary
kingship. The plan had no chance of success — even though by this time many delegates shared Ham-
ilton's lack of faith in "the people" — and he had the good sense to accept the feeble approximation
to his proposals upon which the Convention finally agreed. He signed the Constitution as the only
practicable alternative to "anarchy and convulsion," though, it must be added, he also hoped it was
not a permanent instrument, and hoped to be able to steer the new government towards his own ideal.
Meanwhile, however, he did more than sign the Constitution. He threw himself into the fight
for its ratification, and, with James Madison (who, more nearly than anyone else, was the Constitu-
tion's author), wrote a series of brief essays which were a combined defense and explanation of the
instrument. These essays, 85 in number, are known as The Federalist. They were published in New
York newspapers in the winter of 1787-1788 (republished in two volumes, 1788 — save for the last eight
essays, which appeared in Vol. II before their newspaper publication). In New York the opposition
to the new plan of government was specially bitter and well-organized, but it extended throughout
the thirteen states, and The Federalist was read and was influential everywhere. It was so effective
for its immediate purpose that it probably did more than all else attempted to bring about ratification;
and, in addition, it has become recognized as the world's most important treatise on federal govern-
ment. Moreover, it is soundly, at times even brilliantly, written, and it deserves the secure place it
has been universally accorded in American literature. And for this high achievement credit is due
chiefly to Hamilton who, for the time casting aside his own ideals, put all his energy and all his g^eat
167
1 68
ALEXANDER HAMILTON
ability and clcar-sijihtcd discernment at the service of the common cause of order and security. Of
the Si; essays Hamilton certainly wrote 51 (from which the four here reproduced are selected), Madi-
son fourteen, and John Jay five. Hamilton and Madison jointly wrote three. The authorship of the
remaining twelve cannot be conclusively determined, but rests between Hamilton and Madison, with
the probabilities inclining towards Hamilton for the greater number of them.
Nor did Hamilton's services in the founding of the United States end with The Federalist^ though
his contributions to it constitute his most distinguished literary performance. Upon the election of
Washington to the presidency, Hamilton was at once appointed Secretary of the Treasury (1789),
and this post he held until January, 1795. His conduct of his office was characteristically high-handed,
and the execution of his plans worked grave injustice to a multitude of poor people, but, nevertheless,
he triumphantly performed the almost miraculous feat of quickly restoring the credit of the national
government, and so of placing it from the start on a sound financial basis.
In 1798 Hamilton did all that he could to promote a war against France, believing, apparently,
that thus an opportunity would be afforded to strengthen the national government, and hoping to
vindicate his life-long conviction that he was a born military genius. His efforts for war were fortu-
nately unsuccessful, as were likewise his efforts to control the national election of 1800. In 1804 he
was mortally wounded in a duel with his political opponent, Aaron Burr, and died on 12 July.
From 1789 to the present day he has had his idolatrous followers who have exalted him as the
greatest figure of his time. He has, indeed, proved an excellent subject for romantic biography, but
his worshipers have done much to obscure his real character and have helped to bring on a reaction
against their hero. Jefferson, who was violently abused by Hamilton, and who himself detested Ham-
ilton's political principles, nevertheless described him as "of acute understanding, disinterested, honest
and honorable in all private transactions, amiable in society, and duly valuing virtue in private life."
And Hamilton was more than this: he was a brave soldier, a financial genius, a phenomenal worker,
and a brilliant writer. But he was also determined upon winning personal glory, capable of using
even those to whom he owed most as tools, fanatically self-confident and correspondingly contemptuous
of all opposition, and unscrupulous in the execution of his aims.
THE FEDERALIST!
XV. THE INSUFFICIENCY OF THE
PRESENT CONFEDERATION TO
PRESERVE THE UNION
To the People of the State of Nezv York.
In the course of the preceding papers, I
have endeavored, my fellow-citizens, to
place before you, in a clear and convincing
light, the importance of Union to your
political safety and happiness. I have un-
folded to you a complication of dangers
to which you would be exposed, should you
permit that sacred knot which binds the
people of America together to be severed or
dissolved by ambition or by avarice, by
jealousy or by misrepresentation. In the
sequel of the inquiry through which I pro-
pose to accompany you, the truths intended
to be inculcated will receive further confir-
mation from facts and arguments hitherto
unnoticed. If the road over which you will
still have to pass should in some places
appear to you tedious or irksome, you will
recollect that you are in quest of informa-
1 All of the essays, regardless of authorship, were,
when first published, signed "Publius."
tion on a subject the most momentous which
can engage the attention of a free people,
that the field through which you have to
travel is in itself spacious, and that the
difficulties of the journey have been un-
necessarily increased by the mazes with
which sophistry has beset the way. It will
be my aim to remove the obstacles from
your progress in as compendious a manner
as it can be done, without sacrificing utility
to dispatch.
In pursuance of the plan which I have laid
down for the discussion of the subject, the
point next in order to be examined is the
"insufficiency of the present Confederation
to the preservation of the Union." It may
perhaps be asked what need there is of
reasoning or proof to illustrate a position
which is not either controverted or doubted,
to which the understandings and feelings
of all classes of men assent, and which in
substance is admitted by the opponents as
well as by the friends of the new Constitu-
tion. It must in truth be acknowledged
that, however these may differ in other
respects, they in general appear to harmonize
in this sentiment, at least, that there are
material imperfections in our national sys-
THE FEDERALIST
169
tern, and that something is necessary to be
done to rescue us from impending anarchy.
The facts that support this opinion are no
longer objects of speculation. They have
forced themselves upon the sensibility of
the people at large, and have at length
extorted from those, whose mistaken policy
has had the principal share in precipitating
the extremity at v^hich we are arrived, a
reluctant confession of the reality of those
defects in the scheme of our federal govern-
ment, which have been long pointed out
and regretted by the intelligent friends of
the Union.
We may indeed with propriety be said
to have reached almost the last stage of
national humiliation. There is scarcely
anything that can wound the pride or de-
grade the character of an independent
nation which we do not experience. Are
there engagements to the performance of
which we are held by every tie respectable
among men? These are the subjects of
constant and unblushing violation. Do
we owe debts to foreigners and to our own
citizens contracted in a time of imminent
peril for the preservation of our political
existence? These remain without any proper
or satisfactory provision for their discharge.
Have we valuable territories and important
posts in the possession of a foreign power
which, by express stipulations, ought long
since to have been surrendered? These are
still retained, to the prejudice of our inter-
ests, not less than of our rights. Are we in
a condition to resent or to repel the aggres-
sion? We have neither troops, nor treasury,
nor government.! Are we even in a con-
dition to remonstrate with dignity? The
just imputations on our own faith, in respect
to the same treaty, ought first to be re-
moved. Are we entitled by nature and
compact to a free participation in the navi-
gation of the Mississippi? Spain excludes
us from it. Is public credit an indispensable
resource in time of public danger? We seem
to have abandoned its cause as desperate
and irretrievable. Is commerce of im-
portance to national wealth? Ours is at
the lowest point of declension. Is respecta-
bility in the eyes of foreign powers a safe-
guard against foreign encroachments? The
1 1 mean for the Union. (Hamilton's note.)
imbecility of our government even forbids
them to treat with us. Our ambassadors
abroad are the mere pageants of mimic
sovereignty. Is a violent and unnatural
decrease in the value of land a symptom of
national distress? The price of improved
land in most parts of the country is much
lower than can be accounted for by the
quantity of waste land at market, and can
only be fully explained by that want of
private and public confidence which are so
alarmingly prevalent among all ranks, and
which have a direct tendency to depreciate
property of every kind. Is private credit
the friend and patron of industry? That
most useful kind which relates to borrowing
and lending is reduced within the narrowest
limits, and this still more from an opinion
of insecurity than from the scarcity of
money. To shorten an enumeration of par-
ticulars which can afford neither pleasure
nor instruction, it may in general be de-
manded, what indication is there of national
disorder, poverty, and insignificance that
could befall a community so peculiarly
blessed with natural advantages as we are,
which does not form a part of the dark
catalogue of our public misfortunes?
This is the melancholy situation to which
we have been brought by those very maxims
and councils which would now deter us from
adopting the proposed Constitution; and
which, not content with having conducted
us to the brink of a precipice, seem resolved
to plunge us into the abyss that awaits us
below. Here, my countrymen, impelled by
every motive that ought to influence an
enlightened people, let us make a firm stand
for our safety, our tranquillity, our dignity,
our reputation. Let us at last break the
fatal charm which has too long seduced us
from the paths of felicity and prosperity.
It is true, as has been before observed,
that facts, too stubborn to be resisted, have
produced a species of general assent to the
abstract proposition that there exist ma-
terial defects in our national system; but
the usefulness of the concession, on the part
of the old adversaries of federal measures,
is destroyed by a strenuous opposition to a
remedy, upon the only principles that can
give it a chance of success. While they
admit that the government of the United
States is destitute of energy, they contend
I70
ALEXANDER HAMILTON
apainst conferring upon it those powers
which are requisite to supply that energy.
They seem still to aim at things repugnant
and irreconcihihle; at an augmentation of
federal authority, without a diminution of
State authority; at sovereignty in the
Union, and complete independence in the
members. They still, in fine, seem to cherish
with blind devotion the political monster of
an imperium in imperio.^ This renders a
full display of the principal defects of the
Confederation necessary, in order to show
that the evils we experience do not proceed
fr6m minute or partial imperfections, but
from fundamental errors in the structure
of the building, which cannot be amended
otherwise than by an alteration in the first
principles and main pillars of the fabric.
The great and radical vice in the con-
struction of the existing Confederation is in
the principle of legislation for states or
GOVERNMENTS, in their corporate or col-
lective CAPACITIES, and as contradis-
tinguished from the individuals of which
they consist. Though this principle does
not run through all the powers delegated
to the Union, yet it pervades and governs
those on w^hich the efficacy of the rest de-
pends. Except as to the rule of apportion-
ment, the United States has an indefinite
discretion to make requisitions for men and
money; but they have no authority to
raise either, by regulations extending to the
individual citizens of America. The conse-
quence of this is, that though in theory their
resolutions concerning those objects are laws,
constitutionally binding on the members of
the Union, yet in practice they are mere
recommendations which the States observe
or disregard at their option.
It is a singular instance of the capricious-
ness of the human mind, that, after all the
admonitions we have had from experience
on this head, there should still be found men
who object to the new Constitution for
deviating from a principle which has been
found the bane of the old, and which is in
itself evidently incompatible with the idea
of government; a principle, in short, which,
if it is to be executed at all, must substitute
the violent and sanguinary agency of the
sword to the mild influence of the magistracy.
* A sovereignty within a sovereignty.
There is nothing absurd or impracticable
in the idea of a league or alliance between
independent nations for certain defined pur-
poses precisely stated in a treaty regulating
all the details of time, place, circumstance,
and quantity; leaving nothing to future
discretion; and depending for its execution
on the good faith of the parties. Compacts
of this kind exist among all civilized nations,
subject to the usual vicissitudes of peace
and war, of observance and non-observance,
as the interests or passions of the con-
tracting powers dictate. In the early part
of the present century there was an epi-
demical rage in Europe for this species of
compacts, from which the politicians of the
times fondly hoped for benefits which were
never realized. With a view to establishing
the equilibrium of power and the peace of
that part of the world, all the resources of
negotiation were exhausted, and triple and
quadruple alliances were formed; but thty
were scarcely formed before they were
broken, giving an instructive but afflicting
lesson to mankind, how little dependence
is to be placed on treaties which have no
other sanction than the obligations of good
faith, and which oppose general considera-
tions of peace and justice to the impulse of
any immediate interest or passion.
If the particular States in this country are
disposed to stand in a similar relation to
each other, and to drop the project of a
general discretionary superintendence, the
scheme would indeed be pernicious, and
would entail upon us all the mischiefs which
have been enumerated under the first head;
but it would have the merit of being, at
least, consistent and practicable. Aban-
doning all views towards a confederate
government, this would bring us to a simple
alliance offensive and defensive; and would
place us in a situation to be alternate friends
and enemies of each other, as our mutual
jealousies and rivalships, nourished by the
intrigues of foreign nations, should prescribe
to us.
But if we are unwilling to be placed in
this perilous situation; if we still will adhere
to the design of a national government, or,
which is the same thing, of a superintending
power, under the direction of a common
council, we must resolve to incorporate into
our plan those ingredients which may be
THE FEDERALIST
171
considered as forming the characteristic
difference between a league and a govern-
ment; we must extend the authority of the
Union to the persons of the citizens — the
only proper objects of government.
Government imphes the power of making
laws. It is essential to the idea of a law
that it be attended with a sanction; or, in
others words, a penalty or punishment for
disobedience. If there be no penalty an-
nexed to disobedience, the resolutions or
commands which pretend to be laws will,
in fact, amount to nothing more than advice
or recommendation. This penalty, what-
ever it may be, can only be inflicted in two
ways: by the agency of the courts and minis-
ters of justice, or by military force; by the
coercion of the magistracy, or by the coercion
of arms. The first kind can evidently apply
only to men; the last kind must of necessity
be employed against bodies politic, or com-
munities, or States. It is evident that there
is no process of a court by which the observ-
ance of the laws can, in the last resort, be
enforced. Sentences may be denounced
against them for violations of their duty; but
these sentences can only be carried into
execution by the sword. In an association
where the general authority is confined to
the collective bodies of the communities that
compose it, every breach of the laws must
involve a state of war; and military execu-
tion must become the only instrument of
civil obedience. Such a state of things can
certainly not deserve the name of govern-
ment, nor would any prudent man choose to
commit his happiness to it.
There was a time when we were told that
breaches, by the States, of the regulations
of the federal authority were not to be
expected; that a sense of common interest
would preside over the conduct of the re-
spective members, and would beget a full
compliance with all the constitutional requi-
sitions of the Union. This language, at the
present day, would appear as wild as a great
part of what we now hear from the same
quarter will be thought, when we shall have
received further lessons from that best oracle
of wisdom, experience. It at all times be-
trayed an ignorance of the true springs by
which human conduct is actuated, and belied
the original inducements to the establish-
ment of civil power. Why has government
been instituted at all? Because the passions
of men will not conform to the dictates of
reason and justice, without constraint.
Has it been found that bodies of men act
with more rectitude or greater disinterest-
edness than individuals? The contrary of
this has been inferred by all accurate ob-
servers of the conduct of mankind; and the
inference is founded upon obvious reasons.
Regard to reputation has a less active in-
fluence, when the infamy of a bad action is
to be divided among a number, than when
it is to fall singly upon one. A spirit
of faction, which is apt to mingle its poison
in the deliberations of all bodies of men, will
often hurry the persons of whom they are
composed into improprieties and excesses,
for which they would blush in a private
capacity.
In addition to all this, there is, in the na-
ture of sovereign power, an impatience of con-
trol, that disposes those who are invested
with the exercise of it, to look with an
evil eye upon all external attempts to re-
strain or direct its operations. From this
spirit it happens that in every political as-
sociation which is formed upon the principle
of uniting in a common interest a number
of lesser sovereignties, there will be found a
kind of eccentric tendency in the subordinate
or inferior orbs, by the operation of which
there will be a perpetual effort in each to fly
off from the common center. This tendency
is not difficult to be accounted for. It has
its origin in the love of power. Power con-
trolled or abridged is almost always the
rival and enemy of that power by which it
is controlled or abridged. This simple propo-
sition will teach us how little reason there
is to expect that the persons intrusted with
the administration of the affairs of the par-
ticular members of a confederacy will at all
times be ready, with perfect good humor,
and an unbiased regard to the public weal,
to execute the resolutions or decrees of the
general authority. The reverse of this re-
sults from the constitution of human nature.
If, therefore, the measures of the Confed-
eracy cannot be executed without the inter-
vention of the particular administrations,
there will be little prospect of their being ex-
ecuted at all. The rulers of the respective
members, whether they have a constitutional
right to do it or not, will undertake to judge
172
ALF.XANDER HAMILTON
of the propriety of the measures themselves.
Thev will consider the conformity of the
thinp proposed or required to their immedi-
ate interests or aims; the momentary con-
veniences or inconveniences that would at-
tend its adoption. All this will be done; and
in a spirit of interested and suspicious scru-
tiny, without that knowledge of national cir-
cumstances and reasons of state, which is
essential to a right judgment, and with that
strong predilection in favor of local objects,
which can hardly fail to mislead the decision.
The same process must be repeated in every
member of which the body is constituted;
and the execution of the plans, framed by
the councils of the whole, will always fluc-
tuate on the discretion of the ill-informed
and prejudiced opinion of every part. Those
who have been conversant in the proceed-
ings of popular assemblies; who have seen
how difficult it often is, where there is no
exterior pressure of circumstances, to bring
them to harmonious resolutions on important
points, will readily conceive how impossible
it must be to induce a number of such as-
semblies, deliberating at a distance from
each other, at diflPerent times, and under dif-
ferent impressions, long to co-operate in the
same views and pursuits.
In our case, the concurrence of thirteen
distinct sovereign w^ills is requisite, under the
Confederation, to the complete execution of
every important measure that proceeds from
the Union. It has happened as was to have
been foreseen. The measures of the Union
have not been executed; the delinquencies
of the States have, step by step, matured
themselves to an extreme, which has, at
length, arrested all the wheels of the national
government, and brought them to an awful
stand. Congress at this time scarcely pos-
sess the means of keeping up the forms of ad-
ministration, till the States can have time to
agree upon a more substantial substitute for
the present shadow of a federal government.
Things did not come to this desperate ex-
tremity at once. The causes which have
been specified produced at first only unequal
and disproportionate degrees of compliance
with the requisitions of the Union. The
greater deficiencies of some States furnished
the pretext of example and the temptation of
interest to the complying, or to the least de-
linquent States. Why should we do more in
proportion than those who are embarked
w'ith us in the same political voyage.'' Why
should we consent to bear more than our
proper share of the common burden.'' These
were suggestions which human selfishness
could not withstand, and which even specu-
lative men, who looked forward to remote
consequences, could not, without hesitation,
combat. Each State, yielding to the per-
suasive voice of immediate interest or con-
venience, has successively withdrawn its
support, till the frail and tottering edifice
seems ready to fall upon our heads, and to
crush us beneath its ruins.
XVI. THE SAME SUBJECT CON-
TINUED
To the People of the State of New York:
The tendency of the principle of legislation
for States, or communities, in their politi-
cal capacities, as it has been exemplified
by the experiment we have made of it,
is equally attested by the events which have
befallen all other governments of the con-
federate kind of which we have any account,
in exact proportion to its prevalence in those
systems. The confirmations of this fact will
be worthy of a distinct and particular exam-
ination. I shall content myself with barely
observing here, that of all the confederacies
of antiquity which history has handed
down to us, the Lycian and Achaean leagues,
as far as there remain vestiges of them, ap-
pear to have been most free from the fetters
of that mistaken principle, and were accord-
ingly those w^hich have best deserved, and
have most liberally received, the applauding
suffrages of political writers.
This exceptionable principle may, as truly
as emphatically, be styled the parent of an-
archy: It has been seen that delinquencies
in the members of the Union are its natural
and necessary offspring; and that whenever
they happen the only constitutional remedy
is force, and the immediate effect of the use
of it, civil war.
It remains to inquire how far so odious an
engine of government, in its application to us,
would even be capable of answering its end.
If there should not be a large army constantly
at the disposal of the national government it
would either not be able to employ force at
all, or, when this could be done, it would
THE FEDERALIST
173
amount to a war between parts of the Con-
federacy concerning the infractions of a
league, in which the strongest combination
would be most Hkely to prevail, whether it
consisted of those who supported or of those
who resisted the general authority. It
would rarely happen that the delinquency to
be redressed would be confined to a single
member, and if there were more than one who
had neglected their duty, similarity of situa-
tion would induce them to unite for com-
mon defense. Independent of this motive of
sympathy, if a large and influential State
should happen to be the aggressing member,
it would commonly have weight enough with
its neighbors to win over some of them as as-
sociates to its cause. Specious arguments of
danger to the common liberty could easily be
contrived; plausible excuses for the deficien-
cies of the party could, without difficulty,
be invented to alarm the apprehensions,
inflame the passions, and conciliate the good-
will, even of those States which were not
chargeable with any violation or omission
of duty. This would be the more likely to
take place, as the delinquencies of the larger
members might be expected sometimes to
proceed from an ambitious premeditation in
their rulers, with a view to getting rid of all
external control upon their designs of per-
sonal aggrandizement; the better to effect
which it is presumable they would tamper
beforehand with leading individuals in the
adjacent States. If associates could not be
found at home, recourse would be had to the
aid of foreign powers, who would seldom be
disinclined to encouraging the dissensions of
a Confederacy from the firm union of which
they had so much to fear. When the sword
is once drawn, the passions of men observe no
bounds of moderation. The suggestions of
wounded pride, the instigations of irritated
resentment, would be apt to carry the States
against which the arms of the Union were
exerted to any extremes necessary to avenge
the aff^ront or to avoid the disgrace of sub-
mission. The first war of this kind would
probably terminate in a dissolution of the
Union.
This may be considered as the violent
death of the Confederacy. Its more natural
death is what we now seem to be on the point
of experiencing, if the federal system be not
speedily renovated in a more substantial
form. It is not probable, considering the
genius of this country, that the complying
States would often be inclined to support the
authority of tiie Union by engaging in a war
against the non-complying States. They
would always be more ready to pursue the
milder course of putting themselves upon an
equal footing with the delinquent members
by an imitation of their example. And the
guilt of all would thus become the security of
all. Our past experience has exhibited the
operation of this spirit in its full light. There
would, in fact, be an insuperable difficulty in
ascertaining when force could with propriety
be employed. In the article of pecuniary con-
tribution, which would be the most usual
source of delinquency, it would often be im-
possible to decide whether it had proceeded
from disinclination or inability. The pre-
tense of the latter would always be at hand.
And the case must be very flagrant in which
its fallacy could be detected with sufficient
certainty to justify the harsh expedient of
compulsion. It is easy to see that this prob-
lem alone, as often as it should occur, would
open a wide field for the exercise of factious
views, of partiality, and of oppression, in the
majority that happened to prevail in the
national council.
It seems to require no pains to ptove that
the States ought not to prefer a national Con-
stitution which could only be kept in motion
by the instrumentality of a large army con-
tinually on foot to execute the ordinary
requisitions or decrees of the government.
And yet this is the plain alternative involved
by those who wish to deny it the power of
extending its operations to individuals. Such
a scheme, if practicable at all, would instant-
ly degenerate into a military despotism; but
it will be found in every light impracticable.
The resources of the Union would not be
equal to the maintenance of an army consid-
erable enough to confine the larger States
within the limits of their duty; nor would
the means ever be furnished of forming such
an army in the first instance. Whoever con-
siders the populousness and strength of
several of these States singly at the present
juncture, and looks forward to what they will
become, even at the distance of half a century,
will at once dismiss as idle and visionary any
scheme which aims at regulating their move-
ments by laws to operate upon them in their
174
ALEXANDER HAMILTON
collective capacities, and to be executed by a
coercion applicable to them in the same
capacities. A project of this kind is little less
romantic than the monster-taming spirit
which is attributed to the fabulous heroes
and demi-mnls of antiquity.
Even in those confederacies which have
been composed of members smaller than
many of our counties, the principle of
legislation for sovereign States, supported by
military coercion, has never been found
effectual. It has rarely been attempted to be
employed, but against the weaker members;
and in most instances attempts to coerce the
refractory and disobedient have been the sig-
nals of bloody wars, in which one half of the
confederacy has displayed its banners against
the other half.
The result of these observations to an in-
telligent mind must be clearly this, that if it
be possible at any rate to construct a federal
government capable of regulating the com-
mon concerns and preserving the general
tranquillity, it must be founded, as to the
objects committed to its care, upon the re-
verse of the principle contended for by the
opponents of the proposed Constitution. It
must carry its agency to the persons of the
citizens. It must stand in need of no inter-
mediate legislations; but must itself be em-
powered to employ the arm of the ordinary
magistrate to execute its own resolutions.
The majesty of the national authority must
be manifested through the medium of the
courts of justice. The government of the
Union, like that of each State, must be able
to address itself immediately to the hopes
and fears of individuals; and to attract to
its support those passions which have the
strongest influence upon the human heart.
It must, in short, possess all the means, and
have a right to resort to all the methods,
of executing the powers with which it is in-
trusted, that are possessed and exercised by
the governments of the particular States.
To this reasoning it may perhaps be ob-
jected, that if any State should be disaflPected
to the authority of the Union, it could at any
time obstruct the execution of its laws, and
bring the matter to the same issue of force,
with the necessity of which the opposite
scheme is reproached.
The plausibility of this objection will van-
ish the moment we advert to the essential
difference between a mere non-compliance
and a direct and active resistance. If the inter-
position of the State legislatures be necessary
to give eflf^ect to a measure of the Union, they
have only not to act, or to act evasively, and
the measure is defeated. This neglect of
duty may be disguised under aflPected but
unsubstantial provisions, so as not to appear,
and of course not to excite any alarm in the
people for the safety of the Constitution.
The State leaders may even make a merit of
their surreptitious invasions of it on the
ground of some temporary convenience, ex-
emption, or advantage.
But if the execution of the laws of the
national government should not require the
intervention of the State legislatures, if they
were to pass into immediate operation upon
the citizens themselves, the particular gov-
ernments could not interrupt their progress
without an open and violent exertion of an
unconstitutional power. No omissions nor
evasions would answer the end. They would
be obliged to act, and in such a manner as
would leave no doubt that they had en-
croached on the national rights. An experi-
ment of this nature would always be hazard-
ous in the face of a constitution in any degree
competent to its own defense, and of a people
enlightened enough to distinguish between
a legal exercise and an illegal usurpation of
authority. The success of it w^ould require
not merely a factious majority in the legis-
lature, but the concurrence of the courts of
justice and of the body of the people. If the
judges w^ere not embarked in a conspiracy
with the legislature, they would pronounce
the resolutions of such a majority to be con-
trary to the supreme law of the land, uncon-
stitutional, and void. If the people were not
tainted with the spirit of their State repre-
sentatives, they, as the natural guardians of
the Constitution, w^ould throw their weight
into the national scale and give it a decided
preponderancy in the contest. Attempts of
this kind would not often be made with levity
or rashness, because they could seldom be
made without danger to the authors, unless
in cases of a tyrannical exercise of the federal
authority.
If opposition to the national government
should arise from the disorderly conduct of
refractory or seditious individuals, it could
be overcome by the same means which are
THE FEDERALIST
175
daily employed ao;ainst the same evil under
the State governments. The magistracy,
being equally the ministers of the law of the
land, from whatever source it might emanate,
would doubtless be as ready to guard the
national as the local regulations from the in-
roads of private licentiousness. As to those
partial commotions and insurrections which
sometimes disquiet society, from the in-
trigues of an inconsiderable faction, or from
sudden or occasional ill-humors that do not
infect the great body of the community,
the general government could command
more extensive resources for the suppres-
sion of disturbances of that kind than would
be in the power of any single member. And
as to those mortal feuds which, in cer-
tain conjunctures, spread a conflagration
through a whole nation, or through a very
large proportion of it, proceeding either from
weighty causes of discontent given by the
government or from the contagion of some
violent popular paroxysm, they do not fall
within any ordinary rules of calculation.
When they happen, they commonly amount
to revolutions and dismemberments of em-
pire. No form of government can always
either avoid or control them. It is in vain
to hope to guard against events too mighty
for human foresight or precaution, and it
would be idle to object to a government be-
cause it could not perform impossibilities.
XXIIL THE NECESSITY OF A GOV-
ERNMENT AS ENERGETIC AS THE
ONE PROPOSED TO THE PRESER-
VATION OF THE UNION
To the People of the State of New York:
The necessity of a Constitution, at least
equally energetic with the one proposed, to
the preservation of the Union, is the point
at the examination of which we are now
arrived.
This inquiry will naturally divide itself
into three branches — the objects to be pro-
vided for by the federal government, the
quantity of power necessar}^ to the accom-
plishment of those objects, the persons upon
whom that power ought to operate. Its dis-
tribution and organization will more properly
claim our attention under the succeeding
head.
I he principal purposes to be answered by
union are these — the common defense of the
members; the preservation of the public
peace, as well against internal convulsions as
external attacks; the regulation of commerce
with other nations and between the States;
the superintendence of our intercourse,
political and commercial, with foreign coun-
tries.
The authorities essential to the common
defense are these: to raise armies; to build
and equip fleets; to prescribe rules for the
government of both; to direct their opera-
tions; to provide for their support. These
powers ought to exist without limitation,
because it is impossible to foresee or define the
extent and variety of national exigencies^ or
the correspondent extent and variety of the
means zvhich may be necessary to satisfy them.
The circumstances that endanger the safety
of nations are infinite, and for this reason no
constitutional shackles can wisely be im-
posed on the power to which the care of it
is committed. This power ought to be co-
extensive with all the possible combinations
of such circumstances; and ought to be under
the direction of the same councils which
are appointed to preside over the common
defense.
This is one of those truths which, to a cor-
rect and unprejudiced mind, carries its own
evidence along with it; and may be obscured,
but cannot be made plainer by argument or
reasoning. It rests upon axioms as simple as
they are universal; the means ought to be
proportioned to the end; the persons, from
whose agency the attainment of any end is
expected, ought to possess the means by
which it is to be attained.
Whether there ought to be a federal gov-
ernment intrusted with the care of the com-
mon defense is a question in the first instance
open for discussion; but, the moment it is
decided in the afllirmative, it will follow that
that government ought to be clothed with all
the powers requisite to complete execution
of its trust. And unless it can be shown that
the circumstances which may aflPect the pub-
lic safety are reducible within certain deter-
minate limits; unless the contrary of this
position can be fairly and rationally disputed,
it must be admitted, as a necessary conse-
quence, that there can be no limitation of
that authority which is to provide for the
176
ALF.XANDER HAMILTON
defense and protection of the community,
in any matter essential to its efHcacy —
that is, in any matter essential to the fonna-
tion, direction, or support of the national
FORCES.
Defective as the present Confederation
has been proved to he, this principle ap-
pears to have been fully recognized by the
framers of it; though they have not made
proper or adequate provision for its exer-
cise. Congress have an unlimited discretion
to make requisitions of men and money; to
govern the army and navy; to direct their
operations. As their requisitions are made
constitutionally binding upon the States,
who are in fact under the most solemn obli-
gations to furnish the supplies required of
them, the intention evidently was that the
United States should command whatever
resources were by them judged requisite to
the "common defense and general welfare."
It was presumed that a sense of their true
interests, and a regard to the dictates of good
faith, would be found sufficient pledges for
the punctual performance of the duty of
the members to the federal head.
The experiment has, however, demon-
strated that this expectation was ill-founded
and illusory; and the observations, made
under the last head, will, I imagine, have
sufficed to convince the impartial and dis-
cerning that there is an absolute necessity
for an entire change in the first principles of
the system; that if we are in earnest about
giving the Union energy and duration, we
must abandon the vain project of legis-
lating upon the States in their collective
capacities; we must extend the laws of the
federal government to the individual citizens
of America; we must discard the fallacious
scheme of quotas and requisitions, as equally
impracticable and unjust. The result from
all this is that the Union ought to be invested
with full power to levy troops; to build and
equip fleets; and to raise the revenues which
will be required for the formation and sup-
port of an army and navy, in the customary
and ordinary modes practiced in other gov-
ernments.
If the circumstances of our country ^re
such as to demand a compound instead of a
simple, a confederate instead of a sole, gov-
ernment, the essential point which will re-
main to be adjusted will be to discriminate
the objectSy as far as it can be done, which
shall appertain to the different provinces or
departments of power; allowing to each the
most ample authority for fulfilling the ob-
jects committed to its charge. Shall the
Union be constituted the guardian of the
common safety.? Are fleets and armies and
revenues necessary to this purpose.? The
government of the Union must be empow-
ered to pass all laws, and to make all regula-
tions which have relation to them. The same
must be the case in respect to commerce, and
to every other matter to which its juris-
diction is permitted to extend. Is the ad-
ministration of justice between the citizens
of the same State the proper department of
the local governments.? These must possess
all the authorities which are connected with
this object, and with every other that may
be allotted to their particular cognizance
and direction. Not to confer in each case a
degree of power commensurate to the end
would be to violate the most obvious rules
of prudence and propriety, and improvi-
dently to trust the great interests of the
nation to hands which are disabled from
managing them with vigor and success.
Who so likely to make suitable provisions
for the public defense as that body to which
the guardianship of the public safety is con-
fided; which, as the center of information,
will best understand the extent and urgency
of the dangers that threaten; as the repre-
sentative of the WHOLE, will feel itself most
deeply interested in the preservation of every
part; which, from the responsibility implied
in the duty assigned to it, will be most sen-
sibly impressed with the necessity of proper
exertions; and which, by the extension of its
authority throughout the States, can alone
establish uniformity and concert in the plans
and measures by which the common safety
is to be secured.? Is there not a manifest
inconsistency in devolving upon the federal
government the care of the general defense,
and leaving in the State governments the
effective powers by which it is to be provided
for.? Is not a want of co-operation the in-
fallible consequence of such a system.? And
will not weakness, disorder, and undue dis-
tribution of the burdens and calamities of
war, an unnecessary and intolerable increase
of expense, be its natural and inevitable con-
comitants.? Have we not had unequivocal
THE FEDERALIST
177
experience of its effects in the course of the
revolution which we have just accompHshed?
Every view we may take of the subject,
as candid inquirers after truth, will serve to
convince us, that it is both unwise and dan-
gerous to deny the federal government an
unconfined authority as to all those objects
which are intrusted to its management. It
will indeed deserve the most vigilant and
careful attention of the people, to see that it
be modeled in such a manner as to admit of
its being safely vested with the requisite
powers. If any plan which has been, or may
be, offered to our consideration, should not,
upon a dispassionate iPi'g^iection, be found
to answer this descriptio.lves pig^ht to be re-
jected. A government, "2;ood sQnstitution of
which renders it unfit to be t-i^usted with all
the powers which a free people ought to dele-
gate to any governme7it, would be an unsafe
and improper depositary of the national
INTERESTS. Wherever these can with pro-
priety be confided, the coincident powers
may safely accompany them. This is the
true result of all just reasoning upon the sub-
ject. And the adversaries of the plan pro-
mulgated by the convention ought to have
confined themselves to showing that the in-
ternal structure of the proposed government
was such as to render it unworthy of the con-
fidence of the people. They ought not to
have wandered into inflammatory declama-
tions and unmeaning cavils about the extent
of the powers. The powers are not too ex-
tensive for the objects of federal administra-
tion, or, in other words, for the management
of our NATIONAL INTERESTS; nor can any sat-
isfactory argument be framed to show that
they are chargeable with such an excess. If
it be true, as has been insinuated by some of
the writers on the other side, that the dif-
ficulty arises from the nature of the thing,
and that the extent of the country will not
permit us to form a government in which
such ample powers can safely be reposed,
it would prove that we ought to contract our
views, and resort to the expedient of separate
confederacies, which will move within more
practicable spheres. For the absurdity must
continually stare us in the face of confiding
to a government the direction of the most
essential national interests, without daring
to trust it to the authorities which are indis-
pensable to their proper and efficient man-
agement. Let us not attempt to reconcile
contradictions, but firmly embrace a rational
alternative.
I trust, however, that the impracticability
of one general system cannot be shown. I
am greatly mistaken, if anything of weight
has yet been advanced of this tendency; and
I flatter myself that the observations which
have been made in the course of these papers
have served to place the reverse of that
position in as clear a light as any matter still
in the womb of time and experience can be
susceptible of. This, at all events, must be
evident, that the very difficulty itself, drawn
from the extent of the country, is the strong-
est argument in favor of an energetic gov-
ernment; for any other can certainly never
preserve the Union of so large an empire.
If we embrace the tenets of those who op-
pose the adoption of the proposed Consti-
tution, as the standard of our political creed,
we cannot fail to verify the gloomy doctrines
which predict the impracticability of a na-
tional system pervading entire limits of the
present Confederacy.
LXX. THE EXECUTIVE DEPART-
MENT FURTHER CONSIDERED
To the People of the State of New York:
There is an idea, which is not without
its advocates, that a vigorous Executive is
inconsistent with the genius of republican
government. The enlightened well-wishers
to this species* of government must at least
hope that the supposition is destitute of
foundation, since they can never admit its
truth without at the same time admitting
the condemnation of their own principles.
Energy in the Executive is a leading charac-
ter in the definition of good government. It
is essential to the protection of the commu-
nity against foreign attacks; it is not less
essential to the steady administration of the
laws; to the protection of property against
those irregular and high-handed combi-
nations which sometimes interrupt the ordi-
nary course of justice; to the security of lib-
erty against the enterprises and assaults of
ambition, of faction, and of anarchy. Every
man the least conversant in Roman story
knows how often that republic was obliged to
take refuge in the absolute power of a single
man, under the formidable title of Dictator,
17^
ALEXANDER HAMILTON
as Will against the intrigues of ambitious in-
dividuals who aspired to the tyranny and the
sediti(Mis of wjiole classes of the community
whose conduct threatened the existence of
all government, as against the invasions of
external enemies who menaced the con-
quest and destruction of Rome.
There can be no need, however, to mul-
tiply arguments or examples on this head. A
feeble Executive implies a feeble execution
of the government. A feeble execution is but
another phrase for a bad execution; and a
government ill executed, whatever it may be
in theory, must be, in practice, a bad gov-
ernment.
Taking it for granted, therefore, that all
men of sense will agree in the necessity of an
energetic Executive, it w^ill only remain to
inquire what are the ingredients w^hich con-
stitute this energy? How far can they be
combined with those other ingredients which
constitute safety in the republican sense .f*
And how far does this combination character-
ize the plan which has been reported by the
convention.''
The ingredients which constitute energy in
the Executive are, first, unity; secondly,
duration; thirdly, an adequate provision for
its support; fourthly, competent powers.
The ingredients which constitute safety in
the republican sense are, first, a due depend-
ence on the people; secondly, a due respon-
sibility.
Those politicians and statesmen who have
been the most celebrated for the soundness
of their principles and for the justice of their
view:; have declared in favor of a single
Executive and a numerous legislature. They
have, with great propriety, considered energy
as the most necessary qualification of the for-
mer, and have regarded this as most applic-
able to power in a single hand; while they
have, with equal propriety, considered the
latter as best adapted to deliberation and
wisdom, and best calculated to conciliate the
confidence of the people and to secure their
privileges and Interests.
That unity is conducive to energy will not
be disputed. Decision, activity, secrecy, and
dispatch w^ill generally characterize the pro-
ceedings of one man in a much more eminent
degree than the proceedings of any greater
number; and in proportion as the number is
increased, these qualities will be diminished.
Ihls unity may be destro3^ed in two ways:
either by vesting the power in two or more
magistrates of equal dignity and authority;
or by vesting it ostensibly in one man, sub-
ject, in whole or in part, to the control and co-
operation of others in the capacity of coun-
selors to him. Of the first, the two Consuls
of Rome may serve as an example; of the
last, we shall find examples in the consti-
tutions of several of the States. New York
and New Jersey, if I recollect right, are
the only States which have Intrusted the
executive authority wholly to single men.i
Both these methods of destroying the unity
of the Executive have their partisans; but
the votaries '^'^'-^ ^^xecutive council are the
most numer^.^^'^^^rhey are both liable, if
not to equal^'^co^"' similar objections, and
may in most lights be examined in conjunc-
tion.
The experience of other nations will aflPord
little Instruction on this head. As far, how-
ever, as it teaches anything, it teaches us
not to be enamored of plurality in the
Executive. We have seen that the Achaeans,
on an experiment of two Praetors, were in-
duced to abolish one. 2 The Roman history
records many instances of mischiefs to the re-
public from the dissensions between the Con-
suls, and between the military Tribunes, who
were at times substituted for the Consuls.
But It gives us no specimens of any peculiar
advantages derived to the state from the
circumstance of the plurality of those magis-
trates. That the dissensions between them
were not more frequent or more fatal is mat-
ter of astonishment, until we advert to the
singular position in which the republic was
almost continually placed, and to the pru-
dent policy pointed out by the circumstan-
ces of the state, and pursued by the Consuls,
of making a division of the government
between them. The patricians engaged in a
perpetual struggle with the plebeians for the
preservation of their ancient authorities and
dignities; the Consuls, w^ho were generally
chosen out of the former body, were common-
ly united by the personal interest they had
1 New York has no council except for the single
purpose of appointing to offices; New Jersey has a
council whom the governor may consult. But I think,
from the terms of the constitution, their resolutions
do not bind him. (Hamilton's note.)
2 This is mentioned in No. XVIII.
THE FEDERALIST
179
in the defense of the privileges of their order.
In addition to this motive of union, after the
arms of the republic had considerably ex-
panded the bounds of its empire, it became
an established custom with the Consuls to
divide the administration between themselves
by lot — one of them remaining at Rome to
govern the city and its environs, the other
taking the command in the more distant
provinces. This expedient must, no doubt,
have had great influence in preventing those
collisions and rivalships which might other-
wise have embroiled the peace of the re-
public.
But quitting the dim light of historical re-
search, attaching ourselves purely to the
dictates of reason and good sense, we shall
discover much greater cause to reject than to
approve the idea of plurality in the Exec-
utive, under any modification whatever.
Wherever two or more persons are engaged
in any common enterprise or pursuit there is
always danger of difference of opinion. If it
be a public trust or ofl'ice, in which they
are clothed with equal dignity and authority,
there is peculiar danger of personal emulation
and even animosity. From either, and
especially from all these causes, the most
bitter dissensions are apt to spring. When-
ever these happen, they lessen the respect-
ability, weaken the authority, and distract
the plans and operations of those whom they
divide. If they should unfortunately assail
the supreme executive magistracy of a
country, consisting of a plurality of persons,
they might impede or frustrate the most
important measures of the government in
the most critical emergencies of the state.
And what is still worse, they might split the
community into the most violent and ir-
reconcilable factions, adhering differently to
the different individuals who composed the
magistracy.
Men often oppose a thing, merely because
they have had no agency in planning it, or
because it may have been planned by those
whom they dislike. But if they have been
consulted, and have happened to disapprove,
opposition then becomes, in their estimation,
an indispensable duty of self-love. They
seem to think themselves bound in honor,
and by all the motives of personal infallibil-
ity, to defeat the success of what has been
resolved upon contrary to their sentiments.
Men of upright, benevolent tempers have too
many opportunities of remarking, with hor-
ror, to what desperate lengths this disposition
is sometimes carried, and how often the great
interests of society are sacrificed to the van-
ity, to the conceit, and to the obstinacy of
individuals who have credit enough to make
their passions and their caprices interesting
to mankind. Perhaps the question now
before the public may, in its consequences,
afford melancholy proofs of the effects of this
despicable frailty, or rather detestable vice,
in the human character.
Upon the principles of a free government,
inconveniences from the source just men-
tioned must necessarily be submitted to in
the formation of the legislature; but it is un-
necessary, and therefore unwise, to intro-
duce them into the constitution of the Ex-
ecutive. It is here, too, that they may be
most pernicious. In the legislature, prompti-
tude of decision is oftener an evil than a bene-
fit. The differences of opinion, and the jar-
rings of parties in that department of the
government, though they may sometimes
obstruct salutary plans, yet often promote
deliberation and circumspection, and serve
to check excesses in the majority. When a
resolution, too, is once taken, the opposition
must be at an end. That resolution is a law,
and resistance to it punishable. But no
favorable circumstances palliate or atone for
the disadvantages of dissension in the exec-
utive department. Here they are pure and
unmixed. There is no point at which they
cease to operate. They serve to embarrass
and weaken the execution of the plan or
rrteasure to which they relate, from the first
step to the final conclusion of it. They con-
stantly counteract those qualities in the Ex-
ecutive which are the most necessary ingredi-
ents in its composition — vigor and expedi-
tion, and this without any counterbalancing
good. In the conduct of war, in which the en-
ergy of the Executive is the bulwark of the
national security, everything would be to be
apprehended from its plurality.
It must be confessed that these obser-
vations apply with principal weight to the
first case supposed — that is, to a plurality
of magistrates of equal dignity and authority,
a scheme the advocates for which are not
likely to form a numerous sect; but they
apply, though not with equal, yet with con-
i8o
ALEXANDER HAMILTON
siderable weight to the project of a council,
whose concurrence is made constitutionally
necessar>' to the operations of the ostensible
Executive. An artful cabal in that council
would be able to distract and to enervate the
whole system of administration. If no such
cabal should exist, the mere diversity of
views and opinions would alone be sufficient
to tincture the exercise of the executive
authority with a spirit of habitual feebleness
and dilatoriness.
But one of the weightiest objections to a
plurality in the Executive, and which lies
as much against the last as the first plan, is
that it tends to conceal faults and destroy
responsibility. Responsibility is of two
kinds — to censure and to punishment. The
first is the more important of the two, es-
pecially in an elective office. Man, in public
trust, will much oftener act in such a manner
as to render him unworthy of being any
longer trusted, than in such a manner as to
make him obnoxious to legal punishment.
But the multiplication of the Executive adds
to the difficulty of detection in either case.
It often becomes impossible, amidst mutual
accusations, to determine on whom the
blame or the punishment of a pernicious
measure, or series of pernicious measures,
ought really to fall. It is shifted from one
to another with so much dexterity, and under
such plausible appearances, that the public
opinion is left in suspense about the real
author. The circumstances which may have
led to any national miscarriage or misfortune
are sometimes so complicated that, where
there are a number of actors who may have
had different degrees and kinds of agency,
though we may clearly see upon the whole
that there has been mismanagement, yet it
may be impracticable to pronounce to whose
account the evil which may have been
incurred is truly chargeable.
*'I was overruled by my council. The
council were so divided in their opinions that
it was impossible to obtain any better reso-
lution on the point." These and similar
pretexts are constantly at hand, whether
true or false. And who is there that will
either take the trouble or incur the odium
of a strict scrutiny into the secret springs of
the transaction.' Should there be found a
citizen zealous enough to undertake the un-
promising task, if there happen to be collu-
sion between the parties concerned, how
easy it is to clothe the circumstances with so
much ambiguity as to render it uncertain
what was the precise conduct of any of those
parties!
In the single instance in which the gover-
nor of this State' is coupled with a council — •
that is, in the appointment to offices, we
have seen the mischiefs of it in the view now
under consideration. Scandalous appoint-
ments to important offices have been made.
Some cases, indeed, have been so flagrant
that all parties have agreed in the impro-
priety of the thing. When inquiry has been
made, the blame has been laid by the gover-
nor on the members of the council, who, on
their part, have charged it upon his nomina-
tion; while the people remain altogether at
a loss to determine by whose influence their
interests have been committed to hands so
unqualified and so manifestly improper. In
tenderness to individuals, I forbear to
descend to particulars.
It is evident from these considerations
that the plurality of the Executive tends to
deprive the people of the two greatest
securities they can have for the faithful
exercise of any delegated power: first, the
restraints of public opinion, which lose their
efficacy, as well on account of the division
of the censure attendant on bad measures
among a number as on account of the uncer-
tainty on whom it ought to fall ; and,
secondly, the opportunity of discovering
with facility and clearness the misconduct
of the persons they trust, in order either to
their removal from office, or to their actual
punishment in cases which admit of it.
In England, the king is a perpetual magis-
trate; and it is a maxim which has obtained
for the sake of the public peace, that he is
unaccountable for his administration, and
his person sacred. Nothing, therefore, can
be wiser in that kingdom, than to annex to
the king a constitutional council, who may
be responsible to the nation for the advice
they give. Without this, there would be
no responsibility whatever in the executive
department — an Idea inadmissible in a free
government. But even there the king is not
bound by the resolutions of his council,
though they are answerable for the advice
1 1.e.y New York.
THE FEDERALIST
i«i
they give. He is the absolute master of his
own conduct in the exercise of his office, and
may observe or disregard the counsel given
to him at his sole discretion.
But in a republic, where every magistrate
ought to be personally responsible for his
behavior in office, the reason which in the
British Constitution dictates the propriety
of a council, not only ceases to apply, but
turns against the institution. In the mon-
archy of Great Britain, it furnishes a sub-
stitute for the prohibited responsibility of
the chief magistrate, which serves in some
degree as a hostage to the national justice
for his good behavior. In the American
republic it would serve to destroy, or would
greatly diminish, the intended and necessary
responsibility of the Chief Magistrate
himself.
The idea of a council to the Executive,
which has so generally obtained in the State
constitutions, has been derived from that
maxim of republican jealousy which, con-
siders power as safer in the hands of a num-
ber of men than of a single man. If the
maxim should be admitted to be applicable
to the case, I should contend that the ad-
vantage on that side would not counter-
balance the numerous disadvantages on the
opposite side. But I do not think the rule
at all applicable to the executive power. I
clearly concur in opinion, in this particular,
with a writer whom the celebrated Junius
pronounces to be "deep, solid, and in-
genious," that "the executive power is more
easily confined when it is one";^ that it is
far more safe there should be a single object
for the jealousy and watchfulness of the
people; and, in a word, that all multiplica-
tion of the Executive is rather dangerous
than friendly to liberty.
A little consideration will satisfy us that
the species of security sought for in the
multiplication of the Executive is unattain-
able. Numbers must be so great as to render
combination difficult, or they are rather a
source of danger than of security. The
1 De Lolme. (Hamilton's note.) A Swiss -consti-
tutional writer (born at Geneva, 1740, died 1806) who
lived in England for some years and wrote a treatise
on The Constitution of England (1771, English ed'n,
1775)-
united credit and influence of several indi-
viduals must be more formidable to liberty
than the credit and influence of either of
them separately. When power, therefore,
is placed in the hands of so small a number
of men as to admit of their interests and
views being easily combined in a common
enterprise, by an artful leader, it becomes
more liable to abuse, and more dangerous
when abused, than if it be lodged in the
hands of one man; who, from the very
circumstance of his being alone, will be more
narrowly watched and more readily sus-
pected, and who cannot unite so great a
mass of influence as when he is associated
with others. The Decemvirs of Rome,
whose name denotes their number,^ were
more to be dreaded in their usurpation
than any one of them would have been. No
person would think of proposing an Execu-
tive much more numerous than that body;
from six to a dozen have been suggested for
the number of the council. The extreme of
these numbers is not too great for an easy
combination; and from such a combination
America would have more to fear than from
the ambition of any single individual. A
council to a magistrate, who is himself
responsible for what he does, are generally
nothing better than a clog upon his good
intentions, are often the instruments and
accomplices of his bad, and are almost always
a cloak to his faults.
I forbear to dwell upon the subject of
expense; though it be evident that if the
council should be numerous enough to
answer the principal end aimed at by the
institution, the salaries of the members,
who must be drawn from their homes to
reside at the seat of government, would
form an item in the catalogue of public
expenditures too serious to be incurred for
an object of equivocal utility. I will only
add that, prior to the appearance of the
Constitution, I rarely met with an intelligent
man from any of the States, who did not
admit, as the result of experience, that the
unity of the executive of this State was one
of the best of the distinguishing features of
our constitution.
2 Ten. (Hamilton's note.)
JOEL BARLOW (1754-1812)
Barlow was born at Retlcling, Connecticut, on 24 March, 1754. He attended Dartmouth College
and Yale College, and was graduated from the latter. During college vacations he served as a vol-
unteer in the Revolutionary army, and, after his graduation, as a chaplain. Before holding the latter
post he had begun the study of the law. In the early i/So's he settled at Hartford, working as a jour-
nalist and perhaps looking forward to a legal career. But he was also writing poetry, and in 1787
published The I'ision of Columbus, a reflective poem of considerable length (4,700 lines), which was
received with warm praise not only in America, but also in England and France, In the following
year Barlow went to France as an agent of a group of speculators who styled themselves the Scioto
(Ohio) Land Company. It is said that he was ignorant of the fraudulent nature of the enterprise.
In France he became a supporter of the Revolution, and went almost as far in identifying himself with
the movement as did Paine. While he was visiting England (1791-1792) he published in London a
poem entitled The Conspiracy of Kings, and he was delegated by the London Constitutional Society
to present an address to the French Convention. In 1792 he published a political tract in Paris, Advice
to the Privileged Orders in the Several States of Europe (a later republican tract, published in Philadel-
phia, 1801, was entitled: Joel Barlow to his Fellozv-Citizens in the United States). In 1792 he also was
a candidate for membership in the Convention, and it was while he was forwarding his candidacy in
Chambery that he had placed before him the hasty pudding (boiled Indian meal) which took him in
memory back to his own land and caused him to write the poem here reprinted. It "is certainly his
most original and enduring poem and also one of the best pieces of humorous verse in our early litera-
ture." It "is a mock-heroic of the conventional eighteenth-century type. . . . The pastoral scenes
are native, not imitated, the diction is simple and natural, and the humor, though rather thin, is suf-
ficiently amusing." (S. M. Tucker, Camb. Hist. Am. Lit., I.)
In 1795 Barlow went to Algiers as American consul, where he remained two years. During this
time he procured the release of some American prisoners. In 1798 he was back in Paris, and was of
some service to the American government there. At the same time he engaged in speculations which
were so successful as to yield him a moderate fortune. In 1805 he returned to the United States, and
two years afterwards published a large expansion of his Vision of Columbus — in its new form called
The Columbiad — in which he sought to outstrip Homer as the creator of a national epic. His ambition
was mistaken and the poem was at once set down a failure — a verdict which no later generation has
cared to dispute. In 181 1 Madison appointed Barlow Minister to France. In the following year he
set out for Wilna to hold a conference with Napoleon. Owing to the hardships of the journey he fell
ill, and died near Cracow, Poland, on 24 December, 1812.
THE HASTY PUDDING^
CANTO I
Ye Alps audacious, through the heavens
that rise,
To cramp the day and hide me from the
skies;
Ye Gallic flags, that o'er their heights un-
furled,
Bear death to kings and freedom to the
world,
I sing not you. A softer theme I choose,
A virgin theme, unconscious of the muse,
But fruitful, rich, well suited to inspire
The purest frenzy of poetic fire.
1 First published in 1796.
Despise it not, ye bards to terror steeled,
Who hurl your thunders round the epic
field; 10
Nor ye who strain your midnight throats to
sing
Joys that the vineyard and the stillhouse
bring;
Or on some distant fair your notes employ,
And speak of raptures that you ne'er enjoy.
I sing the sweets I know, the charms I feel,
My morning incense, and my evening
meal, —
The sweets of Hasty Pudding. Come, dear
bowl.
Glide o'er my palate, and inspire my souL
The milk beside thee, smoking from the
kine,
182
THE HASTY PUDDING
183
Its substance mingled, married in with
thine, 20
Shall cool and temper thy superior heat.
And save the pains of blowing while I eat.
Oh! could the smooth, the emblematic
■ song
Flow like the genial juices o'er my tongue,
Could those mild morsels in my numbers
chime,
And, as they roll in substance, roll in rhyme.
No more thy awkward, unpoetic name
Should shun the muse or prejudice thy fame;
But, rising grateful to the accustomed ear,
All bards should catch it, and all realms
revere! 30
Assist me first with pious toil to trace
Through wrecks of time, thy lineage and thy
race;
Declare what lovely squaw, in days of yore
(Ere great Columbus sought thy native
shore).
First gave thee to the world; her works of
fame
Have lived indeed, but lived without a
name.
Some tawny Ceres, goddess of her days.
First learned with stones to crack the well-*
dried maize,
Through the rough sieve to shake the golden
shower,
In boiling water stir the yellow flour: 40
The yellow flour, bestrewed and stirred with
haste.
Swells in the flood and thickens to a paste.
Then pufl^s and wallops, rises to the brim,
Drinks the dry knobs that on the surface
swim;
The knobs at last the busy ladle breaks.
And the whole mass its true consistence
takes.
Could but her sacred name, unknown so
long,
Rise, like her labors, to the son of song,
To her, to them I'd consecrate my lays,
And blow her pudding with the breath of
praise. 50
If 'twas Oella whom I sang before,^
I here ascribe her one great virtue more.
Not through the rich Peruvian realms alone
The fame of Sol's sweet daughter should be
known,
1 Peruvian princess, said to have discovered the art
of spinning. Barlow had sung her praise before in
The Vision of Columbus, Bk. II.
But o'er the world's wide climes should live
secure.
Far as his rays extend, as long as they en-
dure.
Dear Hasty Pudding, what unpromised
joy
Expands my heart, to meet thee in Savoy!
Doomed o'er the world through devious
paths to roam.
Each clime my country, and each house my
home, 60
My soul is soothed, my cares have found an
end;
I greet my long-lost, unforgotten friend.
For thee through Paris, that corrupted
town.
How long in vain I wandered up and down,
Where shameless Bacchus, with his drench-
ing hoard,
Cold from his cave usurps the morning
board.
London is lost in smoke and steeped in tea;
No Yankee there can lisp the name of thee;
The uncouth word, a libel on the town,
Would call a proclamation from the crown. 70
For climes oblique, that fear the sun's full
rays.
Chilled in their fogs, exclude the generous
maize;
A grain whose rich, luxuriant growth re-
quires
Short, gentle showers, and bright, ethereal
fires.
But here, though distant from our native
shore.
With mutual glee, we meet and laugh once
more.
The same! I know thee by that yellow face,
That strong complexion of true Indian race.
Which time can never change, nor soil im-
pair,
Nor Alpine snows, nor Turkey's morbid
air; 80
For endless years, through every mild
domain,
Where grows the maize, there thou art sure
to reign.
But man, more fickle, the bold license
claims.
In different realms to give thee different
names.
Thee the soft nations round the warm
Levant
Polanta call; the French, of course, Polante.
i84
JOEL BARLOW
K'cn in tliy native regions, how I blush
To hear the IViinsyI\ anians call thee Mush!
On lliiilson's banks, while men of Belgic
spaw n
Insult and eat thee by the name Suppawn. 90
All spurious appellations, void of truth;
I've better known thee from my earliest
youth:
Thy name is Hasty Pudding! thus my sire
Was wont to greet thee fuming from his Hre;
And while he argued in thy just defense
With logic clear he thus explained the sense:
"In haste the boiling caldron, o'er the blaze,
Receives and cooks the ready powdered
maize;
In haste 'tis served, and then in equal haste,
W ith cooling milk, we make the sweet re-
past. 100
No carving to be done, no knife to grate
The tender ear and wound the stony plate;
But the smooth spoon, just fitted to the lip,
And taught with art the yielding mass to
dip.
By frequent journeys to the bowl well stored,
Performs the hasty honors of the board."
Such is thy name, significant and clear,
A name, a sound to every Yankee dear.
But most to me, whose heart and palate
chaste
Preserve my pure, hereditary taste. no
There are who strive to stamp with dis-
repute
The luscious food, because it feeds the brute;
In tropes of high-strained wit, while gaudy
prigs
Compare thy nursling, man, to pampered
pigs,
With sovereign scorn I treat the vulgar jest,
Nor fear to share thy bounties with the beast.
What though the generous cow gives me to
quaff
The milk nutritious: am I then a calf.?
Or can the genius of the noisy swine.
Though nursed on pudding, thence lay claim
to mine.? 120
Sure the sweet song I fashion to thy praise.
Runs more melodious than the notes they
raise.
My song, resounding in its grateful glee.
No merit claims: I praise myself in thee.
My father loved thee through his length of
days!
For thee his fields were shaded o'er with
maize;
From thee what health, what vigor he pos-
sessed,
Ten sturdy freemen from his loins attest;^
Thy constellation ruled my natal morn.
And all my bones were made of Indian
corn. 130
Delicious grain, whatever form it take.
To roast or boll, to smother or to bake,
In every dish 'tis welcome still to me.
But most, my Hasty Pudding, most in thee.
Let the green succotash with thee contend;
Let beans and corn their sweetest juices
blend;
Let butter drench them In Its yellow tide,
And a long slice of bacon grace their side;
Not all the plate, how famed soe'er it be.
Can please my palate like a bowl of thee. 140
Some talk of hoe-cake, fair Virginia's pride!
Rich johnny-cake this mouth has often tried;
Both please me well, their virtues much the
same,
Alike their fabric, as allied their fame —
Except In dear New Engjand, where the last
Receives a dash of pumpkin In the paste,
To give It sweetness and Improve the taste.
But place them all before me, smoking hot,
The big, round dumpling, rolling from the
pot;
The pudding of the bag, whose quivering
breast, 150
With suet lined, leads on the Yankee feast;
The charlotte brown, within whose crusty
sides
A belly soft the pulpy apple hides;
The yellow bread whose face like amber
glows.
And all of Indian that the bake-pan knows —
You tempt me not; my favorite greets my
eyes.
To that loved bowl my spoon by instinct
flies.
CANTO II
To mix the food by vicious rules of art.
To kill the stomach and to sink the heart.
To make mankind to social virtue sour,
Cram o'er each dish, and be what they de-
vour;
For this the kitchen muse first framed her
book.
Commanding sweats to stream from every
cook;
1 In some early editions: "freemen sprung from him
attest."
THE HASTY PUDDING
i8s
Children no more their antic gambols tried,
And friends to physic wondered why they
died.
Not so the Yankee: his abundant feast,
With simples furnished and with plainness
dressed, lo
A numerous offspring gathers round the
board,
And cheers alike the servant and the lord;
Whose well-bought hunger prompts the joy-
ous taste.
And health attends them from the short
repast.
While the full pail rewards the milkmaid's
toil.
The mother sees the morning caldron boil;
To stir the pudding next demands their care;
To spread the table and the bowls prepare;
To feed the household as their portions cool
And send them all to labor or to school. i 20
Yet may the simplest dish some rules im-
part,
For nature scorns not all the aids of art.
E'en Hasty Pudding, purest of all food.
May still be bad, indifferent, or good,
As sage experience the short process guides,
Or want of skill, or want of care presides.
Whoe'er would form it on the surest plan.
To rear the child and long sustain the man.
To shield the morals while it mends the
size,
And all the powers of every food sup-
plies— 30
Attend the lesson that the muse shall bring,
Suspend your spoons, and listen while I sing.
But since,- O man! thy life and health de-
mand
Not food alone, but labor from thy hand,
First, in the field, beneath the sun's strong
rays.
Ask of thy mother earth the needful maize;
She loves the race that courts her yielding
soil.
And gives her bounties to the sons of toil.
When now the ox, obedient to thy call.
Repays the loan that filled the winter stall, 40
Pursue his traces o'er the furrowed plain.
And plant in measured hills the golden grain.
But when the tender germ begins to shoot.
And the green spire declares the sprouting
root.
I In some early editions: "And comb their heads,
and send them off to school."
Then guard your nursling from each greedy
foe,
The insidious worm, the all-devouring crow.
A little ashes sprinkled round the spire.
Soon steeped in rain, will bid the worm re-
tire;
The feathered robber with his hungry maw
Swift flies the field before your man of
straw, 50
A frightful image, such as schoolboys bring
When met to burn the Pope or hang the
King.
Thrice in the season, through each verdant
row.
Wield the strong plowshare and the faithful
ho^-
The faithful hoe, a double task that takes.
To till the summer corn and roast the winter
cakes.
Slow springs the blade, while checked by
chilling rains.
Ere yet the sun the seat of Cancer gains;
But when his fiercest fires emblaze the land.
Then start the juices, then the roots ex-
pand; 60
Then, like a column of Corinthian mold,
The stalk struts upward and the leaves un-
fold;
The bushy branches all the ridges fill,
Entwine their arms, and kiss from hill to hill.
Here cease to vex them; all your cares are
done:
Leave the last labors to the parent sun;
Beneath his genial smiles, the well-dressed
field.
When autumn calls, a plenteous crop shall
yield.
Now the strong foliage bears the standards
high,
And shoots the tall top-gallants to the sky; 70
The suckling ears their silky fringes bend.
And, pregnant grown, their swelling coats
distend;
The loaded stalk, while still the burden
grows,
O'erhangs the space that runs between the
rows;
High as a hop-field waves the silent grove,
A safe retreat for little thefts of love.
When the pledged roasting-ears invite the
maid
To meet her swain beneath the new-formed
shade;
His generous hand unloads the cumbrous hill,
1 86
JOKL 15ARLOW
And the <;rccn spoils her ready basket fill; 80
Small a)nipensatii)n tor the twofold bliss,
Ihe promised wedding and the present kiss.
Slight dej^redations these; but now the
moon
Calls from his hollow tree the sly raccoon;
And while by night he bears his prize away,
The bolder stjuirrel labors through the day.
Both thieves alike, but provident of time,
A virtue rare, that almost hides their crime.
Then let them steal the little stores they can.
And fill their granaries from the toils of
man; 90
We've one advantage where they take no
part —
With all their wiles, they ne'er have found
the art
To boil the Hasty Pudding; here we shine
Superior far to tenants of the pine;
This envied boon to man shall still belong
Unshared by them in substance or in song.
At last the closing season browns the plain,
And "ripe October gathers in the grain;
Deep-loaded carts the spacious corn-house
fill;
The sack distended marches to the mill; 100
The laboring mill beneath the burden groans.
And showers the future pudding from the
stones;
Till the glad housewife greets the powdered
gold.
And the new crop exterminates the old.
Ah, who can sing what every wight must feel,
The joy that enters with the bag of meal,
A general jubilee pervades the house,
\\ akes every child and gladdens every
mouse. 1
CANTO III
The days grow short; but though the fall-
ing sun
To the glad swain proclaims his day's work
done.
Night's pleasing shades his various tasks pro-
long,
And yield new subjects to my various song.
For now, the corn-house filled, the harvest
home,
The invited neighbors to the husking come;
A frolic scene, where work, and mirth, and
play.
Unite their charms to chase the hours away.
1 The last four lines of this canto do not appear in
some early editions.
Where the huge heap lies centered in the hall,
The lamp suspended from the cheerful
wall, 10
Brown, corn-fed nymphs, and strong, hard-
handed beaux,
Alternate ranged, extend in circling rows,
Assume their seats, the solid mass attack;
Ihe dry husks rustle, and the corncobs
crack;
The song, the laugh, alternate notes resound.
And the sweet cider trips in silence round.
The laws of husking every wight can tell;
And sure no laws he ever keeps so well:
For each red ear a general kiss he gains,
With each smut ear she smuts the luckless
swains; 20
But when to some sweet maid a prize is cast,
Red as her lips and taper as her waist,
She walks the round and culls one favored
beau,
Who leaps the luscious tribute to bestow.
Various the sport, as are the wits and brains
Of well-pleased lasses and contending swains;
Till the vast mound of corn is swept away.
And he that gets the last ear wins the day.
Meanwhile, the housewife urges all her care
The well-earned feast to hasten and pre-
pare. 30
The sifted meal already waits her hand.
The milk is strained, the bowls in order
stand.
The fire flames high; and as a pool — that
takes
The headlong stream that o'er the mill-
dam breaks —
Foams, roars, and rages with incessant toils,
So the vexed caldron rages, roars, and boils.
First with clean salt she seasons well the
food,
Then strews the flour, and thickens all the
flood.
Long o'er the simmering fire she lets it stand;
To stir it well demands a stronger hand; 40
The husband takes his turn: and round and
round
1 he ladle flies. At last the toil is crowned;
When to the board the thronging buskers
pour,
And take their seats as at the corn before.
I leave them to their feast. There still
belong
More useful- matters to my faithful song, i
2 In some early editions: "copious."
THE HASTY PUDDING
187
For rules there are, though ne'er unfolded
yet,
Nice rules and wise, how pudding should be
ate.
Some with molasses line the luscious treat,
And mix, like bards, the useful with the
sweet :^ 50
A wholesome dish, and well deserving praise,
A great resource in those bleak wintry days.
When the chilled earth lies buried deep in
snow.
And raging Boreas dries^ the shivering cow.
Bless'd cow, thy praise shall still my notes
employ.
Great source of health, the only source of
joy!
Mother of Egypt's god, — but sure, for me,
Were I to leave my God, I'd worship thee.^
How^ oft thy teats these pious hands have
pressed!
How oft thy bounties proved my only
feast ! 60
How oft I've fed thee with my favorite grain !
And roared, like thee, to see^ thy children
slain!
Ye swains w^ho know^ her various worth to
prize,
Ah! house her well from winter's angry skies.
Potatoes, pumpkins, should her sadness
cheer.
Corn from your crib, and mashes from your
■ beer;
When spring returns, she'll well acquit the
loan,
And nurse at once your infants and her
own.
Milk, then, with pudding I should always
choose;
To this in future I confine my muse, 70
Till she in haste some further hints unfold.
Well for the young, nor useless to the old.
First in your bowl the milk abundant take,
1 In allusion to 1. 343 of Horace's De Arte Poetica:
Omne tulit punctum^ qui miscuit utile dulci. The early
editions carry this line on their title-pages and, under-
neath: " He makes a good breakfast who mixes pudding
with molasses."
2 Some early editions: "drives.''
' This and the preceding line do not appear in some
early editions.
< Some early editions: "find."
1 hen drop with care along the silver lake
YouT flakes of pudding; these at first will hide
Their little bulk beneath the swelling tide;
But when their growing mass no more can
sink,
When the soft island looms above the brink,
I hen check your hand; you've got the por-
tion due;
So taught our sires, and what they taught is
true. 80
There is a choice in spoons. Though small
appear
The nice distinction, yet to me 'tis clear.
The deep-bowled Gallic spoon, contrived to
scoop
In ample draughts the thin, diluted soup,
Performs not well in those substantial things.
Whose mass adhesive to the metal clings;
Where the strong labial muscles must em-
brace
The gentle curve, and sweep the hollow
space,
With ease to enter and discharge the freight,
A bowl less concave, but still more dilate, 90
Becomes the pudding best. The shape, the
size,
A secret rests, unknown to vulgar eyes.
Experienced feeders can alone impart
A rule so much above the lore of art.
These tuneful lips that thousand spoons have
tried,
With just precision could the point decide,
Though not in song; the muse but poorly
shines
In cones, and cubes, and geometric lines.
Yet the true form, as near as she can tell.
Is that small section of a goose-egg shell, icxd
Which in two equal portions shall divide
The distance from the center to the side.
Fear not to slaver; 'tis no deadly sin.
Like the free Frenchman, from your joyous
chin
Suspend the ready napkin; or, like me,
Poise with one hand your bowl upon your
knee;
Just in the zenith your wise head project,
Your full spoon, rising in a line direct,
Bold as a bucket, heeds no drops that fall;
The wide-mouthed bowl will surely catch
them all! no
PHILIP FRENEAU (1752-1832)
Philip Morin Freneau was born in New York on 13 January, 1752, the son of a prosperous Hugue-
not merchant who also owned a large country estate in New Jersey. In his sixteenth year Philip
entered the sophomcre class of the college at Princeton. Several of his classmates were youths who
were to become notable men, one of them being James Madison; and in the class below him was Aaron
Burr. Already when he entered college Philip was an easy and copious writer, particularly of heroic
verse, and at Princeton his writing was continued and encouraged. After his graduation (1771) Freneau
spent several years teaching school, at first in Flatbush, Long Island, where, however, he remained
only thirteen days, after which he wrote to Madison: "Long Island I have bid adieu. With all its
brutish, brainless crew. The youth of that detested place Are void of reason and of grace. From
Flushing hills to Flatbush plains Deep ignorance unrivaled reigns." The remainder of his school-
teaching was done near Princess Anne, Maryland. Already he had published a number of poems,
and in the summer of 1775 he was in New York, fired by the impending trouble with England, and
writing many satiric verses against the British. Even thus early in his career, however, he was begin-
ning to suffer from the lack of poetic appreciation amongst his contemporaries, and in the autumn he
sailed with a friend for Santa Cruz. On the voyage the mate died, and Freneau had to learn the art
of navigation and take his place. For two years he made his home on the island of Santa Cruz, spend-
ing some time in short voyages, and writing poetry — notably The Beauties of Santa Cruz, The House
of Night, and The Jamaica Funeral. The second of these is a long poem on death and the grave —
too long to be reprinted here (only fragments of it, which lead to an incorrect impression, have been
reprinted, save in F. L. Pattee's edition of Freneau's poems). This poem sufl^ers from some radical
defects, but has, nevertheless, received high praise for isolated lines of great beauty. It is, moreover,
important for the connection it helps to establish between some of Freneau's work and the romantic
movement, inasmuch as it anticipates both Coleridge and Poe.
In the summer of 1778 f>eneau returned to America, and almost at once began publishing verses.
He was an important and extensive contributor to the United States Magazine, edited by his college class-
mate, H. H. Brackenridge, which lived through twelve issues. Some notion of the condition of lit-
erature in 1779 may be gained from the editor's closing words. He declares that large numbers of
Americans "inhabit the region of stupidity, and cannot bear to have the tranquillity of their repose
disturbed by the villainous shock of a book. Reading is to them the worst of all torments, and I
remember very well that at the commencement of the work it was their language, *Art thou come to
torment us before the time?' We will now say to them, 'Sleep on and take your rest.'"
In the winter of 1779-1780 Freneau was again on the sea, acting as supercargo on a ship sailing
to the Azores. In the summer of 1780 he sailed from Philadelphia to revisit the West Indies, but his
ship was taken by the British and the poet was kept a prisoner for some weeks, during which he was
attacked by a dangerous fever. His experiences he described in The Prison Ship, a satiric poem. In
1781 he became, upon its establishment in Philadelphia, editor of the freeman's Journal, a post which
he held for three j-ears. "During all of this time," says his editor (F. L. Pattee), "his muse was
exceedingly active. He followed carefully the last years of the war, and put into satiric verse every
movement of the 'insolent foe.' He sang the victory of Jones, and mourned in plaintive numbers
the dead at Eutaw Springs. He voiced his indignation over the destructive career of Cornwallis, and
burst into a Laus Deo at his fall. The ludicrous plight of Rivington and Gaines [royalist printers],
the distress of the Tories, and the final departure of the British filled him with glee, which he poured
out in song after song. It was his most prolific and spontaneous period." Yet he was not without
moods of discouragement. "Barbers cannot possibly exist as such," he wrote, "among a people who
have neither hair nor beards. How, then, can a poet hope for success in a city where there are not
three persons possessed of elegant ideas?" As editor he wrote, besides verse, much prose, some of
which should be better known. A convinced democrat, he not only assailed British tyranny but, like
Thomas Paine, attacked negro slavery, and cruelty in every form, and championed the rights of woman.
A journalistic attack upon him is thought to have caused his withdrawal from the paper in June, 1784,
whereupon, as was usual with him throughout his life when he became hard pressed, he again took
to the sea, and was chiefly engaged in sailing merchant ships until 1790. During this period, how-
188
ON THE MEMORABLE VICTORY OF PAl L JONES
189
ever, the first collected edition of his poems appeared (1786) and a supplementary volume containing
prose and additional poems (1788).
In 1790 Freneau was married to Miss Eleanor Forman, and from this year until the spring of
1798 he was engaged in journalism in New York and Philadelphia. As was said, he was a demo-
crat, and he regarded the French Revolution with enthusiasm. He wrote with intense zeal for the
cause of the anti-federalists, and during a portion of the time was supported by Jefferson, who gave
him a minor government post (at a salary of $250 the year). The period was one of bitter contro-
versy, and Washington, who sympathized with the federalists, came in for attack. On one occasion
he angrily spoke of "That rascal, Freneau." No disinterested inquirer any longer doubts that Fre-
neau was honest, and was sincere in his political beliefs, yet Washington's splenetic remark has often
been used against him and has done much to injure his reputation, not only as a man, but as a poet.
After the failure of several journalistic enterprises, Freneau retired with his family to his farm at
Mount Pleasant, New Jersey, in 1798, and there he lived, often on the verge of poverty, during the
greater part of his remaining years. From 1803 to 1807 he was once more on the sea, constrained
by need; but after this his life at Mount Pleasant was unbroken, until his death from exposure in
a snow-storm, on the night of 18 December, 1832. New editions of his poems had been published
in 1795, 1809, and 1815.
Freneau has been called "the poet of the Revolution," and, as well, "the father of American
verse." There is justice in both phrases. A great poet he was not, but his talent was genuine within
its limits. He was a cultured and well-read gentleman, and in his earliest verses went to school to
the best masters, Milton, Gray, and Goldsmith. But, too, he was sensitive to the beauties of nat-
ural scenery and capable of romantic feeling, and he presently struck an independent note, simple
and unaffected, in the lyrical appreciation of the American Indian and American nature. Further,
there can be no doubt that Freneau's deepest feelings were touched by the democratic principles of
Thomas Paine and by the cause of democracy in America and in France. He served America as best
he could in many satiric poems, a few of which, by reason of their vigor and originality, have intrin-
sic worth, beyond their historic interest. Some of his lyrics, too, inspired by the French Revolu-
tion, are among his best. And, finally, his experiences on shipboard stimulated him to the composi-
tion of lyrics of the sea which at the time were new in kind and which remain interesting for their
spirited tone and their authentic quality. There can be no doubt that Freneau's development was
hindered by his environment and personal circumstances. The greater part of his verse is interest-
ing only to the historian or antiquarian. Yet he wrote a few poems which are intrinsically fine in
conception and workmanship and which are not derivative in character; — enough to distinguish him
as America's earliest genuine poet.
ON THE MEMORABLE VICTORY
OF PAUL JONES 1
O'er the rough main with flowing sheet
The guardian of a numerous fleet,
Seraphis from the Baltic came;
A ship of less tremendous force
Sailed by her side the self-same course,
Countess of Scarb'ro' was her name.
And now their native coasts appear,
Britannia's hills their summits rear
Above the German main;
Fond to suppose their dangers o'er^ 10
They southward coast along the shore.
Thy waters, gentle Thames, to gain.
Full forty guns Seraphis bore,
And Scarb'ro's Countess twenty-four,
Manned with Old England's boldest tars —
1 Written early in August, 1781. Published in Free-
man's Journal. The event celebrated occurred on
23 September, 1779.
What flag that rides the Gallic seas
Shall dare attack such piles as these.
Designed for tumults and for wars!
Now from the top-mast's giddy height
A seaman cried — "Four sail in sight 20
Approach with favoring gales";
Pearson, resolved to save the fleet.
Stood off to sea these ships to meet,
And closely braced his shivering sails.
With him advanced the Countess bold.
Like a black tar in wars grown old:
And now these floating piles drew nigh;
But, muse, unfold what chief of fame
In th' other warlike squadron came,
Whose standards at his mast-head fly. 30
'Twas Jones, brave Jones, to battle led
As bold a crew as ever bled
Upon the sky-surrounded main;
The standards of the Western World
Were to the willing winds unfurled.
Denying Britain's tyrant reign.
I go
PHILIP FRENEAU
The Good Man Richard led the line;
The Allianct' next: with these combine
The Gallic ship they Pallas call:
The J't-ngeance, armed with sword and
flame, 4°
These to attack the Britons came —
But two accomplished all.
Now Phoebus sought his pearly bed:
But who can tell the scenes of dread,
The horrors of that fatal night!
Close up these floating castles came;
The Good Man Richard bursts in flame:
Seraphis trembled at the sight.
She felt the fury of her ball,
Down, prostrate dow^n, the Britons fall; 50
Ihe decks were strewed with slain:
Jones to the foe his vessel lashed;
And, while the black artillery flashed,
Loud thunders shook the main.
Alas! that mortals should employ
Such murdering engines, to destroy
That frame by heav'n so nicely joined;
Alas! that e'er the god decreed
That brother should by brother bleed,
And poured such madness in the mmd. 60
But thou, brave Jones, no blame shalt bear,
The rights of men demand thy care:
For these you dare the greedy waves —
No tyrant on destruction bent
Has planned thy conquests — thou art sent
To humble tyrants and their slaves.
See! — dread Seraphis flames again — •
And art thou, Jones, among the slain.
And sunk to Neptune's caves below —
He lives — though crowds around him fall, 70
Still he, unhurt, survives them all;
Almost alone he fights the foe.
And can thy ship these strokes sustain.?
Behold thy brave companions slain.
All clasped m ocean's dark embrace.
"Strike, or be sunk!" — the Briton cries —
"Sink, if you can!" — the chief replies,
Fierce lightnings blazing in his face.
Then to the side three guns he drew
(Almost deserted by his crew),
And charged them deep with woe:
80
By Pearson's flash he aimed the balls;
His main-mast totters — down it falls —
Tremendous was the blow.
Pearson as yet disdained to yield,
But scarce his secret fears concealed,
And thus w^as heard to cry —
"With hell, not mortals, I contend;
What art thou — human, or a fiend.
That dost my force defy.'' 90
"Return, my lads, the fight renew!"
So called bold Pearson to his crew;
But called, alas! in vain;
Some on the decks lay maimed and dead;
Some to their deep recesses fled.
And more were buried in the main.
Distressed, forsaken, and alone.
He hauled his tattered standard down,
And yielded to his gallant foe;
Bold Pallas soon the Countess took, 100
Thus both their haughty colors struck.
Confessing what the brave can do.
But, Jones, too dearly didst thou buy
These ships possessed so gloriously.
Too many deaths disgraced the fray:
Thy bark that bore the conquering flame,
That the proud Briton overcame,
Even she forsook thee on thy way;
For when the morn began to shine.
Fatal to her, the ocean brine no
Poured through each spacious w^ound;
Quick in the deep she disappeared.
But Jones to friendly Belgia steered,
With conquest and with glory crowned.
Go on, great man, to daunt the foe.
And bid the haughty Britons know
They to our Thirteen Stars shall bend;
The Stars that veiled in dark attire,
Long glirnmered with a feeble fire,
But radiant now ascend; 120
Bend to the Stars that flaming rise
In western, not in eastern, skies.
Fair Freedom's reign restored.
So when the magi, come from far,
Beheld the God-attending Star,
They trembled and adored.
THE POLITICAL BALANCE
191
TO THE MEMORY OF THE BRAVE
AMERICANS!
UNDER GENERAL GREENE, IN SOUTH CARO-
LINA, WHO FELL IN THE ACTION OF
SEPTEMBER 8, I781
At Eutaw Springs the valiant died;
Their hmbs with dust are covered o'er —
Weep on, ye springs, your tearful tide;
How many heroes are no more!
If in this wreck of ruin they
Can yet be thought to claim a tear,
O smite your gentle breast, and say
The friends of freedom slumber here!
Thou, who shalt trace this bloody plain,
If goodness rules thy generous breast, lo
Sigh for the wasted rural reign;
Sigh for the shepherds, sunk to rest!
Stranger, their humble graves adorn;
You too may fall, and ask a tear;
'Tis not the beauty of the morn
That proves the evening shall be clear.
They saw their injured country's woe;
The flaming town, the wasted held;
Then rushed to meet the insulting foe;
They took the spear — but left the
shield.- 20
Led by thy conquering genius, Greene,
The Britons they compelled to fly;
None distant viewed the fatal plam.
None grieved, in such a cause to die —
But, like the Parthian, famed of old,
Who, flying, still their arrows threw,
These routed Britons, full as bold,
Retreated, and retreating slew.
Now rest in peace, our patriot band;
Though far from nature's limits thrown, 30
We trust they And a happier land,
A brighter sunshine of their own.
• First published in FrcYman's Journal, 21 November,
1781. The number of .Americans lost, counting killed,
wounded, and missing, was 554.
5 Sir Walter Scott praised this poem and also used
this line in the introduction to Canto III oi Marmion
(1. 64): "And snatched the spear but left the shield."
THE POLITICAL BALANCES
OR, THE FATES OF BRITAIN AND AMERICA
COMPARED
A TALE
Deciding FateSy in Homer s styUy we shozvy
And bring contending gods once more to view.
As Jove the Olympian (whom both I and you
know,
\\ as brother to Neptune, and husband to
Juno)
Was lately reviewing his papers of state.
He happened to light on the records of Fate:
In Alphabet order this volume was written —
So he opened at B, for the article Britain —
She struggles so well, said the god, I will see
What the sisters in Pluto's dominions decree.
And flrst, on the top of a column he read
"Of a king with a mighty soft place in his
head, 10
Who should join in his temper the ass and the
mule.
The third of his name, and by far the worst
fool:
" His reign shall be famous for multiplication,
The sire and the king of a whelp generation:
But such is the will and the purpose of fate,
For each child he begets he shall forfeit a
State:
"In the course of events, he shall find to his
cost
That he cannot regain what he foolishly
lost;
Of the nations around he shall be the de-
rision.
And know by experience the rule of Divi-
sion." 20
So Jupiter read — a god of first rank —
And still had read on — but he came to a
blank:
For the Fates had neglected the rest to
reveal —
They either forgot it, or chose to conceal:
When a leaf is torn out, or a blot on a page
That pleases our fancy, we fly in a rage —
» First published in Freeman s Journal, 3 April, 1782.
ig2
PHILIP FRENEAU
So, curious to know what the Fates would
say next.
No wonder if Jove, disappointed, was vexed.
Hut still as true genius not frequently fails.
He glanced at the Virgin, and thought of the
Scales;^ 30
And said, "To determine the will of the
Fates,
One scale shall weigh Britain, the other the
States.
Then turning to Vulcan, his makerof thunder,
Said he, "My dear Vulcan, I pray you look
yonder.
Those creatures are tearing each other to
pieces.
And, instead of abating, the carnage in-
creases.
"Now, as you are a blacksmith, and lusty
stout ham-eater,
You must make me a globe of a shorter
diameter;
The world in abridgment, and just as it
stands
With all its proportions of waters and
lands; 40
"But its various divisions must so be de-
signed.
That I can unhinge it whene'er I've a
mind —
How else should I know what the portions
will weigh,
Or which of the combatants carry the day?"
Old Vulcan complied (we've no reason to
doubt it),
So he put on his apron and straight went
about it —
Made center, and circles as round as a pan-
cake.
And here the Pacific, and there the Atlantic.
An axis he hammered, whose ends were the
poles
(On which the whole body perpetually
rolls), 50
A brazen meridian he added to these,
Where four times repeated were ninety
degrees.
* This sign of the zodiac stands next to the Virgin.
I am sure you had laughed to have seen his
droll attitude.
When he bent round the surface the circles
of latitude,
The zones and the tropics, meridians,
equator.
And other fine things that are drawn on
salt water.
Away to the southward (instructed by
Pallas)
He placed in the ocean the Terra Australis,
New Holland, New Guinea, and so of the
rest —
America lay by herself in the west: 60
From the regions where winter eternally
reigns.
To the climes of Peru he extended her plains;
Dark groves, and the zones did her bosom
adorn,
And the Crosiers,^ new burnished, he hung
at Cape Horn.
The weight of two oceans she bore on her
sides.
With all their convulsions of tempests and
tides;
Vast lakes on her surface did fearfully roll.
And the ice from her rivers surrounded the
pole.
Then Europe and Asia he northward ex-
tended,
Where under the Arctic with Zembla they
ended 70
(The length of these regions he took with
his garters,
Including Siberia, the land of the Tartars).
In the African clime (where the cocoa-nut
tree grows)
He laid down the deserts, and even the
negroes,
The shores by the weaves of four oceans em-
braced.
And elephants strolling about in the waste.
In forming East India, he had a wide scope.
Beginning his work at the cape of Good
Hope;
Then eastw^ard of that he continued his plan.
Till he came to the empire and isles of
Japan. 80
' Stars, in the form of a cross, which mark the South
Pole in southern latitudes. (Freneau's note.)
THE POLITICAL BALANCE
193
Adjacent to Europe he struck up an island
(One part of it low, but the other was high
land),
With many a comical creature upon it,
And one wore a hat, and another a bonnet.
Like emmets or ants in a fine summer's day,
They ever were marching in battle array,
Or skipping about on the face of the brine.
Like witches in egg-shells (their ships of the
line).
These poor little creatures were all in a flame.
To the lands of America urging their
claim, 90
Still biting, or stinging, or spreading their
sails
(For Vulcan had formed them with stings in
their tails).
So poor and so lean, you might count all
their ribs.i
Yet were so enraptured with crackers and
squibs,
That Vulcan with laughter almost split
asunder,
"Because they imagined their crackers were
thunder."
Due westward from these, with a channel
between,
A servant to slaves, Hibernia was seen,
Once crowded with monarchs, and high in
renown.
But all she retained was the Harp and the
Crown! 100
Insulted for ever by nobles and priests,
And managed by bullies, and governed by
beasts.
She looked! — to describe her I hardly know
how —
Such an image of death in the scowl on her
brow.
For scaffolds and halters were full in her
view.
And the fiends of perdition their cutlasses
drew:
And axes and gibbets around her were placed,
And the demons of murder her honors
defaced.
* Their national debt being now above £200,000,000
sterling. (Freneau's note.)
With the blood of the worthy her mantle
was stained,
And hardly a trace of her beauty re-
mained, no
Her genius, a female, reclined in the shade,
And, sick of oppression, so mournfully
played.
That Jove was uneasy to hear her complain,
And ordered his blacksmith to loosen her
chain:
Then tipped her a wink, saying, "Now is
your time
(To rebel is the sin, to revolt is no crime),
When your fetters are off, if you dare not
be free
Be a slave and be damned, but complain
not to me."
But finding her timid, he cried in a rage —
"Though the doors are flung open, she stays
in the cage! 120
Subservient to Britain then let her remain.
And her freedom shall be but the choice of
her chain."
At length, to discourage all stupid preten-
sions,
Jove looked at the globe, and approved its
dimensions.
And cried in a transport — "Why what have
we here!
Friend Vulcan, it is a most beautiful sphere!
"Now while I am busy in taking apart
This globe that is formed with such exquisite
art,
Go, Hermes, to Libra (you're one of her
gallants).
And ask, in my name, for the loan of her
balance." 130
Away posted Hermes, as swift as the gales,
And as swiftly returned with the ponderous
scales,
And hung them aloft to a beam in the air,
So equally poised, they had turned with a
hair.
Now Jove to Columbia his shoulders applied,
But aiming to lift her, his strength she
defied —
Then, turning about to their godships, he
says:
"A body so vast is not easy to raise;
104
PHILIP FRENEAU
" But if you assist me, I still have a notion
Our forces, united, can put her in motion, 140
And swins Ikt aloft (though alone I mij^iit
fail).
And place her, in spite of her bulk, in our
scale;
"If six years together the Congress have
strove.
And more than divided the empire with
Jove;
With a Jove like myself, who am nine times
as great.
You can join, like their soldiers, to heave
up this weight."
So to it they went, with hand-spikes and
levers,
And upward she sprung, with her mountains
and rivers!
Rocks, cities, and islands, deep waters and
shallows,
Ships, armies, and forests, high heads and
fine fellows: 150
"Stick to it!" cries Jove, "now heave one
and all!
At least we are lifting 'one-eighth of the
ball'!
If backward she tumbles — then trouble
begins.
And then have a care, my dear boys, of your
shins!"
When gods are determined what project can
fail?
So they gave a hard shove, and she mounted
the scale;
Suspended aloft, Jove viewed her with awe —
And the gods,i for their pay, had a hearty —
huzza!
But Neptune bawled out — "Why Jove
you're a noddy.
Is Britain sufficient to poise that vast
body? 160
*Tis nonsense such castles to build in the
air —
As well might an oyster with Britain com-
>>
pare.
"Away to your waters, you blustering
bully,"
Said Jove, "or I'll make you repent of your
folly.
» American soldiers. (Freneaii's note.)
Is Jupiter, Sir, to be tutored by you? —
Get out of my sight, for I know what to do!"
Then searching about with his fingers for
Britain,
Thought he, "This same island I cannot
well hit on;
The devil take him who first called her the
Great:
If she was — she is vastly diminished of
late!" 170
Like a man that is searching his thigh for a
flea.
He peeped and he fumbled, but nothing could
see;
At last he exclaimed: "I am surely upon
it —
I think I have hold of a Highlander's
bonnet."
But finding his error, he said with a sigh,
"This bonnet is only the island of Skie!"2
So away to his namesake the planet he goes,
And borrowed two moons to hang on his
nose.
Through these, as through glasses, he saw
her quite clear.
And in raptures cried out: "I have found
her — she's here! 180
If this be not Britain, then call me an ass —
She looks like a gem in an ocean of glass.
"But, faith, she's so small I must mind how
I shake her;
In a box I'll enclose her, for fear I should
break her:
Though a god, I might suffer for being
aggressor,
Since scorpions, and vipers, and hornets
possess her;
"The white cliffs of Albion I think I descry — ■
And the hills of Plinlimmon appear rather
nigh—
But, Vulcan, inform me what creatures are
these.
That smell so of onions, and garlic, and
cheese?" 190
Old Vulcan replied — "Odds splutter a nails!
Why, these are the Welsh, and the country
is Wales!
2 An island on the north-west of Scotland. (Fre-
neau's note.)
THE POLITICAL BALANCP:
195
When Taffy is vexed, no devil is ruder —
Take care how you trouble the offspring of
Tudor!
"On the crags of the mountains hur living
hur seeks,
Hur country is planted with garlic and leeks;
So great is hur choler, beware how you tease
hur.
For these are the Britons — unconquered by
Caesar."
Jove peeped through his moons, and ex-
amined their features,
And said: "By my truth, they are wonderful
creatures, 200
The beards are so long that encircle their
throats.
That (unless they are Welshmen) I swear
they are goats.
** But now, my dear Juno, pray give me my
mittens
(These insects I am going to handle are
Britons),
I'll draw up their isle with a finger and
thumb.
As the doctor extracts an old tooth from
the gum."
Then he raised her aloft — but to shorten
our tale,
She looked like a clod in the opposite scale —
Britannia so small, and Columbia so large —
A ship of first rate, and a ferryman's barge!
Cried Pallas to Vulcan: "Why, Jove's in a
dream — 211
Observe how he watches the turn of the
beam!
Was ever a mountain outweighed by a grain!
Or what is a drop when compared to the
But Momus alleged: "In my humble opin-
ion,
You should add to Great Britain her foreign
dominion,
When this is appended, perhaps she will rise,
And equal her rival in weight and in size."
**Alas!" said the monarch, "your project is
vain,
But little is left of her foreign domain; 220
And, scattered about in the licjuid expanse.
That little is left to the mercy of France.
"However, we'll lift them, and give her fair
play"—
And soon in the scale with their mistress
they lay;
But the gods were confounded and struck
with surprise,
And Vulcan could hardly believe his own
eyes!
For (such was the purpose and guidance of
fate)
Her foreign dominions diminished her
weight —
By which it appeared, to Britain's disaster.
Her foreign possessions were changing their
master. 230
Then, as he replaced them, said Jove with a
smile:
"Columbia shall never be ruled by an isle —
But vapors and darkness around her may
rise,
And tempests conceal her awhile from our
eyes;
"So locusts in Egypt their squadrons dis-
play.
And rising, disfigure the face of the day;
So the moon, at her full, has a frequent
eclipse.
And the sun in the ocean diurnally dips.
"Then cease your endeavors, ye vermin of
Britain"
(And here, in derision, their island he spit
on); 240
"'Tis madness to seek what you never can
find,
Or to think of uniting what nature disjoined;
" But still you may flutter awhile with your
wings.
And spit out your venom and brandish your
stings:
Your hearts are as black and as bitter as gall,
A curse to mankind — and a blot on the Ball."^
1 It is hoped that such a sentiment may not be
deemed wholly illiberal. Every candid person will
certainly draw a line between a brave and magnanimous
people and a most vicious and vitiating government.
(Freneau's note.)
iq6
rillLIP FRENEAU
ON CAPTAIN BARNEY'S VICTORY
OVER THE SHIP GENERAL MONK'
O'er the waste of waters cruising,
Long tlie General Monk had reigned;
All subduing, all reducing,
None licr lawless rage restrained'
Many a brave and hearty fellow,
"^'ielding to this warlike foe,
When her guns began to bellow
Struck his humbled colors low.
But grown bold with long successes,
Leaving the wide watery way, lo
She, a stranger to distresses,
Came to cruise within Cape May:
"Now we soon," said Captain Rogers,
"Shall their men of commerce meet;
In our hold we'll have them lodgers.
We shall capture half their fleet.
"Lo! I see their van appearing — •
Back our topsails to the mast — ■
They toward us full are steering
With a gentle western blast: 20
I've a list of all their cargoes.
All their guns, and all their men:
I am sure these modern Argos
Can't escape us one in ten:
"Yonder comes the Charming Sally
Sailing with the General Greene —
First we'll fight the Ilyder AH,
Taking her is taking them:
She intends to give us battle,
Bearing down with all her sail — 30
Now, boys, let our cannon rattle!
To take her we cannot fail.
"Our eighteen guns, each a nine-pounder,
Soon shall terrify this foe;
We shall maul her, we shall wound her.
Bringing rebel colors low."
While he thus anticipated
Conquests that he could not gain,
He in the Cape May channel waited
For the ship that caused his pain. 40
Captain Barney then preparing.
Thus addressed his gallant crew —
"Now, brave lads, be bold and daring,
Let your hearts be firm and true;
1 First published in Freeman s Journaly 8 May, 178a.
This is a proud English cruiser.
Roving up and down the main,
We must fight her — must reduce her.
Though our decks be strewed with slain.
"Let who will be the survivor.
We must conquer or must die, 50
We must take her up the river,
Whate'er comes of you or I:
Though she shows most formidable
With her eighteen pointed nines.
And her quarters clad in sable.
Let us balk her proud designs.
"With four nine-pounders, and twelve sixes
We will face that daring band;
Let no dangers damp your courage
Nothing can the brave withstand. 60
Fighting for your country's honor,
Now to gallant deeds aspire;
Helmsman, bear us down upon her,
Gunner, give the word to fire!"
Then yard-arm and yard-arm meeting.
Straight began the dismal fray,
Cannon mouths, each other greeting.
Belched their smoky flames away:
Soon the langrage,^ grape, and chain shot.
That from Barney's cannons flew, 70
Swept the Monky and cleared each round top,
Killed and wound-ed half her crew.
Captain Rogers strove to rally.
But they from their quarters fled.
While the roaring Hyder AH
Covered o'er his decks with dead.
When from their tops their dead men
tumbled,
And the streams of blood did flow.
Then their proudest hopes were humbled
By their brave inferior foe. 80
All aghast, and all confounded.
They beheld their champions fall.
And their captain, sorely wounded.
Bade them quick for quarters call.
Then the Monk's proud flag descended.
And her cannon ceased to roar;
By her crew no more defended.
She confessed the contest o'er.
2 Kind of shot at this time used for tearing sails and
rigging.
TO AN AUTHOR
197
Come, brave boys, and fill your glasses,
You have humbled one proud foe; 90
No brave action this surpasses.
Fame shall tell the nations so.
Thus be Britain's woes completed.
Thus abridged her cruel reign,
Till she ever, thus defeated,
Yields the scepter of the main.
THE WILD HONEY SUCKLE ^
Fair flower, that dost so comely grow,
Hid in this silent, dull retreat.
Untouched thy honied blossoms blow,
Unseen thy little branches greet:
No roving foot shall crush thee here.
No busy hand provoke a tear.
By Nature's self in white arrayed,
She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,
And planted here the guardian shade.
And sent soft waters murmuring by; 10
Thus quietly thy summer goes.
Thy days declining to repose.
Smit with those charms, that must decay,
I grieve to see your future doom;
They died — nor were those flowers more
gay,
The flowers that did in Eden bloom;
Unpitying frosts, and Autumn's power.
Shall leave no vestige of this flower.
From morning suns and evening dews
At first thy little being came: 20
If nothing once, you nothing lose,
For when you die you are the same;
The space between, is but an hour,
The frail duration of a flower.
TO AN AUTHORS
Your leaves bound up compact and fair.
In neat array at length prepare
To pass their hour on learning's stage,
To meet the surly critic's rage;
The statesman's slight, the smatterer's
sneer — •
1 First published in Freeman's Journal^ 2 August,
1786.
2 First published in collective edition of 1788.
Were these, indeed, your only fear.
You might be tranquil and resigned:
What most should touch your fluttering
mind
Is that few critics will be found
lo sift your works, and deal the wound. 10
Thus, when one fleeting year is past
On some bye-shelf your book is cast —
Another comes, with something new.
And drives you fairly out of view:
With some to praise, but more to blame.
The mind returns to — whence it came;
And some alive, who scarce could read
Will publish satires on the dead.
The muse of love in no request —
Go — try your fortune with the rest,
One of the nine you should engage.
To meet the follies of the age.
On one, we fear, your choice must fall,
The least engaging of them all;
Her visage stern — an angry style —
A clouded brow — malicious smile —
A mind on murdered victims placed —
She, only she, can please the taste!
20
Thrice happy Dryden, who could meet
Some rival bard in every street!
When all were bent on writing well
It was some credit to excel!
Thrice happy Dryden, who could find
A Milbourne for his sport designed —
And Pope, who saw the harmless rage
Of Dennis bursting o'er his page,
Might justly spurn the critic's aim.
Who only helped to swell his fame.
On these bleak climes by Fortune thrown,
Where rigid Reason reigns alone, 30
Where lovely Fancy has no sway,
Nor magic forms about us play,
Nor nature takes her summer hue,
Tell me, what has the muse to do.f"
An age employed in edging steel
Can no poetic raptures feel;
No solitude's attracting power.
No leisure of the noonday hour.
No shaded stream, no quiet grove
Can this fantastic century move.
40
SO
iqS
PHILIP FRENEAU
THE INDIAN BURYING GROUND^
In spite of all the learn'd have said,
I still my old opinion keep;
The posture that we give the dead.
Points out the soul's eternal sleep.
Not so the ancients of these lands —
The Indian, when from life released,
Again is seated with his friends.
And shares again the joyous feast. -
His imaged birds, and painted bowl.
And venison, for a journey dressed, lo
Bespeak the nature of the soul.
Activity, that knows no rest.
His bow, for action ready bent.
And arrows, with a head of stone,
Can only mean that life is spent,
And not the old ideas gone.
Thou, stranger, that shalt come this way,
No fraud upon the dead commit —
Observe the swelling turf, and say
They do not lie, but here they sit. 20
Here still a lofty rock remains,
On which the curious eye may trace
(Now wasted, half, by wearing rains)
The fancies of a ruder race.
Here still an aged elm aspires.
Beneath whose far-projecting shade
(And which the shepherd still admires)
The children of the forest played!
There oft a restless Indian queen
(Pale Shebah, with her braided hair)
.And many a barbarous form is seen
To chide the man that lingers there.
30
By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews,
In habit for the chase arrayed.
The hunter still the deer pursues.
The hunter and the deer, a shadel-
> First published in collective edition of 1788.
*The North American Indians bury their dead in a
sitting posture, decorating the corpse with wampum,
the images of birds, quadrupeds, etc.\ and Cif that of
a warrior) with bows, arrows, tomahawks, and other
inilitan»' weapons. "Treneau's note.)
> Thomas Campbell borrowed this line, using it in
the fourth stanza of his poem entitled O'Connor's Child.
And long shall timorous fancy see
The painted chief, and pointed spear,
.And Reason's self shall bow the knee
To shadows and delusions here. 40
ODE<
God save the Rights of Man!
Give us a heart to scan
Blessings so dear;
Let them be spread around
Wherever man is found,
And with the welcome sound
Ravish his ear.
Let us with France agree.
And bid the world be free,
While tyrants fall!
Let the rude savage host
Of their vast numbers boast-
Freedom's almighty trust
Laughs at them all!
Though hosts of slaves conspire
To quench fair Gallia's fire.
Still shall they fail:
Though traitors round her rise.
Leagued with her enemies.
To war each patriot flies.
And will prevail.
No more is valor's flame
Devoted to a name,
Taught to adore —
Soldiers of Liberty
Disdain to 'bow the knee,
But teach Equality
To every shore.
The world at last will join
To aid thy grand design.
Dear Liberty!
To Russia's frozen lands
The generous flame expands:
On Afric's burning sands
Shall man be free!
In this our western world
Be Freedom's flag unfurled
Through all its shores!
10
20
30
< First published, as far as is known, in collective
edition of 1*95, but said to have been sung at the
November Festival of the London Revolution Society
in 1 791. It was sung at the Civic Feast held in honor
of Citizen Genet in Philadelphia on i June, 1793.
ON IHK ANNINKRSARV
199
May no destructive blast
Our heaven of jt)y o'ercast, 40
May Freedom's fabric last
While time endures.
If e'er her cause require! —
Should tyrants e'er aspire
To aim their stroke,
May no proud despot daunt —
Should he his standard plant,
Freedom will never want
Her heart of oak!
ON A HONEY BEE^
DRINKING FROM A GLASS OF WINE AND
DROWNED THEREIN
Thou, born to sip the lake or spring.
Or quafl the waters of the stream,
Why hither come on vagrant wing? —
Does Bacchus tempting seem —
Did he, for you, this glass prepare? —
Will 1 admit you to a share?
Did storms harass or foes perplex.
Did wasps or king-birds bring dismay —
Did wars distress, or labors vex,
Or did you miss your way? — 10
A better seat you could not take
Than on the margin of this lake.
W^elcome! — I hail you to my glass:
All welcome, here, you find;
Here, let the cloud of trouble pass,
Here, be all care resigned.
This fluid never fails to please,
And drown the griefs of men or bees.
What forced you here, we cannot know.
And you will scarcely tell — 20
But cheery we would have you go
And bid a glad farewell:
On lighter wings we bid you fly.
Your dart will now all foes defy.
Yet take not, oh! too deep a drink.
And in this ocean die;
Here bigger bees than you might sink.
Even bees full six feet high.
Like Pharaoh, then, you would be said
To perish in a sea of red. 30
1 Published in the collective edition of 1809.
Do as you please, your will is mine;
Enjoy it without fear —
And your grave will be this glass of wine,
\'our epitaph — a tear —
Go, take your seat in Charon's boat.
We'll tell the hive, you died afloat.
ON THE ANNIVERSARY^
OF THE STORMING OF THE BASTILLE, AV PARIS,
14 JULY, 1789
The chiefs that bow to Capet's reign.
In mourning, now, their weeds display;
But we, that scorn a monarch's chain,
Combine to celebrate the day
To Freedom's birth that put the seal.
And laid in dust the proud Bastille.
To Gallia's rich and splendid crown.
This mighty Day gave such a blow
As Time's recording hand shall own
No former age had power to do: 10
No single gem some Brutus stole,
But instant ruin seized the whole.
Now tyrants rise, once more to bind
In royal chains a nation freed —
Vain hope! for they, to death consigned,
Shall soon, like perjured Louis, bleed:
O'er every king, o'er every (lueen,
Fate hangs the sword, and guillotine.
"Plunged in a gulf of deep distress
France turns her back (so traitors say); 20
Kings, priests, and nobles, round her press.
Resolved to seize their destined prey:
Thus Europe swears (in arms combined)
To Poland's doom is France consigned."
Yet those, who now are tlunight so low
From concjuests that were basely gained.
Shall rise tremendous from the blow
And free Two Worlds, that still are chained,
Restrict the Briton to his isle.
And Freedom plant in every soil. 30
Ye sons of this degenerate clime,
Haste, arm the bark, exp:ind the sail;
Assist to speed that golden time
When Frei'dom rules, and monarchs fail;
All left to 1' ranee — new powers may join.
And help to crush the cause divine.
2 First published in National Gazette, 17 July, 1793.
200
PHILIP FRENEAU
All! wliile I write, dear France Allied,
My anient wish I scarce restrain,
To throw these Sybil leaves aside,
And Hy to join you on the main: 40
I'nfurl the topsail for the chase
And help to crush the tyrant race!
THE REPUBLICAN GENIUS
OF EUROPE^
Emperors and kin^s! in vain you strive
Your torments to conceal —
The age is come that shakes your thrones,
Tramples in dust despotic crowns
And bids the scepter fail.
In western worlds the flame began:
From thence to France it flew —
Tiirough Europe, now, it takes its way,
Beams an insufferable day.
And lays all tyrants low. 10
Genius of France! pursue the cnase
Till Reason's laws restore
Man to be Man, in every clime; —
That Being, active, great, sublime,
Debased in dust no more.
In dreadful pomp he takes his way
O'er ruined crowns, demolished thrones —
Pale tyrants shrink before his blaze —
Round him terrific lightnings play —
W ith eyes of fire, he looks them through.
Crushes the vile despotic crew, 21
And Pride in ruin lays.
TO A CATY-DID2
In a branch of willow hid
Sings the evening Caty-did:
From the lofty locust bough
Feeding on a drop of dew.
In her suit of green arrayed
Hear her singing in the shade
Caty-did, Caty-did, Caty-did!
While upon a leaf you tread,
Or repose your little head.
On your sheet of shadows laid, 10
All the day you nothing said:
Half the night your cheery tongue
Reveled out its little song.
Nothing else but Caty-did.
' First published in Jersey Chronicle, 23 May, 1795.
'Published in collective edition of 1815.
P rom your lodgings on the leaf
Did you utter joy or grief.''
Did you only mean to say,
I have had my summer's day.
And am passing, soon, away
To the grave of Caty-did: — 20
Poor, unhappy Caty-did!
But you would have uttered more
Had you known of nature's power —
From the world when you retreat.
And a leaf's your winding sheet
Long before your spirit fled.
Who can tell but nature said,
Live again, my Caty-did!
Live, and chatter Caty-did.
Tell me, what did Caty do? 30
Did she mean to trouble you.?—
Why was Caty not forbid
To trouble little Caty-did? —
Wrong, indeed at you to fling,
Hurting no one while you sing
Caty-did ! Caty-did ! Caty-did 1
Why continue to complain?
Caty tells me, she again
Will not give you plague or pain: —
Caty says you may be hid; 40
Caty will not go to bed
While you sing us Caty-did.
Caty-did! Caty-did! Caty-did!
But, while singing, you forgot
To tell us what did Caty not:
Caty-did not think of cold.
Flocks retiring to the fold.
Winter, v/ith his wrinkles old.
Winter, that yourself foretold
When you gave us Caty-did. 50
Stay securely in your nest;
Caty now will do her best.
All she can to make you bless'd;
But, you want no human aid —
Nature, when she formed you, said,
"Independent you are made.
My dear little Caty-did:
Soon yourself must disappear
With the verdure of the year," —
And to go, we know not where, 60
With your song of Caty-did.
WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859)
"The first ambassador whom the New World of Letters sent to the Old" — the description is
Thackeray's— was born in New York on 3 April, 1783. His father was a merchant, honest and blame-
less in his life, but severe and devoted to a stern religion — so devoted that he would have had his
children believe that all pleasures were sinful. Mrs. Irving was of softer, gentler temper, like Wash-
ington, her youngest and eleventh child. Thanks to her the child was tenderly brought up. In
his boyhood he was mischievous and an indifferent student, though an eager reader of such narra-
tives of adventure as he could find. In 1799, after he had attended for varying periods some four
different schools, he entered a law oflice to prepare himself for a legal career. His study was not
over-zealous and was much interrupted — by literary reading, which included novels by Mrs. Rad-
cliffe and Sterne's Sentimental Journey, by attempts at essay-writing, by social diversion, and by travel.
It was owing to poor health that he was sent abroad in 1804, where he traveled in Sicily, Italy,
France, Holland, and England, returning to America early in 1806. In the fall of the same year
he was admitted to the bar, rather, it has been thought, because of the friendship of one of his exam-
iners than because of his knowledge of the law. He never made more than a vague pretense at the
practice of his profession, but instead gave himself over to a gay social life, fell in love with a beautiful
young girl, Matilda Hoffman, and joined his brother and a friend in writing a series of essays, 5^/-
magundiy imitative of Addison's Spectator, to "amuse, edify, and castigate the town." The castigation
was mild and the town was genuinely amused. Following this success, Irving, with another brother,
undertook to write a parody of "a small handbook which had recently appeared, entitled A Picture
of New York.'* Presently the brother went to Europe, and Irving, working on alone, altered the plan,
so that the book became a humorous History of New York from the Beginning of the fVorld to the End
of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker. It was published in December, 1809. Earlier in
the same year Matilda Hoffman had died, causing Irving grief which was deep and not easily for-
gotten, but which has been exaggerated by most of his biographers.
In 1810 he was taken into their hardware business by his brothers, their object being to give
him an income, but to leave him free for literary work. Though during the next few years he was
connected with two periodicals, he did little writing, and chiefly used his freedom to enjoy social
life. His most recent biographer (G. S. Hellman) believes that during this period Irving proposed
marriage to a Scotchwoman some years his senior but, if he did so, his proposal was rejected. In
the late spring of 1815 he sailed for Liverpool, where one of his brothers conducted the English
establishment of the firm. He expected to remain in England only a few months, but in fact did
not return to America until seventeen years later. His brother in Liverpool had become practically
an invalid, and Irving took charge of the business, but was able also to travel occasionally. His
circle of acquaintance, always wide, soon included Thomas Campbell, Francis Jeffrey, editor of the
Edinburgh Review, and Sir Walter Scott. In 1818 the Irving firm, which had been suffering from unset-
tled business conditions, became bankrupt, and Irving now had, for the first time, to face the prob-
lem of earning a living. After a period of distress and hesitation he determined to try to make his
way by writing, and began the series of essays which was published in seven numbers, or parts, in
1819-1820, with the title. The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. The book was an immediate
and great success in both America and England, and it seemed that Irving would have no difficulty
in earning his living by his pen. For many years, however, he was more or less embarrassed finan-
cially, because he was almost uniformly unfortunate in the speculations into which he ventured with
the large profits from this and succeeding volumes. Bracebridge Hall was published in 1822, and
Tales of a Traveler in 1824.
Meanwhile in 1821 Irving had left England for the Continent, had spent some time in Paris, and
then had traveled in Germany, where, in the winter of 1822-1823, he had met an English girl, Emily
Foster, whom he had sought to marry. Probably he continued for several years to press his suit,
but without success. In 1826 he went to Madrid as a member of the American legation, and began
work upon his History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (published 1828). He trav-
eled extensively in Spain, visiting the Alhambra in 1828, and living there for some time in 1829. In
the latter year his Chronicle of the Coyiquest of Granada was published, and he returned to England to
201
202
WASHINGTON IRVING
hi'comc sccrctnry of the legation in I.omion. His continued success and increasing reputation were
sicnalizcd by high honors, which inchidcd a D.C.L. from Oxford in 1S31. In the same year the Ital-
ian f'oxiii^rs anJ Discovrrirs oj the Companions of Columbus was puhHshed, and in 1832 The .llhambra.
In this year also Irving returned to New "^'ork, where he met with an overwhelming reception. He
continued, however, to he a wanderer, travehng in the West and South. In 1836 he settled in the
house at Tarrytown, on the Hudson, which he later called "Sunnyside." About this time were pub-
lished several hooks resulting from his Western travels— notably A Tour of the Prairies (1835). Irving
was now and later embarrassed by multiplied indications of his eminence, and had to decline two invi-
tations to high public office, as well as many lesser invitations. As early as 1838 he began to work
upon his Life of Geori^e If'ashington. In 1841 he accepted appointment as American Minister to Spain,
and from 1842 until 1846 he was again in Europe. During the remaining years of his life he pub-
lished his books on Goldsmith (1849), Mahomet (1849-1850), and Washington (1855-1859), besides
other volumes. He died at "Sunnyside" on 28 November, 1859.
Irving's mild, gentle, companionable nature gave him a multitude of warm friends and, com-
municated to his books, made him perhaps the best loved, as well as one of the most highly honored,
of nineteenth-century writers. He probably never understood his father's austere Calvinism, but
he felt and resented the conscientious officiousness w-hich seemed to be its chief outward sign. Given
his own character, his conclusion was inevitable: "For my part, I have not so bad an opinion of man-
kind as many of my brother philosophers. I do not think poor human nature so sorry a piece of
workmanship as they would make it out to be; and as far as I have observed, I am fully satisfied
that man, if left to himself, would about as readily go right as wrong." His bent was for worldly
enjoyment and the cultivation of sentiment, and he gave himself free rein, with at least innocent
results. Thomas Moore, after unsuccessful attempts to exhibit Irving to several acquaintances, wrote
that he was "not strong as a lion, but delightful as a domestic animal." Francis Jeffrey, a friendly
and appreciative critic, pointed out that the sweetness and charm which made him thus delightful
were, if unrelieved, in danger of proving insipid. Mildness and gentleness are well, but we want, too,
positive force. Irving, however, shrank from the actual world about him. As a boy he loved what
was picturesque, strange, and distant. As a young man he seized upon the Dutch past of New York
as its "poetic age, . . . poetic from its very obscurit}'," and he sought "to clothe home scenes and
places and familiar names with those imaginative and whimsical associations so seldom met with in our
new country, but which live like charms and spells about the cities of the old world, binding the heart
of the native inhabitant to his home." In this aim he was at the time eminently successful, though
Knickerbocker's History is immature, diffuse, and no longer really readable as a whole. But again, in
those of his writings which still secure his fame because of their intrinsic worth — in Rip Fan fFinkle,
the English essays, and The Alhambra — Irving finds himself most at home in an imaginative or
legendary past. Indeed, one is not far wrong who thinks of him as a gracious ambassador, to us
an ambassador from the world of sentimental fancy, as he was in his own time an ambassador who
succeeded remarkably' in creating friendly feeling for America in England and Europe.
THE SKETCH BOOK
THE AUTHOR'S ACCOUNT OF
HIMSELF
"I am of this mind with Homer, that as the
snaile that crept out of her shel was turned eft-
soons into a toad, and thereby was forced to make
a stoole to sit on; so the traveller that stragleth
from his owne country is in a short time trans-
formed into so monstrous a shape, that he is faine
to alter his mansion with his manners, and to
live where he can, not where he would."
Lyly's Euphues.
I WAS always fond of visiting new scenes,
and observing strange characters and man-
ners. Even when a mere child I began my
travels, and made many tours of discovery
into foreign parts and unknown regions of
my native city, to the frequent alarm of my
parents and the emolument of the town-
crier. As I grew into boyhood, I extended
the range of my observations. My holiday
afternoons were spent in rambles about
the surrounding country. I made myself
familiar with all its places famous in history
or fable. I knew every spot where a murder
or robbery had been committed, or a ghost
seen. I visited the neighboring villages, and
added greatly to my stock of knowledge, by
noting their habits and customs, and con-
versing with their sages and great men. I
even journeyed one long summer's day to
the summit of the most distant hill, whence
I stretched my eye over many a mile of terra
incognita, and was astonished to find how
vast a globe I inhabited.
THE SKETCH BOOK
203
This ramblinc; propensity strengthened
with my years. Books ofvoyajjes and trav-
els became my passion, and in devouring
their contents I neglected the regular ex-
ercises of the school. How wistfully would I
wander about the pier-heads in fine weather,
and watch the parting ships, bound to dis-
tant climes; with what longing eyes would
I gaze after their lessening sails, and waft
myself in imagination to the ends of the
earth!
Further reading and thinking, though
they brought this vague inclination into
more reasonable bounds, only served to
make it more decided. I visited various parts
of my own country; and had I been merely a
lover of fine scenery, I should have felt little
desire to seek elsewhere its gratification, for
on no country have the charms of nature
been more prodigally lavished. Her mighty
lakes, like oceans of liquid silver; her moun-
tains, with their bright aerial tints; her val-
valleys, teeming with wild fertility; her
tremendous cataracts, thundering in their
solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with
spontaneous verdure; her broad deep rivers,
rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her
trackless forests, where vegetation puts
forth all its magnificence; her skies, kin-
dling with the magic of summer clouds and
glorious sunshine; — no, never need an
American look beyond his own country for
the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery.
But Europe held forth the charms of sto-
ried and poetical association. There were to
be seen the masterpieces of art, the refine-
ments of highly cultivated society, the quaint
peculiarities of ancient and local custom.
My native country was full of youthful prom-
ise: Europe was rich in the accumulated
treasures of age. Her very ruins told the his-
tory of times gone by, and every moldering
stone was a chronicle. I longed to wander
over the scenes of renowned achievement
— to tread, as it were, in the footsteps of an-
tiquity— to loiter about the ruined castle —
to meditate on the falling tower — to escape,
in short, from the commonplace realities
of the present, and lose myself among the
shadowy grandeurs of the past.
I had, beside all this, an earnest desire to
see the great men of the earth. We have,
it is true, our great men in America: not a
city but has an ample share of them. I have
mingled among them in my time, and been
almost withered by the shade into which
they cast me; for there is nothing so baleful
to a small man as the shade of a great one,
particularly the great man of a city. But I
was anxious to see the great men of Europe;
for' I had read in the works of various phi-
losophers, that all animals degenerated in
America, and man among the number. A
great man of Europe, thought I, must there-
fore be as superior to a great man of America
as a peak of the Alps to a highland of the Hud-
son, and in this idea I was confirmed, by ob-
serving the comparative importance and swell-
ing magnitude of many English travelers
among us, who, I was assured, were very
little people in their own country. I will
visit this land of wonders, thought I, and see
the gigantic race from w^hich I am degener-
ated.
It has been either my good or evil lot to
have my roving passion gratified. I have
wandered through different countries, and
witnessed many of the shifting scenes of
life. I cannot say that I have studied them
with the eye of a philosopher; but rather
with the sauntering gaze with which humble
lovers of the picturesque stroll from the win-
dow of one print-shop to another; caught
sometimes by the delineations of beauty,
sometimes by the distortions of caricature,
and sometimes by the loveliness of land-
scape. As it is the fashion for modern tour-
ists to travel pencil in hand, and bring home
their portfolios filled with sketches, I am
disposed to get up a few for the entertain-
ment of my friends. When, however, I look
over the hints and memorandums I have
taken down for the purpose, my heart almost
fails me at finding how my idle humor has led
me aside from the great objects studied by
every regular traveler who would make a
book. I fear I shall give equal disappoint-
ment with an unlucky landscape painter,
who had traveled on the continent, but,
following the bent of his vagrant inclina-
tion, had sketched in nooks and corners and
by-places. His sketch-book was accordingly
crowded with cottages and landscapes and
obscure ruins; but he had neglected to paint
St. Peter's, or the Coliseum; the Cascade of
Terni, or the Bay of Naples; and had not a
single glacier or volcano in his whole collec-
tion.
204
WASHINGTON IRVING
ENGLISH WRllERS ON AMERICA
"Mcthinks I sec In my mind a noble and
puissant nation, rousing herself like a strong man
after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks;
methinks I see her as an eagle, mewing her mighty
youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full
midday beam."
Milton on the Libkrty of the Press.'
It is with feelings of deep regret that I
observe the literary animosity daily grow-
ing up between England and America.
Great curiosity has been awakened of late
with respect to the United States, and the
London press has teemed with volumes of
travels through the Republic; but they seem
intended to diffuse error rather than knowl-
edge; and so successful have they been, that,
notwithstanding the constant intercourse be-
tween the nations, there is no people con-
cerning whom the great mass of the British
public have less pure information, or enter-
tain more numerous prejudices.
English travelers are the best and the
worst in the world. Where no motives of
pride or interest intervene, none can equal
them for profound and philosophical views
of society, or faithful and graphical descrip-
tions of external objects; but when either the
interest or reputation of their own country
comes in collision with that of another, they
go to the opposite extreme, and forget their
usual probity and candor, in the indulgence
of splenetic remark and an illiberal spirit of
ridicule.
Hence, their travels are more honest and
accurate, the more remote the country des-
cribed. I would place implicit confidence in
an Englishman's descriptions of the re-
gions beyond the cataracts of the Nile; of
unknown islands in the Yellow Sea; of the
interior of India; or of any other tract w^hich
other travelers might be apt to picture out
with the illusions of their fancies; but I
would cautiously receive his account of his
immediate neighbors, and of those nations
with which he is in habits of most frequent
intercourse. However I might be disposed
to trust his probity, I dare not trust his
prejudices.
It has also been the particular lot of our
country to be visited by the w^orst kind of
English travelers. While men of philosoph-
1 I.e., Areopagitica.
ical spirit and cultivated minds have been
sent from England to ransack the poles, to
penetrate the deserts, and to study the man-
ners and customs of barbarous nations with
which she can have no permanent inter-
course of profit or pleasure; it has been left
to the broken-down tradesman, the schem-
ing adventurer, the wandering mechanic,
the Manchester and Birmingham agent, to
be her oracles respecting America. Erom
such sources she is content to receive her in-
formation respecting a country in a singular
state of moral and physical development; a
country in which one of the greatest polit-
ical experiments in the history of the world
is now performing; and which presents the
most profound and momentous studies to
the statesman and the philosopher.
That such men should give prejudicial ac-
counts of America is not a matter of surprise.
The themes it offers for contemplation are
too vast and elevated for their capacities.
The national character is yet in a state of
fermentation; it may have its frothiness and
sediment, but its ingredients are sound and
wholesome; it has already given proofs of
powerful and generous qualities; and the
whole promises to settle down into some-
thing substantially excellent. But the causes
which are operating to strengthen and en-
noble it, and its daily indications of admir-
able properties, are all lost upon these pur-
blind observers; who are only affected by the
little asperities incident to its present sit-
uation. They are capable of judging only of
the surface of things; of those matters which
come in contact with their private interests
and personal gratifications. They miss
some of the snug conveniences and petty
comforts which belong to an old, highly
finished, and over-populous state of society;
where the ranks of useful labor are crowded,
and many earn a painful and servile sub-
sistence by studying the very caprices of
appetite and self-indulgence. These minor
comforts, however, are all-important in the
estimation of narrow minds; which either do
not perceive, or will not acknowledge, that
they are more than counterbalanced among
us by great and generally diffused blessings.
They may, perhaps, have been disap-
pointed in some unreasonable expectation of
sudden gain. They may have pictured Amer-
ica to themselves an EI Dorado, where gold
THE SKETCH BOOK
205
and silver abounded and the natives were
lacking in sagacity; and where they were to
become strangely and suddenly rich in some
unforeseen but easy manner. The same weak-
ness of mind that indulges absurd expec-
tations produces petulance in disappoint-
ment. Such persons become embittered
against the country on finding that there, as
everywhere else, a man must sow before he
can reap; must win wealth by industry and
talent; and must contend with the common
difficulties of nature and the shrewdness of
an intelligent and enterprising people.
Perhaps, through mistaken or ill-directed
hospitality, or from the prompt disposition
to cheer and countenance the stranger, prev-
alent among my countrymen, they may
have been treated with unwonted respect in
America; and having been accustomed all
their lives to consider themselves below the
surface of good society, and brought up in a
servile feeling of inferiority, they become
arrogant on the common boon of civility;
they attribute to the lowliness of others their
own elevation; and underrate a society where
there are no artificial distinctions, and where
by any chance such individuals as them-
selves can rise to consequence.
One would suppose, however, that infor-
mation coming from such sources, on a sub-
ject where the truth is so desirable, would be
received with caution by the censors of the
press; that the motives of these men, their
veracity, their opportunities of inquiry and
observation, and their capacities for judg-
ing correctly, would be rigorously scruti-
nized before their evidence was admitted in
such sweeping extent against a kindred na-
tion. The very reverse, however, is the case,
and it furnishes a striking instance of human
inconsistency. Nothing can surpass the vigi-
lance with which English critics will examine
the credibility of the traveler who publishes
an account of some distant and compara-
tively unimportant country. How warily
will they compare the measurements of a
pyramid or the descriptions of a ruin; and
how sternly will they censure any inaccuracy
in these contributions of merely curious
knowledge: while they will receive, with
eagerness and unhesitating faith, the gross
misrepresentations of coarse and obscure
writers, concerning a country with which
their own is placed in the most important
and delicate relations. Nay, they will even
make these apocryphal volumes text-books,
oa which to enlarge with a zeal and an ability
worthy of a more generous cause.
I shall not, however, dwell on this irksome
and hackneyed topic; nor should I have ad-
verted to it, but for the undue interest ap-
parently taken in it by my countrymen, and
certain injurious effects which I apprehend
it might produce upon the national feeling.
We attach too much consequence to these
attacks. They cannot do us any essential
injury. The tissue of misrepresentations
attempted to be woven round us are like
cobwebs woven round the limbs of an infant
giant. Our country continually outgrows
them. One falsehood after another falls off
of itself. We have but to live on, and every
day we live a whole volume of refutation.
All the writers of England united, if we
could for a moment suppose their great
minds stooping to so unworthy a combina-
tion, could not conceal our rapidly growing
importance and matchless prosperity. They
could not conceal that these are owing, not
merely to physical and local, but also to moral
causes, — to the political liberty, the gen-
eral diffusion of knowledge, the prevalence of
sound moral and religious principles, which
give force and sustained energy to the char-
acter of a people; and which, in fact, have
been the acknowledged and wonderful sup-
porters of their own national power and glory.
But why are we so exquisitely alive to the
aspersions of England.'' Why do we suffer
ourselves to be so affected by the contumely
she has endeavored to cast upon us.'' It is
not in the opinion of England alone that
honor lives and reputation has its being. The
world at large is the arbiter of a nation's
fame; with its thousand eyes it witnesses a
nation's deeds, and from their collective tes-
timony is national glory or national disgrace
established.
For ourselves, therefore, it is compara-
tively of but little importance whether Eng-
land does us justice or not; it is perhaps of
far more importance to herself. She is instil-
ling anger and resentment into the bosom of
a youthful nation, to grow with its growth
and strengthen with its strength. If in Amer-
ica, as some of her writers are laboring to
convince her, she is hereafter to find an
invidious rival and a gigantic foe, she may
:o6
WASHINGTON IRVING
tlianl; those vt-ry writers for Imviii^ pro-
vokeJ riv.i'sliip niul irritated hostility.
Kvcry one knows the all-pervading influence
of literature at the present day, and
how much the opinions and passions of
mankind are under its control. The mere
contests of the sword are temporary; their
wounds are but in the flesh, and it is the
pride of the generous to forgive and forget
them; but the slanders of the pen pierce to
the heart; they rankle longest in the noblest
spirits; they dwell ever present in the mind,
and render it morbidly sensitive to the most
trifling collision. It is but seldom that any
one overt act produces hostilities between
two nations; there exists, most commonly, a
previous jealousy and ill-will; a predis-
position to take offense. Trace these to
their cause, and how often will they be found
to originate in the mischievous effusions of
mercenary writers; who, secure in their clos-
ets, and for ignominious bread, concoct and
circulate the venom that is to inflame the
generous and the brave.
I am not laying toG much stress upon this
point; for it applies most emphatically to
our particular case. Over no nation does the
press hold a more absolute control than over
the people of America; for the universal ed-
ucation of the poorest classes makes every
individual a reader. There is nothing pub-
lished in England on the subject of our coun-
try that does not circulate through every
part of it. There is not a calumny dropped
from English pen, nor an unworthy sarcasm
uttered by an English statesman, that does
not go to blight good-will, and add to the
mass of latent resentment. Possessing, then,
as England does, the fountain-head whence
the literature of the language flows, how
completely is it in her power, and how truly
is it her duty, to make it the medium of ami-
able and magnanimous feeling — a stream
where the two nations might meet together,
and drink in peace and kindness. Should
she, however, persist in turning it to waters
of bitterness, the time may come w^hen she
may repent her folly. The present friend-
ship of America may be of but little moment
to her; but the future destinies of that coun-
try do not admit of a doubt; over those of
England there lower some shadows of uncer-
tainty. Should, then, a day of gloom arrive;
should these reverses overtake her, from
which the proudest empires have not been
exempt; she may look back with regret at
her infatuation, in repulsing from her side a
nation she might have grappled to her bosom,
and thus destroying her only chance for real
friendship beyond the boundaries of her own
dominions.
There is a general impression in England,
that the people of the United States are in-
imical to the parent country. It is one of
the errors which have been diligently prop-
agated by designing writers. There is,
doubtless, considerable political hostility,
and a general soreness at the illiberality of
the English press; but, generally speaking,
the prepossessions of the people are strongly
in favor of England. Indeed, at one time,
they amounted, in many parts of the Union,
to an absurd degree of bigotry. The bare
name of Englishman was a passport to the
confidence and hospitality of every family,
and too often gave a transient currency to
the w^orthless and the ungrateful. Through-
out the country there was something of en-
thusiasm connected with the idea of Eng-
land. We looked to it with a hallowed feel-
ing of tenderness and veneration, as the land
of our forefathers — the august repository
of the monuments and antiquities of our
race — the birthplace and mausoleum of the
sages and heroes of our paternal history.
After our own country, there was none in
whose glory we more delighted — none whose
good opinion we w-ere more anxious to pos-
sess— none towards which our hearts yearned
with such throbbings of w^arm consanguinity.
P-ven during the late w^ar,^ w^henever
there was the least opportunity for kind feel-
ings to spring forth, it was the delight of the
generous spirits of our country to show that,
in the midst of hostilities, they still kept
alive the sparks of future friendship.
Is all this to be at an end? Is this golden
band of kindred sympathies, so rare betw^een
nations, to be broken forever.'' — Perhaps it is
for the best — it may dispel an illusion w-hich
might have kept us in mental vassalage;
which might have interfered occasionally
with our true interests, and prevented the
growth of proper national pride. But it is
hard to give up the kindred tit! and there
are feelings dearer than interest — closer to
JThe Warof 1812.
THE SKETCH BOOK
207
the heart than pride — that will still make us
cast back a look of regret, as we wander far-
ther and farther from the paternal roof, and
lament the waywardness of the parent that
would repel the affections of the child.
Short-sighted and injudicious, however, as
the conduct of England may be in this sys-
tem of aspersion, recrimination on our part
would be equally ill-judged. I speak not of
a prompt and spirited vindication of our
country, nor the keenest castigation of her
slanderers — but I allude to a disposition to
retaliate in kind, to retort sarcasm and in-
spire prejudice, which seems to be spreading
widely among our writers. Let us guard par-
ticularly against such a temper, for it would
double the evil instead of redressing the
wrong. Nothing is so easy and inviting as
the retort of abuse and sarcasm; but it is a
paltry and an unprofitable contest. It is
the alternative of a morbid mind, fretted
into petulance, rather than warmed into
indignation. If England is willing to permit
the mean jealousies of trade or the rancorous
animosities of politics to deprave the in-
tegrity of her press and poison the fountain
of public opinion, let us beware of her ex-
ample. She may deem it her interest to dif-
fuse error and engender antipathy for the
purpose of checking emigration; we have
no purpose of the kind to serve. Neither
have we any spirit of national jealousy to
gratify, for as yet, in all our rivalships with
England, we are the rising and the gaining
party. There can be no end to answer, there-
fore, but the gratification of resentment — a
mere spirit of retaliation; and even that is
impotent. Our retorts are never republished
in England; they fall short, therefore, of
their aim, but they foster a querulous and
peevish temper among our writers; they sour
the sweet flow of our early literature, and
sow thorns and brambles among its blossoms.
What is still worse, they circulate through
our own country, and, as far as they have
effect, excite virulent national prejudices.
This last is the evil most especially to be dep-
recated. Governed as we are entirely by
public opinion, the utmost care should be
taken to preserve the purity of the public
mind. Knowledge is power and truth is
knowledge; whoever, therefore, knowingly
propagates a prejudice, willfully saps the
foundation of his country's strength.
I he members of a republic, above all other
men, should be candid and dispassionate.
They are, individually, portions of the sover-
eign mmd and sovereign will, and should be
enabled to come to all (juestions of national
concern with calm and unbiased judgments.
From the peculiar nature of our relations with
England, we must have more frequent ques-
tions of a difficult and delicate character
with her than with any other nation; ques-
tions that affect the most acute and excit-
able feelings; and as in the adjusting of these
our national measures must ultimately be
determined by popular sentiment, we cannot
be too anxiously attentive to purify it from
all latent passion or prepossession.
Opening, too, as we do, an asylum for
strangers from every portion of the earth,
we should receive all with impartiality. It
should be our pride to exhibit an example of
one nation, at least, destitute of national an-
tipathies, and exercising not merely the overt
acts of hospitality, but those more rare and
noble courtesies which spring from liberality
of opinion.
What have we to do wMth national preju-
dices? They are the inveterate diseases of
old countries, contracted in rude and igno-
rant ages when nations knew but little of each
other, and looked beyond their own bound-
aries with distrust and hostility. We, on the
contrary, have sprung into national existence
in an enlightened and philosophic age,
when the different parts of the habitable
world and the various branches of the human
family have been indefatigably studied and
made known to each other; and we forgo the
advantages of our birth, if we do not shake off
the national prejudices, as we w^ould the local
superstitions of the old world.
But above all let us not be influenced by
any angry feelings, so far as to shut our eyes
to the perception of what is really excellent
and amiable in the English character. We
are a young people, necessarily an imitative
one, and must take our examples and models
in a great degree from the existing nations of
Europe. There is no country more worthy
of our study than England. The spirit of
her constitution is most analogous to ours.
The manners of her people — their intellec-
tual activity — their freedom of opinion —
their habits of thinking on those subjects
which concern the dearest interests and most
208
WASHINGTON IRVING
sacred charitiis of private life, are all con-
penial to the Anurican character; and, in
fact, are all intrinsically excellent; for it is
in the moral feelinc; of the people that the
deep founilations of British prosperity are
laid; and however the superstructure may be
time-worn, or overrun by abuses, there must
be something solid in the basis, admirable in
the materials, and stable in the structure of
an edihce that so long has towered unshaken
amidst the tempests of the world.
Let it be the pride of our writers, therefore,
discarding all feelings of irritation, and dis-
daining to retaliate the illiberality of British
authors, to speak of the English nation with-
out prejudice and with determined candor.
While they rebuke the indiscriminating big-
otry with which some of our countrymen ad-
mire and imitate everything English merely
because it is English, let them frankly point
out what is really worthy of approbation. We
may thus place England before us as a per-
petual volume of reference, wherein are re-
corded sound deductions from ages of ex-
perience; and while we avoid the errors and
absurdities which may have crept into the
page, we may draw thence golden maxims
of practical wisdom, wherewith to strengthen
and to embellish our national character.
RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND
Oh! friendly to the best pursuits of man,
Friendly to thought, to virtue, and to peace,
Domestic life in rural pleasures past!
COWPER.
The stranger who would form a correct
opinion of the English character must not
confine his observations to the metropolis.
He must go forth into the country; he must
sojourn in villages and hamlets; he must
visit castles, villas, farmhouses, cottages;
he must wander through parks and gardens;
along hedges and green lanes; he must loiter
about country churches; attend wakes and
fairs and other rural festivals; and cope
with the people in all their conditions and all
their habits and humors.
In some countries the large cities absorb
the wealth and fashion of the nation; they
are the only fixed abodes of elegant and in-
telligent society, and the country is inhabited
almost entirely by boorish peasantry. In
England, on the contrary, the metropolis is
a mere gathering place, or general rendez-
vous, of the polite classes, where they devote
a small portion of the year to a iiurry of gay-
cty and dissipation, and, having indulged
this kind of carnival, return again to the ap-
parently more congenial habits of rural life.
Fhe various orders of society are therefore
diffused over the whole surface of the king-
dom, and the most retired neighborhoods
afford specimens of the different ranks.
The English, in fact, are strongly gifted
with the rural feeling. They possess a quick
sensibility to the beauties of nature and a
keen relish for the pleasures and employ-
ments of the country. This passion seems
inherent in them. Even the inhabitants of
cities, born and brought up among brick
walls and bustling streets, enter with facility
into rural habits, and evince a tact for rural
occupation. The merchant has his snug re-
treat in the vicinity of the metropolis, where
he often displays as much pride and zeal in
the cultivation of his flower-garden and the
maturing of his fruits, as he does in the con-
duct of his business and the success of a com-
mercial enterprise. Even those less fortu-
nate individuals who are doomed to pass their
lives in the midst of din and traffic, contrive
to have something that shall remind them
of the green aspect of nature. In the most
dark and dingy quarters of the city, the
drawing-room window resembles frequently
a bank of flowers; every spot capable of veg-
etation has its grass-plot and flower-bed;
and every square its mimic park, laid out
with picturesque taste an^ gleaming w^ith
refreshing verdure.
Those who see the Englishman only in
town are apt to form an unfavorable opin-
ion of his social character. He is either ab-
sorbed in business, or distracted by the
thousand engagements that dissipate time,
thought, and feeling, in this huge metrop-
olis. He has, therefore, too commonly a look
of hurry and abstraction. Wherever he hap-
pens to be, he is on the point of going some-
where else; at the moment he is talking on
one subject, his mind is wandering to an-
other; and while paying a friendly visit, he
is calculating how he shall economize time
so as to pay the other visits allotted in the
morning. An immense metropolis like Lon-
don is calculated to make men selfish and
uninteresting. In their casual and transient
THE SKETCH HOOK
209
meetings they can but deal briefly in com-
monplaces. They present but the cold super-
ficies of character — its rich and genial qual-
ities have no time to be warmed into a flow.
It is in the country that the Englishman
gives scope to his natural feelings. He
breaks loose gladly from the cold formal-
ities and negative civilities of town; throws
off his habits of shy reserve, and becomes
joyous and free-hearted. He manages to
collect around him all the conveniences and
elegancies of polite life, and to banish its
restraints. His country-seat abounds with
every requisite, either for studious retire-
ment, tasteful gratification, or rural exer-
cise. Books, paintings, music, horses, dogs,
and sporting implements of all kinds, are at
hand. He puts no constraint either upon
his guests or himself, but in the true spirit of
hospitality provides the means of enjoyment
and leaves every one to partake according to
his inclination.
The taste of the English in the cultivation
of land, and in what is called landscape gar-
dening, is unrivaled. They have studied
nature intently, and discover an exquisite
sense of her beautiful forms and harmo-
nious combinations. Those charms, which in
other countries she lavishes in wild solitudes,
are here assembled round the haunts of
domestic life. They seem to have caught her
coy and furtive graces, and spread them like
witchery about their rural abodes.
Nothing can be more imposing than the
magnificence of English park scenery. Vast
lawns that extend like sheets of vivid green,
with here and there clumps of gigantic trees
heaping up rich piles of foliage; the solemn
pomp of groves and woodland glades with
the deer trooping in silent herds across
them, the hare bounding away to the covert,
or the pheasant suddenly bursting upon the
wing; the brook, taught to wind in natural
meanderings or expand into a glassy lake;
the sequestered pool, reflecting the quiver-
ing trees, with the yellow leaf sleeping on its
bosom, and the trout roaming fearlessly
about its limpid waters; while some rustic
temple or sylvan statue, grown green and
dank with age, gives an air of classic sanctity
to the seclusion.
These are but a few of the features of park
scenery; but what most delights me is the
creative talent with which the English deco-
rate the unostentatious abodes of middle
life. The rudest habitation, the most un-
promising and scanty portion of land, in the
hands of an Englishman of taste, becomes a
little paradise. \\ ith a nicely discriminating
eye, he seizes at once upon its capabili-
ties, and pictures in his mind the future land-
scape. The sterile spot grows into loveliness
under his hand; and yet the operations of art
which produce the eflPect are scarcely to be
perceived. The cherishing and training of
some trees; the cautious pruning of others;
the nice distribution of flowers and plants of
tender and graceful foliage; the introduction
of a green slope of velvet turf; the partial
opening to a peep of blue distance or silver
gleam of water: all these are managed with a
delicate tact, a pervading yet quiet assiduity,
like the magic touchings with which a painter
finishes up a favorite picture.
The residence of people of fortune and re-
finement in the country has diflPused a degree
of taste and elegance in rural economy that
descends to the lowest class. The very
laborer, with his thatched cottage and nar-
row slip of ground, attends to their embellish-
ment. The trim hedge, the grass-plot before
the door, the little flower-bed bordered with
snug box, the woodbine trained up against
the wall and hanging its blossoms about the
lattice, the pot of flowers in the window, the
holly providentl}" planted about the house to
cheat winter of its dreariness, and to throw
in a semblance of green summer to cheer the
fireside: all these bespeak the influence of
taste, flowing down from high sources, and
pervading the lowest levels of the public
mind. If ever Love, as poets sing, delights
to visit a cottage, it must be the cottage of
an English peasant.
The fondness for rural life among the
higher classes of the English has had a great
and salutary effect upon the national charac-
ter. I do not know a finer race of men than
the English gentlemen. Instead of the soft-
ness and effeminacy which characterize the
men of rank in most countries, they exhibit
a union of elegance and strength, a robust-
ness of frame and freshness of complexion,
which I am inclined to attribute to their
living so much in the open air, and pursuing
so eagerly the invigorating recreations of the
country. These hardy exercises produce
also a healthful tone of mind and spirits.
210
WASHINGTON IRVING
and a manliness and simplicity of manners,
which even the folhes and dissipations of the
town cannot easily pervert, and can never
entirely destroy. In the country, too, the
different orders of society seem to approach
more freely, to be more disposed to blend
and operate favorably upon each other.
The distinctions between them do not ap-
pear to be so marked and impassable as in
the cities. The manner in which property
has been distributed into small estates and
farms has established a regular gradation
from the nobleman, through the classes of
gentry, small landed proprietors, and sub-
stantial farmers, down to the laboring
peasantry; and while it has thus banded
the extremes of society together, has infused
into each intermediate rank a spirit of inde-
pendence. This, it must be confessed, is
not so universally the case at present as it
was formerly; the larger estates having, in
late years of distress, absorbed the smaller,
and, in some parts of the country, almost
annihilated the sturdy race of small farmers.
These, however, I believe, are but casual
breaks in the general system I have men-
tioned.
In rural occupation there is nothing mean
and debasing. It leads a man forth among
scenes of natural grandeur and beauty; it
leaves him to the workings of his own mind,
operated upon by the purest and most ele-
vating of external influences. Such a man
may be smiple and rough, but he cannot be
vulgar. The man of refinement, therefore,
finds nothing revolting in an intercourse
with the lower orders in rural life, as he does
when he casually mingles with the lower
orders of cities. He lays aside his distance
and reserve, and is glad to waive the dis-
tinctions of rank, and to enter into the hon-
est, heartfelt enjoyments of common life.
Indeed the very amusements of the country
brmg men more and more together; and the
sound of hound and horn blend all feelings
into harmony. I believe this is one great
reason why the nobility and gentry are
more popular among the inferior orders in
England than they are in any other country;
and why the latter have endured so many
excessive pressures and extremities, without
repining more generally at the unequal dis-
tribution of fortune and privilege.
To this mingling of cultivated and rustic
society may also be attributed the rural
feeling that runs through British literature;
the frequent use of illustrations from rural
life; those incomparable descriptions of
nature that abound in the British poets,
that have continued down from TJie Flozver
and the Leaf of Chaucer,^ and have brought
into our closets all the freshness and fra-
grance of the dewy landscape. The pastoral
writers of other countries appear as if they
had paid nature an occasional visit, and be-
come acquainted with her general charms;
but the British poets have lived and reveled
with her — they have wooed her in her
most secret haunts — they have watched her
minutest caprices. A spray could not tremble
m the breeze — a leaf could not rustle to the
ground — a diamond-drop could not patter
in the stream — a fragrance could not exhale
from the humble violet, nor a daisy unfold
its crimson tints to the morning, but it has
been noticed by these impassioned and deli-
cate observers, and wrought up into some
beautiful morality.
The effect of this devotion of elegant minds
to rural occupations has been wonderful on
the face of the country. A great part of the
island is rather level, and would be monoto-
nous were it not for the charms of culture:
but it is studded and gemmed, as it were,
with castles and palaces, and embroidered
with parks and gardens. It does not abound
in grand and sublime prospects, but rather
in little home scenes of rural repose and
sheltered quiet. Every antique farmhouse
and moss-grown cottage is a picture; and
as the roads are continually winding, and
the view is shut in by groves and hedges,
the eye is delighted by a continual succession
of small landscapes of captivating loveliness.
The great charm, however, of English
scenery is the moral feeling that seems to
pervade it. It is associated in the mind with
ideas of order, of quiet, of sober well-estab-
lished principles, of hoary usage and reverend
custom. Everything seems to be the growth
of ages of regular and peaceful existence.
The old church of remote architecture, with
its low massive portal, its Gothic tower, its
windows rich with tracery and painted glass,
1 Since Trving's death it has been shown by Skeat
that this poem was not written by Chaucer, but prob-
ably by an unknown woman at a time later than the
year of Chaucer's death.
THE SKETCH BOOK
211
in scrupulous preservation, its stately monu-
ments of warriors and worthies of the olden
time, ancestors of the present lords of the
soil, its tombstones recording successive
generations of sturdy yeomanry whose
progeny .still plough the same fields and
kneel at the same altar; the parsonage, a
quaint irregular pile, partly antiquated, but
repaired and altered in the tastes of various
ages and occupants; the stile and footpath
leading from the churchyard across pleasant
fields and along shady hedgerows, according
to an immemorial right of way; the neigh-
boring village, with its venerable cottages,
its public green sheltered by trees, under
which the forefathers of the present race
have sported; the antique family mansion,
standing apart in some little rural domain,
but looking down with a protecting air on
the surrounding scene: all these common
features of English landscape evince a calm
and settled security, and hereditary trans-
mission of home-bred virtues and local at-
tachments, that speak deeply and touchingly
for the moral character of the nation.
It is a pleasing sight of a Sunday morning,
when the bell is sending its sober melody
across the quiet fields, to behold the peas-
antry in their best finery, with ruddy faces
and modest cheerfulness, thronging tran-
quilly along the green lanes to church; but
it is still more pleasing to see them in the
evenings, gathering about their cottage
doors, and appearing to exult in the humble
comforts and embellishments which their
own hands have spread around them.
It is this sweet home feeling, this settled
repose of affection in the domestic scene, that
is, after all, the parent of the steadiest
virtues and purest enjoyments; and I can-
not close these desultory remarks better
than by quoting the words of a modern Eng-
lish poet, who has depicted it with remark-
able felicity:
Through each gradation, from the castled hall.
The city dome, the villa crowned with shade.
But chief from modest mansions numberless,
In town or hamlet, shelt'ring middle life,
Down to the cottaged vale and straw-roofed shed;
This western isle hath long been famed for scenes
Where bliss domestic finds a dwelling-place;
Domestic bliss, that, like a harmless dove
(Honor and sweet endearment keeping guard),
Can center in a little quiet nest
All that desire would fly for through the earth;
That can, the world eluding, be itself
A world enjoyed; that wants no witnesses
But its own sharers and approving heaven;
That, like a flower deep hid in rocky cleft.
Smiles, though 'tis looking only at the sky.^
JOHN BULL
An old song, made by an aged old pate,
Of an old worshipful gentleman who had a great
estate,
That kept a brave old house at a bountiful rate,
And an old porter to relieve the poor at his gate.
With an old study filled full of learned old books,
With an old reverend chaplain, you might know
him by his looks,
With an old buttery hatch worn quite oflf the
hooks,
And an old kitchen that maintained half-a-dozen
old cooks.
Like an old courtier, etc.
Old Song.
There is no species of humor in which the
English more excel than that which consists
in caricaturing and giving ludicrous appella-
tions or nicknames. In this way they have
whimsically designated, not merely individ-
uals, but nations; and in their fondness for
pushing a joke they have not spared even
themselves. One would think that in personi-
fying itself a nation would be apt to picture
something grand, heroic, and imposing; but
it is characteristic of the peculiar humor of
the English, and of their love for what is
blunt, comic, and familiar, that they have
embodied their national oddities in the figure
of a sturdy, corpulent old fellow, with a three-
cornered hat, red waistcoat, leather breeches,
and stout oaken cudgel. Thus they have
taken a singular delight in exhibiting their
most private foibles in a laughable point of
view; and have been so successful in their
delineations that there is scarcely a being in
actual existence more absolutely present to
the public mind than that eccentric person-
age, John Bull.
Perhaps the continual contemplation of the
character thus drawn of them has contri-
buted to fix it upon the nation, and thus to
give reality to what at first may have been
painted in a great measure from the imagina-
1 From a Poem on the death of the Princess
Charlotte, by the Reverend Rann Kennedy, A.M.
(Irving's note.)
21
WASHINGTON IRVING
tion. Men arc apt to acquire peculiarities
that are continually ascribed to them. The
common orders of English seem wonderfully
captivated with the beau ideal which they
have formed of John Bull, and endeavor to
act up to the broad caricature that is per-
petually before their eyes. Unluckily, they
sometimes make their boasted Hull-ism an
apology for their prejudice or grossness; and
this I have especially noticed among those
truly home-bred and genuine sons of the soil
who have never migrated beyond the sound
of Bow-bells. 1 If one of these should be a
little uncouth in speech and apt to utter im-
pertinent truths, he confesses that he is a
real John Bull and always speaks his mind.
If he now and then flies into an unreasonable
burst of passion about trifles, he observes that
John Bull is a choleric old blade, but then his
passion is over in a moment and he bears no
malice. If he betrays a coarseness of taste
and an insensibility to foreign refinements,
he thanks Heaven for his ignorance — he is a
plain John Bull and has no relish for frippery
and knickknacks. His very proneness to be
gulled by strangers and to pay extravagantly
for absurdities is excused under the plea of
munificence — for John is always more gener-
ous than wise.
Thus, under the name of John Bull, he will
contrive to argue every fault into a merit,
and will frankly convict himself of being the
honestest fellow in existence.
However little, therefore, the character
may have suited in the first instance, it has
gradually adapted itself to the nation, or
rather they have adapted themselves to each
other; and a stranger w^ho wishes to study
English peculiarities may gather much valu-
able information from the innumerable
portraits of John Bull as exhibited in the
windows of the caricature-shops. Still, how-
ever, he is one of those fertile humorists that
are continually throwing out new portraits
and presenting different aspects from differ-
ent points of view; and, often as he has been
described, I cannot resist the temptation to
give a slight sketch of him, such as he has
met my eye.
John Bull, to all appearance, is a plain,
downright, matter-of-fact fellow, with much
less of poetry about him than rich prose.
' Bells of the church of St. Mary le Bow, Cheapside,
London.
There is little of romance in his nature, but a
vast deal of strong natural feeling. He excels
in humor more than in wit, is jolly rather
than gay, melancholy rather than morose;
can easily be moved to a sudden tear, or sur-
prised into a broad laugh; but he loathes sen-
timent and has no turn for light pleasantry.
He is a boon companion if you allow him to
have his humor and to talk about himself;
and he will stand by a friend in a quarrel,
with life and purse, however soundly he may
be cudgeled.
In this last respect, to tell the truth, he has
a propensity to be somewhat too ready. He
is a busy-minded personage, who thinks not
merely for himself and family, but for all the
country round, and is most generously dis-
posed to be everybody's champion. He is
continually volunteering his services to settle
his neighbors' affairs, and takes it in great
dudgeon if they engage in any matter of con-
sequence without asking his advice, though
he seldom engages in any friendly office of the
kind wMthout finishing by getting into a
squabble with all parties, and then railing
bitterly at their ingratitude. He unluckily
took lessons in his youth in the noble science
of defense, and having accomplished himself
in the use of his limbs and his weapons, and
become a perfect master at boxing and cudgel
play, he has had a troublesome life of it ever
since. He cannot hear of a quarrel between
the most distant of his neighbors but he
begins incontinently to fumble with the head
of his cudgel, and consider whether his inter-
est or honor does not require that he should
meddle in the broil. Indeed, he has extended
his relations of pride and policy so com-
pletely over the whole country that no event
can take place without infringing some of his
finely spun rights and dignities. Couched in
his little domain, with these filaments stretch-
ing forth in every direction, he is like some
choleric, bottle-bellied old spider who has
woven his web over a whole chamber, so that
a fly cannot buzz, nor a breeze blow, without
startling his repose and causing him to sally
forth wrathfully from his den.
Though really a good-hearted, good-
tempered old fellow at bottom, yet he is
singularly fond of being in the midst of con-
tention. It is one of his peculiarities, how-
ever, that he only relishes the beginning of
an affray; he always goes into a fight with
THE SKETCH HOOK
213
alacrity, but comes out of it grumbling even
when victorious; and though no one fights
with more obstinacy to carry a contested
point, yet when the battle is over and he
comes to the reconciliation, he is so much
taken up with the mere shaking of hands that
he is apt to let his antagonist pocket all that
they have been quarreling about. It is not,
therefore, fighting that he ought so much to
be on his guard against as making friends.
It is difficult to cudgel him out of a farthing,
but, put him in good humor, and you may
bargain him out of all the money in his
pocket. He is like a stout ship, which will
weather the roughest storm uninjured, but
roll its masts overboard in the succeeding
calm.
He is a little fond of playing the magnifico
abroad, of pulling out a long purse, flinging
his money bravely about at boxing matches,
horse races, cock fights, and carrying a high
head among "gentlemen of the fancy" ;i but
immediately after one of these fits of extrav-
agance, he will be taken with violent qualms
of economy, stop short at the most trivial
expenditure, talk desperately of being ruined
and brought upon the parish, and in such
moods will not pay the smallest tradesman's
bill without violent altercation. He is, in
fact, the most punctual and discontented
paymaster in the world; drawing his coin
out of his breeches pocket with infinite reluc-
tance, paying to the uttermost farthing, but
accompanying every guinea with a growl.
With all his talk of economy, however, he
is a bountiful provider and a hospitable
housekeeper. His economy is a whimsical
kind, its chief object being to devise how he
may afford to be extravagant; for he will be-
grudge himself a beefsteak and a pint of port
one day, that he may roast an ox whole,
broach a hogshead of ale, and treat all his
neighbors on the next.
His domestic establishment is enormously
expensive; not so much from any great out-
ward parade as from the great consumption
of solid beef and pudding, the vast number
of followers he feeds and clothes, and his
singular disposition to pay hugely for small
services. He is a most kind and indulgent
master, and, provided his servants humor his
peculiarities, flatter his vanity a little now and
1 I.e., sporting characters.
then, and do not peculate grossly on him
before his face, they may manage him to per-
fection. Everything that lives on him seems
to thrive and grow fat. His house-servants
are well paid, and pampered, and have little
to do. His horses are sleek and lazy, and
prance slowly before his state carriage; and
his house-dogs sleep quietly about the door,
and will hardly bark at a house-breaker.
His family mansion is an old castellated
manor-house, gray with age, and of a most
venerable though weather-beaten appear-
ance. It has been built upon no regular plan,
but is a vast accumulation of parts erected
in various tastes and ages. The center bears
evident traces of Saxon architecture, and is
as solid as ponderous stone and old English
oak can make it. Like all the relics of that
style, it is full of obscure passages, intricate
mazes, and dusky chambers; and though
these have been partially lighted up in mod-
ern days, yet there are many places where
you must still grope in the dark. Additions
have been made to the original edifice from
time to time, and great alterations have taken
place; towers and battlements have been
erected during wars and tumults, wings built
in times of peace, and outhouses, lodges, and
offices run up according to the whim or con-
venience of different generations, until it has
become one of the most spacious, rambling
tenements imaginable. An entire wing is
taken up with the family chapel, a reverend
pile that must have been exceedingly sump-
tuous, and indeed in spite of having been
altered and simplified at various periods has
still a look of solemn religious pomp. Its
walls within are stored with the monuments
of John's ancestors; and it is snugly fitted up
with soft cushions and well-lined chairs,
where such of his family as are inclined to
church services may doze comfortably in the
discharge of their duties.
To keep up this chapel has cost John much
money; but he is stanch in his religion and
piqued in his zeal, from the circumstance
that many dissenting chapels have been
erected in his vicinity, and several of his
neighbors, with whom he has had quarrels,
are strong papists.
To do the duties of the chapel, he main-
tains at a large expense a pious and portly
family chaplain. He is a most learned and
decorous personage and a truly well-bred
214
WASHINGTON IRVINC]
Christian, who always hacks the old gentle-
man in his opinions, winks discreetly at his
little peccaiiilloes, rebukes the children when
refractory, and is of j^reat use in exhorting
the tenants to read their Bibles, say their
prayers, and, above all, to pay their rents
punctually and without ;>ruinhlinf?.
The family apartments are in a very anti-
quated taste, somewhat heavy and often
inconvenient, but full of the solemn maj^ni-
ficence of former times; fitted up with rich
though faded tapestry, unwieldy furniture,
and loads of massive, gorgeous old plate.
The vast fireplaces, ample kitchens, exten-
sive cellars, and sumptuous banqueting halls
all speak of the roaring hospitality of days of
yore, of which the modern festivity at the
manor-house is but a shadow. There are,
however, complete suites of rooms apparently
deserted and time-worn, and towers and tur-
rets that are tottering to decay, so that in
high winds there is danger of their tumbling
about the ears of the household.
John has frequently been advised to have
the old edifice thoroughly overhauled, and to
have some of the useless parts pulled down,
and the others strengthened w^ith their mate-
rials; but the old gentleman always grows
testy on this subject. He swears the house
is an excellent house, that it is tight and
weatherproof, and not to be shaken by tem-
pests; that it has stood for several hundred
years, and therefore is not likely to tumble
down now; that as to its being inconvenient,
his family is accustomed to the inconveni-
ences, and would not be comfortable without
them; that as to its unwieldy size and irregu-
lar construction, these result from its being
the growth of centuries, and being improved
by the wisdom of every generation; that an
old family like his requires a large house to
dwell in; new, upstart families may live in
modern cottages and snug boxes, but an old
English family should inhabit an old English
manor-house. If you point out any part of
the building as superfluous, he insists that it
is material to the strength or decoration of
the rest and the harmony of the whole, and
swears that the parts are so built into each
other that if you pull down one, you lun the
risk of having the whole about your ears.
The secret of the matter is, that John has
a great disposition to protect and patronize.
He thmks it indispensable to the dignity of
an ancient and honorable family to be boun-
teous in its appointments and to be eaten up
by dependents; and so, partly from pride
and partly from kind-heariedness, he makes
it a rule always to give shelter and main-
tenance to his superannuated servantt;.
The consequence is, that like many other
venerable family establishments, his manor
is encumbered by old retainers whom he can-
not turn off, and an old style which he can-
not lay down. His mansion is like a great
hospital of invalids, and with all its magni-
tude is not a whit too large for its inhabitants.
Not a nook or corner but is of use in housing
some useless personage. Groups of veteran
beef-eaters, gouty pensioners, and retired
heroes of the buttery and the larder are seen
lolling about its walls, crawling over its
lawns, dozing under its trees, or sunning
themselves upon the benches at its doors.
Every office and outhouse is garrisoned by
these supernumeraries and their families, for
they are amazingly prolific, and when they
die off are sure to leave John a legacy of
hungry mouths to be provided for. A mat-
tock cannot be struck against the most
moldering tumble-down tower, but out pops,
from some cranny or loophole, the gray pate
of some superannuated hanger-on, who has
lived at John's expense all his life, and makes
the most grievous outcry at their pulling
down the roof from over the head of a worn-
out servant of the family. This is an appeal
that John's honest heart never can with-
stand, so that a man who has faithfully
eaten his beef and pudding all his life is sure
to be rewarded with a pipe and tankard in
his old days.
A great part of his park, also, is turned
into paddocks, where his broken-down
chargers are turned loose to graze undis-
turbed for the remainder of their existence —
a worthy example of grateful recollection,
which if some of his neighbors were to imi-
tate would not be to their discredit. Indeed,
it is one of his great pleasures to point out
these old steeds to his visitors, to dwell on
their good qualities, extol their past serv-
ices, and boast with some little vainglory
of the perilous adventures and hardy exploits
through which they have carried him.
He is given, however, to indulge his ven-
eration for family usages and famaly incum-
brances to a whimsical extent. His manor
J
THE SKETCH BOOK
215
is infested by Rani^s of p;ypsies, yet he will
not suffer tliein to be driven off, because
they have infested the place time out of
mind, and been regular poachers upon every
generation of the family. He will scarcely
permit a dry branch to be lopped from the
great trees that surround the house, lest it
should molest the rooks that have bred there
for centuries. Owls have taken possession
of the dovecote, but they are hereditary
owls and must not be disturbed. Swallows
have nearly choked up every chimney with
their nests, martins build in every frieze and
cornice, crows flutter about the towers and
perch on every weathercock, and old gray-
headed rats may be seen in every quarter of
the house running in and out of their holes
undauntedly in broad daylight. In short,
John has such a reverence for everything
that has been long in the family that he will
not hear even of abuses being reformed, be-
cause they are good old family abuses.
All those whims and habits have con-
curred woefully to drain the old gentleman's
purse, and as he prides himself on punctual-
ity in money matters and wishes to main-
tain his credit in the neighborhood, they
have caused him great perplexity in meeting
his engagements. This, too, has been in-
creased by the altercations and heart-burn-
ings which are continually taking place in
his family. His children have been brought
up to different callings and are of different
ways of thinking, and as they have always
been allowed to speak their minds freely,
they do not fail to exercise the privilege most
clamorously in the present posture of his
affairs. Some stand up for the honor of the
race, and are clear that the old establishment
should be kept up in all its state, whatever
may be the cost; others, who are more pru-
dent and considerate, entreat the old gentle-
man to retrench his expenses and to put his
whole system of housekeeping on a more
moderate footing. He has, indeed, at tmies
seemed inclined to listen to their opinions,
but their wholesome advice has been com-
pletely defeated by the obstreperous con-
duct of one of his sons. This is a noisy,
rattle-pated fellow of rather low habits, who
neglects his business to frequent alehouses,
is the orator of village clubs, and a complete
oracle among the poorest of his father's ten-
ants. No sooner does he hear any of his
brothers mention reform or retrenchment,
than up he jumps, takes the words out of
their mouths, and roars out for an overturn.
When his tongue is once going nothing can
stop it. He rants about the room, hectors
the old man about his spendtiirift practices,
ridicules his tastes and pursuits, insists that
he shall turn the old servants out of doors,
give the broken-down horses to the hounds,
send tiie fat chaplain packing, and take a
field-preacher in his place; nay, that the
whole family mansion shall be leveled with
the ground, and a plain one of brick and
mortar built in its place. He rails at every
social entertainment and family festivity,
and skulks away growling to the alehouse
whenever an equipage drives up to the door.
Though constantly complaining of the empti-
ness of his purse, yet he scruples not to spend
all his pocket money in these tavern convoca-
tions, and even runs up scores for the liquor
over which he preaches about his father's
extravagance.
It may readily be imagined how little
such thwarting agrees with the old cavalier's
fiery temperament. He has become so irri-
table from repeated crossings that the mere
mention of retrenchment or reform is a signal
for a brawl between him and the tavern
oracle. As the latter is too sturdy and
refractory for paternal discipline, having
grow^n out of all fear of the cudgel, they have
frequent scenes of wordy warfare, which at
times run so high that John is fain to call in
the aid of his son Tom, an officer who has
served abroad, but is at present living at
home on half-pay. This last is sure to
stand by the old gentleman, right or wrong,
likes nothing so much as a racketing, royster-
ing life, and is ready at a wink or nod to out
saber and flourish it over the orator's head
if he dares to array himself against paternal
authority.
These family dissensions, as usual, have
got abroad, and are rare food for scandal in
John's neighborhood. People begin to look
wise and shake their heads whenever his
affairs are mentioned. They all hope that
matters are not so bad with him as repre-
sented, but when a man's own children begin
to rail at his extravagance, things must be
badly managed. They understand he is
mortgaged over head and ears and is con-
tinually dabbling with money lenders. He
2l6
WASHINGTON IRVING
is certainly nii opcn-liandctl old gentleman,
Init tliey tear he has lived too fast; indeed,
they never knew any good come of this fond-
ness for huntine;, racing, reveling, and prize-
fighting. In short, Mr. Bull's estate is a very
fine one and has heen in the family a long
time, but for all that they have known many
finer estates come to the hammer.
What is worst of all, is the effect which
these pecuniary embarrassments and domes-
tic feuds have had on the poor man himself.
Instead of that jolly round corporation and
smug rosy face which he used to present, he
has of late become as shriveled and shrunk
as a frost-bitten apple. His scarlet, gold-
laced waistcoat, which bellied out so bravely
in those prosperous days when he sailed be-
fore the wind, now hangs loosely about him
like a mainsail in a calm. His leather
breeches are all in folds and wrinkles, and
apparently have much ado to hold up the
boots that yawn on both sides of his once
sturdy legs.
Instead of strutting about as formerly,
with his three-cornered hat on one side,
flourishing his cudgel and bringing it down
every moment with a hearty thump upon
the ground, looking every one sturdily in the
face, and trolling out a stave of a catch or a
drinking song, he now goes about whistling
thoughtfully to himself, with his head droop-
ing down, his cudgel tucked under his arm,
and his hands thrust to the bottom of his
breeches pockets, which are evidently empty.
Such is the plight of honest John Bull at
present; yet for all this the old fellow's spirit
is as tall and as gallant as ever. If you drop
the least expression of sympathy or concern
he takes fire in an instant, swears that he is
the richest and stoutest fellow in the coun-
try, talks of laying out large sums to adorn
his house or buy another estate, and, w^ith
a valiant swagger and grasping of his cudgel,
longs exceedmgly to have another bout at
quarter-staff.
Though there may be something rather
whimsical in all this, yet I confess I cannot
look upon John's situation without strong
feelings of interest. With all his odd humors
?nd obstinate prejudices, he is a sterling-
hearted old blade. He may not be so won-
derfully fine a fellow as he thinks himself,
but he is at least twice as good as his neigh-
bors represent him. His virtues are all his
own — all plain, homebred, and unaffected.
His very faults smack of the raciness of his
good qualities. His extravagance savors of
his generosity, his quarrelsomeness of his
courage, his credulity of his open faith, his
vanity of his pride, and his bluntness of
his sincerit3^ They are all the redundancies
of a rich and liberal character. He is like his
own oak, rough without, but sound and solid
within; whose bark abounds with excres-
cences in proportion to the growth and
grandeur of the timber; and whose branches
make a fearful groaning and murmuring in
the least storm, from their very magnitude
and luxuriance. There is something, too, in
the appearance of his old family mansion
that is extremely poetical and picturesque;
and as long as it can be rendered comfortably
habitable, I should almost tremble to see it
meddled with during the present conflict of
tastes and opinions. Some of his advisers
are no doubt good architects that might be of
service, but many, I fear, are mere levelers,
who, when they had once got to work with
their mattocks on this venerable edifice,
would never stop until they had brought it
to the ground, and perhaps buried them-
selves among the ruins. All that I wish is,
that John's present troubles may teach him
more prudence in future; that he may cease
to distress his mind about other people's
affairs; that he may give up the fruitless
attempt to promote the good of his neigh-
bors and the peace and happiness of the
world by dint of the cudgel; that he may
remain quietly at home, gradually get his
house into repair, cultivate his rich estate
according to his fancy, husband his income —
if he thinks proper, bring his unruly children
into order — if he can, renew the jovial scenes
of ancient prosperity, and long enjoy on his
paternal lands a green, an honorable, and a
merry old age.
THE ALHAMBRAi
PALACE OF THE ALHAMBRA
To the traveler imbued with a feeling for
the historical and poetical, so inseparably
intertwined in the annals of romantic Spain,
1" Rough drafts of some of the following tales and
essays were actually written during a residence in the
Alhambra; others were subsequently added, founded
on notes and observations made there. Care was
THE ALHAMHRA
217
the Alhambra is as much an object of devo-
tion as is the Caaba to all true Moslems.
How many legends and traditions, true and
fabulous, — how many songs and ballads,
Arabian and Spanish, of love and war and
chivalry, are associated with this Oriental
pile! It was the royal abode of the Moorish
kings, where, surrounded with the splendors
and refinements of Asiatic luxury, they held
dominion over what they vaunted as a ter-
restrial paradise, and made their last stand
for empire in Spain, The royal palace forms
but a part of a fortress, the walls of which,
studded with towers, stretch irregularly
round the whole crest of a hill, a spur of the
Sierra Nevada or Snowy Mountains, and
overlook the city; externally it is a rude con-
gregation of towers and battlements, with
no regularity of plan nor grace of architec-
ture, and giving little promise of the grace
and beauty which prevail within.
In the time of the Moors the fortress was
capable of containing within its outward pre-
cincts an army of forty thousand men, and
served occasionally as a stronghold of the
sovereigns against their rebellious subjects.
After the kingdom had passed into the hands
of the Christians, the Alhambra continued to
be a royal demesne, and was occasionally in-
habited by the Castilian monarchs. The
emperor Charles V commenced a sumptuous
palace within its walls, but was deterred from
completing it by repeated shocks of earth-
quakes. The last royal residents were Philip
V and his beautiful queen, Elizabetta of
Parma, early in the eighteenth century.
Great preparations were made for their
reception. The palace and gardens were
placed in a state of repair, and a new suite of
apartments erected, and decorated by artists
brought from Italy. The sojourn of the
sovereigns was transient, and after their
taken to maintain local coloring and verisimilitude;
so that the whole might present a faithful and living
picture of that microcosm, that singular little world
into which I had been fortuitously thrown; and about
which the external world had a very imperfect idea.
It was my endeavor scrupulously to depict its half
Spanish, half Oriental character; its mixture of the
heroic, the poetic, and the grotesque; to revive the
traces of grace and beauty fast fading from its walls;
to record the regal and chivalrous traditions concerning
those who once trod its courts; and the whimsical and
superstitious legends of the motley race now burrowing
among its ruins." (From Irving's Preface to Revised
Ed'n, 1 851.)
departure the palace once more became
desolate. Still the place was maintained
with some military state. The governor held
it immediately from the crown, its jurisdic-
tion extended down into the suburbs of the
city and was independent of the captain-
general of Granada. A considerable garrison
was kept up; the governor had his apart-
ments in the front of the old Moorish palace,
and never descended into Granada without
some military parade. The fortress, in fact,
was a little town of itself, having several
streets of houses within its walls, together
with a Franciscan convent and a parochial
church.
The desertion of the court, however, was
a fatal blow to the Alhambra. Its beautiful
halls became desolate, and some of them fell
to ruin; the gardens were destroyed, and the
fountains ceased to play. By degrees the
dwellings became filled with a loose and law-
less population: contrabandistasy^ who availed
themselves of its independent jurisdiction to
carry on a wide and daring course of smug-
gling, and thieves and rogues of all sorts, who
made this their place of refuge whence they
might depredate upon Granada and its vicin-
ity. The strong arm of government at length
interfered; the whole community was thor-
oughly sifted; none were suffered to remain
but such as were of honest character, and
had legitimate right to a residence; the
greater part of the houses were demolished
and a mere hamlet left, with the parochial
church and the Franciscan convent. During
the recent troubles in Spain, when Granada
was in the hands of the French, the Alham-
bra was garrisoned by their troops, and the
palace was occasionally inhabited by the
French commander. With that enlightened
taste which has ever distinguished the French
nation in their conquests, this monument of
Moorish elegance and grandeur was rescued
from the absolute ruin and desolation that
were overwhelming it. The roofs were
repaired, the saloons and galleries protected
from the weather, the gardens cultivated,
the water-courses restored, the fountains once
more made to throw up their sparkling
showers; and Spain may thank her invaders
for having preserved to her the most beauti-
ful and interesting of her historical monu-
ments.
1 Smugglers.
2l8
WASHING ION IRVING
On tlic departure of the Kreiicli tluy l>l<^^v
up several towers of the outer wall, and left
the fortiHeations scarcely tenahle. Since
that time the military importance of the
post is at an end. The garrison is a handful
of invalid soldiers, whose principal duty is to
guard some of the outer towers, which serve
occasionally as a prison of state; and the
governor, abandoning the lofty hill of the
Alhambra, resides in the center of Granada,
for the more convenient dispatch of his
official duties. I cannot conclude this brief
notice of the state of the fortress without
bearing testimony to the honorable exertions
of its present commander, Don Francisco de
Serna, who is tasking all the limited resources
at his command to put the palace in a state
of repair, and by his judicious precautions
has for some time arrested its too certain
decay. Had his predecessors discharged the
duties of their station with equal fidelity, the
Alhambra might yet have remained in almost
its pristine beauty; were government to
second him with means equal to his zeal, this
relic of it might still be preserved for many
generations to adorn the land, and attract
the curious and enlightened of every clime.
Our first object, of course, on the morning
after our arrival, w^as a visit to this time-
honored edifice; it has been so often, how-
ever, and so minutely described by travelers,
that I shall not undertake to give a compre-
hensive and elaborate account of it, but
merely occasional sketches of parts, with the
mcidents and associations connected with
them.
Leaving our posada,^ and traversing the
renowned square of the Vivarrambla, once
the scene of Moorish jousts and tourna-
ments, now a crowded market-place, we pro-
ceeded along the Zacatin, the main street of
what, in the time of the Moors, was the
Great Bazaar, and w'here small shops and
narrow alleys still retain the Oriental char-
acter. Crossing an open place in front of the
palace of the captain-general, we ascended a
confined and winding street, the name of
which reminded us of the chivalric days
of Granada. It is called the Calle, or street of
the Gomeres, from a Moorish family famous
in chronicle and song. This street led up to
the Puerta de las Granadas,^ a massive gate-
1 Lodging house.
2 Gate of the pomegranates.
way of Cirecian architecture, built by
Charles V, forming the entrance to the
domains of the Alhambra.
At the gate were two or three ragged super-
annuated soldiers, dozing on a stone bench,
the successors of the Zegris and the Aben-
cerrages;'^ while a tall, meager varlet, whose
rusty-brown cloak was evidently intended to
conceal the ragged state of his nether gar-
ments, was lounging in the sunshine and gos-
siping with an ancient sentinel on duty. He
joined us as we entered the gate, and offered
his services to show us the fortress.
I have a traveler's dislike to officious
ciceroni, and did not altogether like the
garb of the applicant.
"You are well acquainted with the place,
I presume.?"
^' Ninguno mas; pues, senor, soy hijo de la
Alhambra'' — (Nobody better; in fact, sir, I
am a son of the Alhambra!)
The common Spaniards have certainly a
most poetic way of expressing themselves.
"A son of the Alhambra!" — the appellation
caught me at once; the very tattered garb
of my new acquaintance assumed a dignity
in my eyes. It was emblematic of the for-
tunes of the place, and befitted the progeny
of a ruin.
I put some further questions to him, and
found that his title was legitimate. His
family had lived in the fortress from genera-
tion to generation ever since the time of the
Conquest. His name was Mateo Ximenes.
"Then, perhaps," said I, "you may be a
descendant from the great Cardinal
Ximenes?" " Dios sabe! God knows,
"seiior! It may be so. We are the oldest
family in the Alhambra, — Christianos viejosy
old Christians, without any taint of Moor
or Jew. I know we belong to some great
family or other, but I forget whom. My
father knows all about it; he has the coat-of-
arms hanging up in his cottage, up in the
fortress." There is not any Spaniard, how-
ever poor, but has some claim to high pedi-
gree. The first title of this ragged worthy,
however, had completely captivated me, so
I gladly accepted the services of the "son of
Alhambra."
We now found ourselves in a deep, narrow
ravine, filled with beautiful groves, with a
' Names of two famous Moorish families, according
to tradition perpetually hostile to each other.
THE ALHAMBRA
219
steep avenue, and various footpaths winding
through it, bordered with stone seats, and
ornamented with fountains. To our left we
beheld the towers of the Alhambra beetling
above us; to our right, on the opposite side
of the ravine, we w^ere equally dominated by-
rival towers on a rocky eminence. These,
we were told, were the torres bermejas, or
vermilion towers," so called from their ruddy
hue. No one knows their origin. They are
of a date much anterior to the Alhambra:
some suppose them to have been built by the
Romans; others, by some wandering colony
of Phoenicians. Ascending the steep and
shady avenue, we arrived at the foot of a
huge square Moorish tower, forming a kind
of barbican, through which passed the main
entrance to the fortress. Within the barbi-
can was another group of veteran invalids,
one mounting guard at the portal, while the
rest, wrapped in their tattered cloaks, slept
on the stone benches. This portal is called
the Gate of Justice, from the tribunal held
within its porch during the Moslem domi-
nation, for the immediate trial of petty
causes — a custom common to the Oriental
nations, and occasionally alluded to in the
sacred Scriptures. "Judges and officers shalt
thou make thee m all thy gates, and they shall
judge the people with just judgment. "^
The great vestibule, or porch of the gate, is
formed by an immense Arabian arch, of the
horseshoe form, which springs to half the
height of the tower. On the keystone of this
arch is engraven a gigantic hand. Within
the vestibule, on the keystone of the portal,
is sculptured, in like manner, a gigantic key.
Those who pretend to some knowledge of
Mohammedan symbols affirm that the hand
is the emblem of doctrine, the five fingers
designating the five principal command-
ments of the creed of Islam, fasting, pilgrim-
age, almsgiving, ablution, and war against
infidels. The key, say they, is the emblem
of the faith or of power; the key of Daoud,
or David, transmitted to the prophet. "And
the key of the house of David will I lay upon
his shoulder; so he shall open and none shall
shut, and he shall shut and none shall open."
(Isaiah, xxii, 22.) The key we are told was
emblazoned on the standard of the Moslems
in opposition to the Christian emblem of the
* Deuteronomy, xvi, 18.
cross, when they subdued Spain or Anda-
lusia. It betokened the concjuering power
invested in the prophet. "He that hath the
key of David, he that openeth and no man
shutteth; and shutteth and no man open-
eth." (Revelation, iii, 7.)
A different explanation of these emblems,
however, was given by the legitimate son of
the Alhambra, and one more in unison with
the notions of the common people, who attach
something of mystery and magic to every-
thing Moorish, and have all kinds of super-
stitions connected with this old Moslem
fortress. According to Mateo, it was a tra-
dition handed down from the oldest inhabi-
tants, and which he had from his father and
grandfather, that the hand and key were
magical devices on which the fate of the
Alhambra depended. The Moorish king who
built it was a great magician, or, as some
believed, had sold himself to the devil, and
had laid the whole fortress under a magic
spell. By this means it had remained stand-
ing for several years, in defiance of storms
and earthquakes, while almost all other build-
ings of the Moors had fallen to ruin and dis-
appeared. This spell, the tradition went on
to say, would last until the hand on the outer
arch should reach down and grasp the key,
when the whole pile would tumble to pieces,
and all the treasures buried beneath it by the
Moors would be revealed.
Notwithstandmg this ominous prediction,
we ventured to pass through the spellbound
gateway, feeling some little assurance against
magic art in the protection of the Virgin, a
statue of whom we observed above the portal.
After passing through the barbican, we
ascended a narrow lane, winding between
walls, and came on an open esplanade within
the fortress, called the Plaza de los Algibes,
or Place of the Cisterns, from great reser-
voirs which undermine it, cut in the living
rock by the Moors to receive the water
brought by conduits from the Darro, for the
supply of the fortress. Here, also, is a well
of immense depth, furnishing the purest and
coldest of water, — another monument of the
delicate taste of the Moors, who were inde-
fatigable in their exertions to obtain that
element in its crystal purity.
In front of this esplanade is the splendid
pile commenced by Charles V, and intended,
it is said, to eclipse the residence of the
220
WASHINGTON IRVING
Moorisli kinus. Much of the Oriental edi-
fice intended for the winter season was de-
moHshed to make way for this massive pile.
The .j;rand entrance was blocked up, so that
the present entrance to the Moorish palace
is through a simple and almost humble portal
in a corner. With all the massive grandeur
and architectural merit of the palace of
Charles V, we regarded it as an arrogant in-
truder, and, passing by it with a feeling
almost of scorn, rang at the Moslem portal.
W hile waiting for admittance, our self-
imposed cicerone, Mateo Ximenes, informed
us that the royal palace was entrusted to the
care of a worthy old maiden dame called
Dona Antonia-Molina, but who, according
to Spanish custom, w^ent by the more neigh-
borly appellation of Tia Antonia (Aunt
Antonia), who maintained the Moorish halls
and gardens in order and showed them to
strangers. While we were talking, the door
was opened by a plump little black-eyed
Andalusian damsel, whom Mateo addressed
as Dolores, but who, from her bright looks
and cheerful disposition, evidently merited
a merrier name. Mateo informed me in a
whisper that she was the niece of Tia Antonia,
and I found she was the good fairy w^ho was
to conduct us through the enchanted palace.
Under her guidance we crossed the thresh-
old, and were at once transported, as if by
magic wand, into other times and an Oriental
realm, and were treading the scenes of Arabian
story. Nothing could be in greater contrast
than the unpromising exterior of the pile
with the scene now before us. We found our-
selves in a vast patio, or court, one hundred
and fifty feet in length, and upwards of
eighty feet in breadth, paved with white
marble, and decorated at each end with light
Moorish peristyles, one of which supported
an elegant gallery of fretted architecture.
Along the moldings of the cornices and on
various parts of the walls were escutcheons
and ciphers, and cufic^ and Arabic charac-
ters in high relief, repeating the pious mot-
toes of the Moslem monarchs, the builders of
the Alhambra, or extolling their grandeur
and munificence. Along the center of the
court extended an immense basin or tank
(estanque), a hundred and twenty-four feet
in length, twenty-seven in breadth, and five
1 Arabic alphabet anciently employed at Cufa, a
town near the lower Euphrates.
in depth, receiving its water from two marble
vases. Hence it is called the Court of the
Alberca (from al beerkah, the Arabic for a
pond or tank). Great numbers of gold-fish
were to be seen gleammg through the waters
of the basin, and it was bordered by hedges
of roses.
Passing from the Court of the Alberca
under a Moorish archway, we entered the
renowned Court of Lions. No part of the
edifice gives a more complete idea of its
original beauty than this, for none has suf-
fered so little from the ravages of time. In
the center stands the fountain famous in
song and story. The alabaster basins still
shed their diamond drops; the twelve lions
which support them, and give the court its
name, still cast forth crystal streams as in
the days of Boabdil.2 The lions, however,
are unworthy of their fame, being of miser-
able sculpture, the work probably of some
Christian captive. The court is laid out in
flower-beds, instead of its ancient and appro-
priate pavement of tiles or marble; the alter-
ation, an instance of bad taste, was made by
the French when in possession of Granada.
Round the four sides of the court are light
Arabian arcades of open filigree work, sup-
ported by slender pillars of white marble,
which it is supposed were originally gilded.
The architecture, like that in most parts of
the interior of the palace, is characterized by
elegance rather than grandeur, bespeaking
a delicate and graceful taste, and a disposi-
tion to indolent enjoyment. When one looks
upon the fairy traces of the peristyles, and
the apparently fragile fretwork of the walls,
it is difficult to believe that so much has sur-
vived the wear and tear of centuries, the
shocks of earthquakes, the violence of war,
and the quiet, though no less baneful, pilfer-
ings of the tasteful traveler: it is almost suf-
ficient to excuse the popular tradition that
the whole is protected by a magic charm.
On one side of the court a rich portal opens
into the Hall of the Abencerrages: so called
from the gallant cavaliers of that illustrious
line who were here perfidiously massacred.
There are some who doubt the whole story,
2 Last Moorish king of Granada; revolted and seized
throne of his father in 1481; in 1491 was attacked,
defeated, and captured by Ferdinand and Isabella,
who gave him his liberty on the condition that he
should acknowledge himself their vassal.
THE ALHAMBRA
221
but our humble cicerone Mateo pointed out
the very wicket of the portal through which
they were introduced one by one into the
Court of Lions, and the white marble foun-
tain in the center of the hall beside which
they were beheaded. He showed us also
certain broad ruddy stains on the pavement,
traces of their blood, which, according to
popular belief, can never be effaced.
Finding we listened to him apparently
with easy faith, he added that there was
often heard at night, in the Court of Lions,
a low confused sound, resembling the mur-
muring of a multitude, and now and then a
faint tinkling, like the distant clank of chains.
These sounds were made by the spirits of the
murdered Abencerrages; who nightly haunt
the scene of their suffering and invoke the
vengeance of Heaven on their destroyer.
The sounds in question had no doubt been
produced, as I had afterwards an oppor-
tunity of ascertaining, by the bubbling cur-
rents and tinkling falls of water conducted
under the pavement through pipes and chan-
nels to supply the fountains; but I was too
considerate to intimate such an idea to the
humble chronicler of the Alhambra.
Encouraged by my easy credulity, Mateo
gave me the following as an undoubted fact,
which he had from his grandfather:
There was once an invalid soldier, who
had charge of the Alhambra to show it to
strangers; as he was one evening, about twi-
light, passing through the Court of Lions, he
heard footsteps on the Hall of the Abencer-
rages; supposing some strangers to be linger-
ing there, he advanced to attend upon them,
when to his astonishment he beheld four
Moors richly dressed, with gilded cuirasses
and scimitars, and poniards glittering with
precious stones. They were walking to and
fro, with solemn pace; but paused and beck-
oned to him. The old soldier, however, took
to flight, and could never afterwards be pre-
vailed upon to enter the Alhambra. Thus
it is that men sometimes turn their backs
upon fortune; for it is the firm opinion of
Mateo that the Moors intended to reveal the
place where their treasures lay buried. A
successor to the invalid soldier was more
knowing; he came to the Alhambra poor;
but at the end of a year went off to Malaga,
bought houses, set up a carriage, and still
hves there, one of the richest as well as oldest
men of the place; all which, Mateo sagely sur-
mised, was in consequence of his finding out
the golden secret of these phantom Moors.
I now perceived I had made an invaluable
acquaintance in this son of the Alhambra,
one who knew all the apocryphal history of
the place, and firmly believed in it, and
whose memory was stuffed with a kind of
knowledge for which I have a lurking fancy,
but which is too apt to be considered rub-
bish by less indulgent philosophers. I deter-
mined to cultivate the acquaintance of this
learned Theban.
Immediately opposite the Hall of the
Abencerrages, a portal, richly adorned, leads
into a liall of less tragical associations. It is
light and lofty, exquisitely graceful in its
architecture, paved with white marble, and
bears the suggestive name of the Hall of the
Two Sisters. Some destroy the romance of
the name by attributing it to two enormous
slabs of alabaster which lie side by side, and
form a great part of the pavement: an opinion
strongly supported by Mateo Ximenes.
Others are disposed to give the name a more
poetical significance, as the vague memorial
of Moorish beauties who once graced this
hall, which was evidently a part of the royal
harem. This opinion I was happy to find
entertained by our little bright-eyed guide,
Dolores, who pointed to a balcony over an
inner porch, which gallery, she had been
told, belonged to the women's apartment.
"You see, sefior," said she, "it is all grated
and latticed, like the gallery in a convent
chapel where the nuns hear mass; for the
Moorish kings," added she, indignantly,
"shut up their wives just like nuns."
The latticed jalousies, in fact, still remain,
whence the dark-eyed beauties of the harem
might gaze unseen upon the zambras and
other dances and entertainments of the hall
below.
On each side of this hall are recesses or
alcoves for ottomans and couches, on which
the voluptuous lords of the Alhambra in-
dulged in that dreamy repose so dear to the
Orientalists. A cupola or lantern admits a
tempered light from above and a free circula-
tion of air; while on one side is heard the
refreshing sound of waters from the Foun-
tain of the Lions, and on the other side the
soft plash from the basin in the garden of
Lindaraxa.
WASHINGTON IRVING
It is impossible to contemplate this scene,
so perfectly Oriental, without feeling the
early associations of Arabian romance, and
almost expectinji to sec the white arm of
some mysterious jirincess beckoning from
the g.illerv, or some dark eye sparkling
through the lattice. The abode of beauty
is iiere as if it had been inhabited but yester-
day; but where are the two sisters, where the
Zoraydas and Lindaraxas!
An abundant supply of water, brought
from the mountains by old Moorish aque-
ducts, circulates throughout the palace, sup-
plying its baths and hsh-pools, sparkling in
jets within its halls or murmuring in chan-
nels along the marble pavements. W hen it
has paid its tribute to the royal pile, and
visited its gardens and parterres, it flows
down the long avenue leading to the city,
tinkling in rills, gushing in fountains, and
maintaining a perpetual verdure in those
groves that embower and beautify the whole
hill of the Alhambra.
I hose only who have sojourned in the
ardent climates of the South can appreciate
the delights of an abode combming the
breezy coolness of the mountam with the
freshness and verdure of the valley. While
the city below pants with the noontide heat,
and the parched Vega trembles to the eye,
the delicate airs from the Sierra Nevada play
through these lofty halls, bringing with them
the sweetness of the surrounding gardens.
Everything invites to that mdolent repose,
the bliss of southern climes; and while the
half-shut eye looks out from shaded bal-
conies upon the glittering landscape, the ear
is lulled by the rustling of groves and the
murmur of running streams.
I forbear for the present, however, to
describe the other delightful apartments of
the palace. My object is merely to give the
reader a general introduction into an abode
where, if so disposed, he may linger and
loiter with me day by day until we gradually
become familiar with all its localities.
IMPORTANT NEGOTIATIONS. —THE
AUTHOR SUCCEEDS TO THE
THRONE OF BOABDIL
The day was nearly spent before we could
tear ourself from this region of poetry and
romance to descend to the city and return
to the forlorn realities of a Spanish posada.
In a visit of ceremony to the Governor of the
Alhambra, to whom w^e had brought letters,
we dwelt with enthusiasm on the scenes we
had witnessed, and could not but express
surprise that he should reside in the city
when he had such a paradise at his command.
He pleaded the inconvenience of a residence
in the palace from its situation on the crest
of a hill, distant from the seat of business
and the resorts of social intercourse. It did
very well for monarchs, who often had need
of castle walls to defend them from their own
subjects. *'But, senors," added he, smiling,
"if you think a residence there so desirable,
my apartments in the Alhambra are at your
service."
It is a common and almost indispensable
point of politeness in a Spaniard, to tell you
his house is yours. " Esta casa es siempre a
la disposicion de Vm." — "This house is
always at the command of your Grace." In
fact, anything of his which you admire is
immediately offered to you. It is equally
a mark of good breeding in you not to accept
it; so we merely bowed our acknowledgments
of the courtesy of the Governor in offering
us a royal palace. We w^ere mistaken, how-
ever. The Governor was in earnest. "You
will find a rambling set of empty, unfurnished
rooms," said he; "but Tia Antonia, who has
charge of the palace, may be able to put
them in some kind of order, and to take care
of you while you are there. If you can make
any arrangement with her for your accom-
modation, and are content with scanty fare
in a royal abode, the palace of King Chico^
is at your service."
We took the Governor at his word, and
hastened up the steep Calle de los Gomeres,
and through the Great Gate of Justice, to
negotiate with Dame Antonia, — doubting at
times if this were not a dream, and fearing
at times that the sage Diieiia of the fortress
might be slow to capitulate. We knew we
had one friend at least in the garrison who
would be in our favor, the bright-eyed little
Dolores, whose good graces we had propi-
tiated on our first visit, and who hailed our
return to the palace with her brightest looks.
All, however, went smoothly. The good
Tia Antonia had a little furniture to put in
1 Boabdil.
II
THE ALHAMBRA
223
the rooms, but it was of the commonest kind.
We assured her we could bivouac on the
floor. She could supply our table, but only
in her own simple way; — we wanted nothing
better. Her niece, Dolores, would wait upon
us; and at the word we threw up our hats
and the bargain was complete.
The very next day we took up our abode
in the palace, and never did sovereigns share
a divided throne with more perfect harmony.
Several days passed by like a dream, when
my worthy associate,^ being summoned to
Madrid on diplomatic duties, was compelled
to abdicate, leavmg me sole monarch of this
shadowy realm. For myself, being in a man-
ner a haphazard loiterer about the world, and
prone to linger in its pleasant places, here
have I been suffering day by day to steal
away unheeded, spellbound, for aught I
know, in this old enchanted pile. Having
always a companionable feeling for my
reader, and being prone to live with him on
confidential terms, I shall make it a point to
communicate to him my reveries and re-
searches during this state of delicious thral-
dom. If they have the power of imparting
to his imagination any of the witching charms
of the place, he will not repine at lingering
W'ith me for a season in the legendary halls
of the Alhambra.
THE HALL OF AMBASSADORS
In one of my visits to the old Moorish
chamber where the good Tia Antonia cooks
her dinner and receives her company, I
observed a mysterious door in one corner,
leading apparently into the ancient part of
the edifice. My curiosity being aroused, I
opened it, and found myself in a narrow,
blind corridor, groping along which I came
to the head of a dark winding staircase, lead-
ing down an angle of the Tower of Comares.
Down this staircase I descended darkling,
guiding myself by the wall until I came to a
small door at the bottom, throwing which
open, I was suddenly dazzled by emerging
into the brilliant antechamber of the Hall of
Ambassadors; with the fountain of the Court
of the Alberca sparkling before me. The
' Prince Demetri Ivanovitch Dolgorouki, Secretary
of the Russidn Embassy at Madrid.
antechamber is separated from the court by
an elegant gallery, supported by slender
columns with spandrels of open work in the
Morisco style. At each end of the ante-
chamber are alcoves, and its ceiling is richly
stuccoed and painted. Passing through a
magnificent portal, I found myself in the far-
famed Hall of Ambassadors, the audience
chamber of the Moslem monarchs. It is said
to be thirty-seven feet square and sixty feet
high; occupies the whole interior of the
Tower of Comares; and still bears the traces
of past magnificence. The walls are beauti-
fully stuccoed and decorated with Morisco
fancifulness; the lofty ceiling was originally
of the same favorite material, with the usual
frostwork and pensile ornaments or stalac-
tites; which, with the embellishments of
vivid coloring and gilding, must have been
gorgeous in the extreme. Unfortunately, it
gave way during an earthquake, and brought
down with it an immense arch which tra-
versed the hall. It was replaced by the
present vault or dome of larch or cedar, with
intersecting ribs, the whole curiously wrought
and richly colored; still Oriental in its char-
acter, reminding one of "those ceilings of
cedar and vermilion that we read of in the
Prophets and the Arabian Nights."^
From the great height of the vault above
the windows, the upper part of the hall is
almost lost in obscurity; yet there is a mag-
nificence as well as solenmity in the gloom,
as through it w^e have gleams of rich gilding
and the brilliant tints of the Moorish pencil.
The royal throne was placed opposite the
entrance in a recess, which still bears an
inscription intimating that Yusef I (the
monarch who completed the Alhambra)
made this the throne of his empire. Every-
thing in this noble hall seems to have been
calculated to surround the throne with
impressive dignity and splendor; there was
none of the elegant voluptuousness which
reigns in other parts of the palace. The
tower is of massive strength, domineering
over the whole edifice and overhanging the
steep hillside. On three sides of the Plall of
Ambassadors are windows cut through the
immense thickness of the walls and com-
manding extensive prospects. The balcony
of the central window especially looks down
2 Urquhart's Pillars of Hercules. (Irving's note.)
224
WASIIINGION IRVING
upon the \ii(l;nit vallt-y of the Darro, with
its walks, its om this time until his death on 12 June, 187S, he directed the affairs of the
Evening Post. His flow of poetry, never copious, with the passaj^e of years };rew ahnost imperceptible.
Nearly all that insures the permanency of his fame is included in the volumes of 1821 and 1832. His
energies were more and more absorbed by the Post, which, with constant good sense and unfailing
courage, he succeeded in making America's greatest newspaper, and eventually a very profitable one
too. His most notable literary work in his later years was his translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey
(1870-1873), whose excellence has perhaps never been adequately recognized.
Bryant was a severe artist, and for formal excellence he has only two or three rivals among later
Americans. His happiest pieces are few in number, but those few retain their interest because they
give fine expression to certain of man's graver moods when he faces the elemental, unchanging mysteries
of life, and when he feels between himself and surrounding nature a dim harmony which, somehow,
fortifies, consoles, and on occasion gladdens him. Despite the pleasure Bryant derived from Words-
worth, the English poet's influence upon him may easily be exaggerated and misunderstood. His
language seems rather to be derived from poets of the eighteenth century, and for his chastened use
of it his study of Greek must at least share, with Wordsworth, the credit. He has, too, little or
nothing of Wordsworth's mystical pantheism. On the contrary, he still looks to the God of his Puri-
tan fathers. But, in his later time, the old creed has lost its narrow severity, without losing its
gravity.
THANATOPSIS^
To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion wath her visible forms, she
speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When
thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images 10
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow
house
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at
heart; —
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings while from all around —
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air —
Comes a still voice — Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground.
Where thy pale form was laid, with many
tears, 20
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee,
shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
» First published in its present form in 1821. The
title, formed from two Greek words, means: A view
of death.
This and the following poems are here reprinted
from the Roslyn Edition of Bryant's Poetical Works
with the permission of the publishers, Messrs. D.
Appleton and Company.
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements.
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude
swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The
oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy
mold. 30
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie
down
With patriarchs of the infant world — with
kings,
The powerful of the earth — the wise, the good.
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past.
All in one mighty sepulcher. The hills
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, — the
vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods — rivers that move 40
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured
round all,
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste, —
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun.
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven.
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. — Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 52
246
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
WluTf rolls the Orction, aiul hears no souiul,
Save his own ilashin«;s — yet the dead are
there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them
down
In their last sleep— the dead reign there
alone.
Soshalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that
breathe 60
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of
care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall
leave
Their mirth and their employments, and
shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long
train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's green spring, and he who
goes
In the full strength of years, matron and
maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed
man — 70
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side.
By those, who in their turn shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to
join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall
take
His chamber in the silent halls of death.
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night.
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and
soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave.
Like one who wraps the drapery of his
couch 80
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
THE YELLOW VIOLETi
When beechen buds begin to swell,
And woods the blue-bird's warble know,
The yellow violet's modest bell
Peeps from the last year's leaves below.
J Written in 1814; published in 1821.
Ere russet fields their green resume,
Sweet flower, I love, in forest bare.
To meet thee, when thy faint perfume
Alone is in the virgin air.
Of all her train, the hands of Spring
Eirst plant thee in the watery mold, 10
And I have seen thee blossoming
Beside the snow-bank's edges cold.
Thy parent sun, who bade thee view
Pale skies, and chilling moisture sip.
Has bathed thee in his own bright hue.
And streaked with jet thy glowing lip.
Yet slight thy form, and low thy seat,
And earthward bent thy gentle eye,
Unapt the passing view to meet,
When loftier flowers are flaunting nigh. 20
Oft, in the sunless April day,
Thy early smile has stayed my walk;
But midst the gorgeous blooms of May,
I passed thee on thy humble stalk.
So they, who climb to wealth, forget
The friends in darker fortunes tried.
I copied them — but I regret
That I should ape the ways of pride.
And when again the genial hour
Awakes the painted tribes of light, 30
I'll not o'erlook the modest flower
That made the woods of April bright.
INSCRIPTION FOR THE
ENTRANCE TO A WOOD 2
Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth
which needs
No school of long experience, that the world
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares,
To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood
And view the haunts of Nature. The calm
shade
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet
breeze
That makes the green leaves dance, shall
waft a balm
2 A portion (all save last several lines) published in
North American Review in 1 8i 7; published in its present
form in 1821.
TO A WATERFOWL
247
To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing
here
Of all that pained thee in the haunts of
men, 10
And made thee loathe thy life. The primal
curse
Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth.
But not in vengeance. God hath yoked to
guilt
Her pale tormentor, misery. Hence, these
shades
Are still the abodes of gladness; the thick
roof
Of green and stirring branches is alive
And musical with birds, that sing and sport
In wantonness of spirit; while below
The squirrel, with raised paws and form
erect.
Chirps merrily. Throngs of insects in the
shade 20
Try their thin wings and dance in the warm
beam
That waked them into life. Even the green
trees
Partake the deep contentment; as they bend
To the soft winds, the sun from the blue
sky
Looks in and sheds a blessing on the scene.
Scarce less the cleft-born wild-flower seems
to enjoy
Existence, than the winged plunderer
That sucks its sweets. The mossy rocks
themselves.
And the old and ponderous trunks of pros-
trate trees
That lead from knoll to knoll a causey
rude 30
Or bridge the sunken brook, and their dark
roots.
With all their earth upon them, twisting high.
Breathe fixed tranquillity. The rivulet
Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er
its bed
Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks.
Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice
In its own being. Softly tread the marge.
Lest from her midway perch thou scare the
wren
That dips her bill in water. The cool wind.
That stirs the stream in play, shall come to
thee, 40
Like one that loves thee nor will let thee
pass
Ungreeted, and shall give its light embrace.
TO A WATERFOWL 1
Whither, midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of
day.
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pur-
sue
Thy solitary way.^
Vainly the fowler's eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee
wrong.
As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.
Seek'st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 10
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean-side.''
There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast —
The desert and illimitable air —
Lone wandering, but not lost.
All day thy wings have fanned,
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land.
Though the dark night is near. 20
And soon that toil shall end;
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest.
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall
bend.
Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.
Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my
heart
Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.
'Written in December, 1815; published in North
American Review in 181 8, also in vol. of 1821. On 15
December Bryant walked from Cummington to Plain-
field; he felt "very forlorn and desolate indeed, not
knowing what was to become of him in the big world
which grew bigger as he ascended [the hills] and yet
darker with the coming on of night. The sun had
already set, leaving behind it one of those brilliant
seas of chrysolite and opal which often flood the New
England skies. While he was looking upon the rosy
splendor with rapt admiration, a solitary bird made
wing along the illuminated horizon. He watched the
lone wanderer until it was lost in the distance, asking
himself whither it had come and to what far home it
was flying. When he went to the house where he was
to stop for the night, his mind was still full of what
he had seen and felt, and he wrote" To a Waterfowl.
(P. Godwin.)
24S
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
He who, froiTi /one to zone,
Guides throiiuh the liouiulless sky thy cer-
tain Hi,s;hr, 30
In the IcMic; w;iy that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
A FOREST HYMNi
The p;roves were God's first temples. Ere
man learned
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave.
And spread the roof above them — ere he
framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,
Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down.
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication. For his simple heart
Might not resist the sacred influences
Which, from the stilly twilight of the
place, 10
And from the gray old trunks that high in
heaven
Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the
sound
Of the invisible breath that swayed at once
All their green tops, stole over him, and
bowed
His spirit with the thought of boundless
power
And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why
Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect
God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore
Only among the crowd, and under roofs
That our frail hands have raised.^ Let me,
at least, 20
Here, in the shadow of this aged wood,
Offer one hymn — thrice happy, if it find
Acceptance in His ear.
Father, thy hand
Hath reared these venerable columns, thou
Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst
look down
Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose
All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun,
Budded, and shook their green leaves in thy
breeze.
And shot tow^ard heaven. The century-liv-
ing crow
Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and
died 30
'Published in United States Literary Gazette, 1825,
and in vol. of 1832.
Among their branches, till, at last, they stood,
As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark,
Fit shrine for humble worshiper to hold
Communion with his Maker. These dim
vaults.
These winding aisles, of human pomp or
pride
Report not. No fantastic carvings show
The boast of our vain race to change the form
Of thy fair works. But thou art here — thou
fill'st
The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds
That run along the summit of these trees 40
In music; thou art in the cooler breath
That from the inmost darkness of the place
Comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the
ground,
The fresh moist ground, are all instinct with
thee.
Here is continual worship; — Nature, here,
In the tranquillity that thou dost love,
Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly, around,
From perch to perch, the solitary bird
Passes; and yon clear spring, that, midst its
herbs,
Wells softly forth and wandering steeps the
roots 50
Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale
Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left
Thyself without a witness, in the shades.
Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and
grace
Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak —
By whose immovable stem I stand and seem
Almost annihilated — not a prince,
In all that proud old world beyond the deep.
E'er wore his crown as loftily as he
Wears the green coronal of leaves with
which 60
Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root
Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare
Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower,
With scented breath and look so like a smile.
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mold,
An emanation of the indwelling Life,
A visible token of the upholding Love,
That are the soul of this great universe.
My heart is awed within me when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on, 70
In silence, round me — the perpetual work
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed
For ever. Written on thy works I read
The lesson of thy own eternity.
I CANNOT FORGET
249
Lo! all grow old and die — but see again,
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses — ever gay and beautiful youth
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors
Molder beneath them. Oh, there is not
lost 80
One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet,
After the flight of untold centuries,
The freshness of her far beginning lies
And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate
Of his arch-enemy Death — yea, seats him-
self
Upon the tyrant's throne — the sepulcher,
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe
Makes his own nourishment. For he came
forth
From thine own bosom, and shall have no
end.
There have been holy men who hid them-
selves 90
Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave
Their lives to thought and prayer, till they
outlived
The generation born with them, nor seemed
Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks
Around them; — and there have been holy
men
Who deemed ir were not well to pass life thus.
But let me often to these solitudes
Retire, and in thy presence reassure
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,
The passions, at thy plainer footsteps
shrink 100
And tremble and are still. O God ! when thou
Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire
The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill,
With all the waters of the firmament.
The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the
woods
And drowns the villages; when, at thy call,
Uprises the great deep and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms
Its cities — who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of thy power, no
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by?
Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad unchained elements to teach
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate.
In these calm shades, thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of thy works
Learn to conform the order of our lives.
I BROKE THE SPELL^
I BROKE the spell that held me long,
The dear, dear witchery of song.
I said, the poet's idle lore
Shall waste my prime of years no more,
For Poetry, though heavenly born,
Consorts with poverty and scorn.
I broke the spell — nor deemed its pov/er
Could fetter me another hour.
Ah, thoughtless! how could I forget
Its causes were around me yet.f* 10
For wheresoe'er I looked, the while,
Was Nature's everlasting smile.
Still came and lingered on my sight
Of flowers and streams the bloom and light,
And glory of the stars and sun; —
And these and poetry are one.
They, ere the world had held me long,
Recalled me to the love of song.
I CANNOT F0RGET2
I CANNOT forget with what fervid devotion
I worshiped the visions of verse and of
fame;
Each gaze at the glories of earth, sky, and
ocean.
To my kindled emotions, was wind over
flame.
And deep were my musings in life's early
blossom.
Mid the twilight of mountain-groves wan-
dering long;
How thrilled my young veins, and how
throbbed my full bosom.
When o'er me descended the spirit of song!
'Mong the deep-cloven fells that for ages
have listened
To the rush of the pebble-paved river
between, 10
Where the kingfisher screamed and gray pre-
cipice glistened.
All breathless with awe have I gazed on the
scene;
1 Published in Atlantic Souvenir, 1825, also in vol. of
1832.
2 Published in New York Reviexv, 1826, also in vol.
of 1832.
2;o
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
Till I felt the dark power o'er my reveries
stealing.
From the gloom of the thicket that over
me hung,
And the thoughts that awoke, in that rapture
of feeling,
Were formed into verse as they rose to
my tongue.
Bright visions! I mixed with the world, and
ye faded,
No longer your pure rural worshiper now;
In the haunts your continual presence per-
vaded.
Ye shrink from the signet of care on my
brow. 20
In the old mossy groves on the breast of the
mountains,
In deep lonely glens where the waters com-
plain,
By the shade of the rock, by the gush of the
fountain,
I seek your loved footsteps, but seek them
in vain.
Oh, leave not forlorn and for ever forsaken,
Your pupil and victim to life and its tears!
But sometimes return, and in mercy awaken
The glories ye showed to his earlier years.
THE CONJUNCTION OF JUPITER
AND VENUSi
I WOULD not always reason. The straight
path
Wearies us with the never-varying lines,
And we grow melancholy. I would make
Reason my guide, but she should sometimes
sit
Patiently by the way-side, while I traced
The mazes of the pleasant wilderness
Around me. She should be my counselor.
But not my tyrant. For the spirit needs
Impulses from a deeper source than hers.
And there are motions, in the mind of
man lo
That she must look upon with awe. I bow
Reverently to her dictates, but not less
Hold to the fair illusions of old time —
Illusions that shed brightness over life,
And glory over Nature. Look, even now%
> Published in United States Literary Gazette^ 1826,
also in vol. of 1 832.
Where two bright planets in the twilight
meet,
Upon the saffron heaven, — the imperial star
Of Jove, and she that from her radiant urn
Pours forth the light of love. Let me believe,
Awhile, that they are met for ends of good, 20
Amid the evenmg glory, to confer
Of men and their affairs, and to shed down
Kind mfluence. Lo! they brighten as we
gaze.
And shake out softer fires! The great earth
feels
The gladness and the quiet of the time.
Meekly the mighty river, that infolds
This mighty city, smooths his front, and far
Glitters and burns even the rocky base
Of the dark heights that bound him to the
west;
And a deep murmur, from the many streets, 30
Rises like a thanksgiving. Put we hence
Dark and sad thoughts awhile — there's time
for them
Hereafter — on the morrow we will meet,
\\ ith melancholy looks, to tell our griefs,
And make each other wretched; this calm
hour,
This balmy, blessed evening, w^e will give
To cheerful hopes and dreams of happy days.
Born of the meeting of those glorious stars.
Enough of drought has parched the year,
and scared
The land with dread of famine. Autumn,
yet, 40
Shall make men glad w^th unexpected fruits.
The dog-star shall shine harmless: genial days
Shall softly glide away into the keen
And wholesome cold of winter; he that fears
The pestilence, shall gaze on those pure
beams,
And breathe, with confidence, the quiet air.
Emblems of power and beauty! well may
they
Shine brightest on our borders, and withdraw
Toward the great Pacific, marking out
The path of empire. Thus in our own land, 50
Ere long, the better Genius of our race,
Having encompassed earth, and tamed its
tribes,
Shall sit him down beneath the farthest west,
By the shore of that calm ocean, and look
back
On realms made happy.
THE PRAIRIES
2qi
Light the nuptial torch,
And say the glad, yet solemn rite, that
knits
The youth and maiden. Happy days to them
That wed this evening! — a long life of love.
And blooming sons and daughters! Happy
they
Born at this hour, for they shall see an age 60
Whiter and holier than the past, and go
Late to their graves. Men shall wear softer
hearts.
And shudder at the butcheries of war,
As now at other murders.
Hapless Greece!^
Enough of blood has wet thy rocks, and
stained
Thy rivers; deep enough thy chains have
worn
Their links into thy flesh; the sacrifice
Of thy pure maidens, and thy innocent babes.
And reverend priests, has expiated all
Thy crimes of old. In yonder mingling
lights 70
There is an omen of good days for thee.
Thou shalt arise from midst the dust and sit
Again among the nations. Thine owm arm
Shall yet redeem thee. Not in wars like
thine
The world takes part. Be it a strife of
kings,—
Despot with despot battling for a throne, —
And Europe shall be stirred throughout her
realms,
Nations shall put on harness, and shall fall
Upon each other, and in all their bounds
The wailing of the childless shall not cease. 80
Thine is a w^ar for liberty, and thou
Must fight it single-handed. The old world
Looks coldly on the murderers of thy race,
And leaves thee to the struggle; and the
new, —
I fear me thou couldst tell a shameful tale
Of fraud and lust of gain; — thy treasury
drained.
And Missolonghi fallen. Yet thy wrongs
Shall put new strength into thy heart and
hand.
And God and thy good sword shall yet work
out,
For thee, a terrible deliverance. 90
1 The Greeks at this time were fighting the Turks
for independence, which was not gained until 1829.
TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN^
Thou blossom bright with autumn dew,
And colored with the heaven's own blue,
Ihat openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night;
Thou comest not when violets lean
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest.
Thou waitest late and com'st alone, 9
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.
Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue — blue — as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.
I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart. 20
THE PRAIRIES-^
These are the gardens of the Desert, these
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
For which the speech of England has no
name —
The Prairies. I behold them for the first.
And my heart swells, while the dilated sight
Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo! they
stretch,
In airy undulations, far away,
As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell.
Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed.
And motionless for ever. — Motionless.^ — 10
No — they are all unchained again. The
clouds
Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath,
The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye;
Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase
The sunny ridges. Breezes of the South!
Who toss the golden and the flame-like
flowers.
'Written in 1829; published in the vol. of 1832.
> Written in Illinois, while Bryant was visiting
brothers there, in 1832; published in the Knickerbocker
Magazine, 1833, and in Poems, 1834.
-3-
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
And pass the prairie-liawk that, poised on
high,
Flaps his hroad wings, yet moves not — ye
have played
Among the pahiis of Mexico and vines
Of Texas, and have crisped the Hmpid
brooks 20
That from the fountains of Sonora gHde
Into the cahn Pacific — have ye fanned
A nobler or a lovelier scene than this?
Man hath no power in all this glorious work:
The hand that built the firmament hath
heaved
And smoothed these verdant swells, and
sown their slopes
With herbage, planted them with island
groves,
And hedged them round with forests. Fit-
ting floor
For this magnificent temple of the sky —
With flowers whose glory and whose multi-
tude 30
Rival the constellations! The great heavens
Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love, —
A nearer vault, and of a tenderer blue,
Than that which bends above our eastern
hills.
As o'er the verdant waste I guide my steed.
Among the high rank grass that sweeps his
sides
The hollow beating of his footstep seems
A sacrilegious sound. I think of those
Upon whose rest he tramples. Are they
here — 39
The dead of other days? — and did the dust
Of these fair solitudes once stir with life
And burn with passion? Let the mighty
mounds
That overlook the rivers, or that rise
In the dim forest crowded with old oaks,
Answer. A race, that long has passed away,
Built them; — a disciplined and populous
race
Heaped, with long toil, the earth, while yet
the Greek
Was hewing the Pentelicus to forms
Of symmetry, and rearing on its rock
The glittering Parthenon. These ample
fields 50
Nourished their harvests, here their herds
were fed.
When haply by their stalls the bison lowed,
And bowed his maned shoulder to the yoke.
All day this desert murmured with their
toils.
Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked,
and wooed
In a forgotten language, and old tunes.
From instruments of unremembered form.
Gave the soft winds a voice. The red man
came —
The roaming hunter tribes, warlike and
fierce.
And the mound-builders vanished from the
earth. * 60
The solitude of centuries untold
Has settled where they dwelt. The prairie-
wolf
Hunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug
den
Yawns by my path. The gopher mines the
ground
Where stood their swarming cities. All is
gone;
All — save the piles of earth that hold their
bones.
The platforms where they worshiped un-
known gods.
The barriers which they builded from the soil
To keep the foe at bay — till o'er the walls
The wild beleaguerers broke, and, one by
one, 70
The strongholds of the plain were forced,
and heaped
With corpses. The brown vultures of the
wood
Flocked to those vast uncovered sepulchers,
And sat unscared and silent at their feast.
Haply some solitarx^ fugitive.
Lurking in marsh and forest, till the sense
Of desolation and of fear became
Bitterer than death, yielded himself to die.
Man's better nature triumphed then. Kind
words
Welcomed and soothed him; the rude con-
querors 80
Seated the captive with their chiefs; he chose
A bride among their maidens, and at length
Seemed to forget — yet ne'er forgot — the
wife
Of his first love, and her sweet little ones,
Butchered, amid their shrieks, with all his
race.
Thus change the forms of being. Thus
arise
Races of living things, glorious in strength.
THE POET
253
And perish, as the quickening breath of
God
Fills them, or is withdrawn. The red man,
too,
Has left the blooming wilds he ranged so
long, 90
And, nearer to the Rocky Mountains, sought
A wilder hunting-ground. The beaver builds
No longer by these streams, but far away.
On waters whose blue surface ne'er gave
back
The white man's face — among Missouri's
springs,
And pools whose issues swell the Oregon —
He rears his little Venice. In these plains
The bison feeds no more. Twice twenty
leagues
Beyond remotest smoke of hunter's camp,
Roams the majestic brute, in herds that
shake 100
The earth with thundering steps — yet here
I meet
His ancient footprints stamped beside the
pool.
Still this great solitude is quick with life.
Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers
They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds.
And birds, that scarce have learned the fear
of man.
Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground,
Startlingly beautiful. The graceful deer
Bounds to the wood at my approach. The
bee,
A more adventurous colonist than man, 1 10
With whom he came across the eastern deep,
Fills the savannas with his murmurings.
And hides his sweets, as in the golden age.
Within the hollow oak. I listen long
To his domestic hum, and think I hear
The sound of that advancing multitude
Which soon shall fill these deserts. From
the ground
Comes up the laugh of children, the soft
voice
Of maidens, and the sweet and solemn
hymn
Of Sabbath worshipers. The low of
herds 120
Blends with the rustling of the heavy grain
Over the dark brown furrows. All at once
A fresher wind sweeps by, and breaks my
dream.
And I am in the wilderness alone.
THE POET^
Thou, who wouldst wear the name
Of poet mid thy brethren of mankind.
And clothe in words of flame
Thoughts that shall live within the general
mind!
Deem not the framing of a deathless lay
The pastime of a drowsy summer day.
But gather all thy powers.
And wreak them on the verse that thou
dost weave.
And in thy lonely hours.
At silent morning or at wakeful eve, 10
While the warm current tingles through thy
veins.
Set forth the burning words in fluent strains.
No smooth array of phrase.
Artfully sought and ordered though it be.
Which the cold rhymer lays
Upon his page with languid industry,
Can wake the listless pulse to livelier speed.
Or fill with sudden tears the eyes that read.
The secret wouldst thou know
To touch the heart or fire the blood at
will.? 20
Let thine own eyes o'erflow;
Let thy lips quiver with the passionate
thrill;
Seize the great thought, ere yet its power be
past.
And bind, in words, the fleet emotion fast.
Then, should thy verse appear
Halting and harsh, and all unaptly
wrought,
Touch the crude line with fear.
Save in the moment of impassioned
thought;
Then summon back the original glow, and
mend
The strain with rapture that with fire was
penned. 30
Yet let no empty gust
Of passion find an utterance in thy lay,
A blast that whirls the dust
Along the howling street and dies away;
But feelings of calm power and mighty
sweep.
Like currents journeying through the wind-
less deep.
1 Written in 1863; published in 1864.
^54
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
Seek'st thou, in living lays,
To limn the beauty of the earth and sky?
Before thine inner ^aze
Let all that beauty in clear vision lie; 40
Look on it with exceeding love, and write
The words inspired by wonder and delight.
Of tempests vvouldst thou sing,
Or tell of battles — make thyself a part
Of the great tumult; cling
Lo the tossed wreck with terror in thy
heart;
Scale, with the assaulting host, the rampart's
height,
And strike and struggle in the thickest fight.
So shalt thou frame a lay
That haply may endure from age to age, 50
And they who read shall say:
"What witchery hangs upon this poet's
page!
What art is his the written spells to find
That sway from mood to mood the willing
mind!"
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT (1796-18S9)
Prescott's father was an eminent lawyer who practiced In Salem and Boston and who had, for the
times, ample means, which relieved his son of the need of ever considering money in planning his
course of life. This turned out to be a circumstance of capital importance. His mother was a woman
of character and unusual energy, who exerted a strong influence upon her son, encouraging him to
master the difliculties in his way and to carry his work through to accomplishment. The historian
was born on 4 May, 1796, at Salem, and lived there until the family's removal to Boston in 1808.
He entered the sophomore class of Harvard in 181 1. He was not a distinguished student, on the con-
trary was distinguished rather for his love of pleasure, until the occurrence of the accident which befell
him in his junior year. A fellow-student, in fun, threw at him a crust of bread; by a sudden turn
of his head Prescott happened to catch the crust full in his left eye. The result, when he had recov-
ered from the pain and the nervous shock, was found to be that the eye was practically blind. Dur-
ing the remainder of his life he had not only to depend on one eye, but to use that with the utmost
caution lest he should lose it also. And frequently for long periods he did lose it, and had to live
and work in darkness, because of extremely painful attacks of acute rheumatism centering in his eye.
When he returned to his studies after the accident he applied himself to them with sobered temper,
and was graduated in 1814 with honors. He was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa. It was his inten-
tion to follow his father in the practice of the law, and he now undertook studies to this end. But
early in 1815 inflammation in his eye which completely incapacitated him for several months caused
him to abandon the law. In the fall he sailed for the Azores, where his maternal grandfather lived as
American consul, and thence he went to Europe, traveling there extensively and returning to Boston
in 1817. In 1820 he married Susan Amory, of Boston. What occupation he should now follow was a
question not quickly answered, but by 1820 he had determined to become a man of letters. He pro-
ceeded to undertake a long course of preliminary study, which included rhetoric, Latin, and the history
and literature of England, France, Italy, and Spain. Following Italian letters he had intended to
study German, but had found it impracticable. As a consequence, late in 1824, he began the study
of Spanish, prompted thereto by his friend George Ticknor. It was not, however, until two years
later that he determined to make Spanish history the field of his life's work. He then settled, for
his first subject, upon the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, and devoted three years to preparation
for writing. This he began in the fall of 1829, to finish his task almost seven years later, in the sum-
mer of 1836. Even then he was hesitant about publishing, fearing that his work might be judged
valueless, but he was urged on by his family and others, and the book finally appeared on Christmas
day in 1837. It was immediately successful, and Prescott went on more confidently to prepare The
Conquest of Mexico, which was published in December, 1843. This was even more successful than
Ferdinand and Isabella, and won a heartier reception in England and Europe. The Conquest of Peru
was a natural, practically inevitable, sequel to the Mexico. Much of the necessary preparation served
as well for the one as for the other, and Prescott did not hesitate to go on immediately with the Peru,
though he was already planning to write the History of Philip II and had this subject much on his
mind. Peru was published in 1847, and Prescott immediately began work upon what he hoped would
be his greatest book. Progress was interrupted by a visit to England in 1850, where the historian
was heartily received and showered with honors, which included a D.C.L. from Oxford, but his only
other interruptions were caused by failing health. The first volume o{ Philip II was finished in 1852
and the second two years later, and both were published in 1855. The third volume was also fin-
ished (published 1858), and Prescott was at work on the fourth (there were to be five) when he sud-
denly died from an attack of apoplexy on 28 January, 1859.
There is abundant testimony to Prescott's personal charm and to his patience under an afflic-
tion which would have condemned most men in his circumstances to stolid inactivity. And his heroic
work — it was no less, for a man almost blind and frequently incapacitated by pain — gave a new stand-
ard in history to America. Irving (who had graciously given up his own plan for a work on Mexico
when he heard of Prescott's undertaking) had written history that was literature, but it was more
notable for its charm than for thoroughness or scholarship. Prescott has recorded that the Memoirs
of Gibbon had something to do with his becoming a historian, and that his resolve was to make him-
255
2 56
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT
silf one "in the lust sense of the term." Hy this he did not mean that he proposed to write in terms
of a philosophy of history, nor even that he proposed to write reflectively, for he was not in any serious
sense of the word a thinker at all, and his work is akin in spirit to that of the simple chronicler. He
meant only that he proposed to write from a background of thorough culture and from a knowl-
edge as complete as he could make it of his primary sources. This he did, and he worked so well that
though additional information since turned up has invalidated many details in his narratives-
still, his histories remain on the whole sound and valuable for the general student and reader. By
present-day standards his style is over-elaborate; but, on the other hand, he brought such a talent
for vividness and such an instinct for the picturesque to his writing that his books retain their fasci-
nation and are long likely to be widely read.
HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF
PERU
BOOK HI
CHAPTER III
THE SPANIARDS LAND AT TUMBEZ — PIZARRO
RECONNOITERS THE COUNTRY — FOUN-
DATION OF SAN MIGUEL — MARCH INTO
THE INTERIOR — EMBASSY FROM THE
INCA — ADVENTURES ON THE MARCH —
REACH THE FOOT OF THE ANDES
1532
We left the Spaniards at the island of
Puna, preparing to make their descent on
the neighboring continent at Tumbez. This
port was but a few leagues distant, and
Pizarro, with the greater part of his followers,
passed over in the ships, while a few others
were to transport the commander's baggage
and the military stores on some of the Indian
balsas. One of the latter vessels which first
touched the shore was surrounded, and three
persons w^ho were on the raft w^ere carried off
by the natives to the adjacent woods and
there massacred. The Indians then got pos-
session of another of the balsas, containing
Pizarro's wardrobe: but, as the men who de-
fended it raised loud cries for help, they
reached the ears of Hernando Pizarro, who,
with a small body of horse, had effected a
landing some way farther down the shore. A
broad tract of miry ground, overflowed at
high water, lay between him and the party
thus rudely assailed by the natives. The
tide was out, and the bottom was soft and
dangerous. With little regard to the danger,
however, the bold cavalier spurred his horse
' Notes on following pages are Prescott's. The
greater number of his notes, however, have been omit-
ted, consisting, as they do, largely of quotations from
the Spanish sources.
into the slimy depths, and followed by his
men, with the mud up to their saddle-girths,
they plunged forward until they came into
the midst of the marauders, who, terrified
by the strange apparition of the horsemen,
fled precipitately, without show of fight, to
the neighboring forests.
This conduct of the natives of Tumbez is
not easy to be explained; considering th3
friendly relations maintained with the
Spaniards on their preceding visit, and lately
renewed in the island of Puna. But Pizarro
was still more astonished, on entering their
town, to find it not only deserted, but, with
the exception of a few buildings, entirely
demolished. Four or five of the most sub-
stantial private dwellings, the great temple,
and the fortress — and these greatly dam-
aged, and wholly despoiled of their interior
decorations — alone survived to mark the
site of the city, and attest its former splen-
dor. The scene of desolation filled the
Conquerors with dismay; for even the raw
recruits, who had never visited the coast be-
fore, had heard the marvelous stories of the
golden treasures of Tumbez, and they had
confidently looked forward to them as an
easy spoil after all their fatigues. But the
gold of Peru seemed only like a deceitful
phantom, which, after beckoning them on
through toil and danger, vanished the mo-
ment they attempted to grasp it.
Pizarro dispatched a small body of troops
in pursuit of the fugitives; and, after some
slight skirmishing, they got possession of
several of the natives, and among them, as
it chanced, the curaca of the place. When
brought before the Spanish commander, he
exonerated himself from any share in the
violence offered to the white men, saying that
it was done by a lawless party of his people,
without his knowledge at the time; and
he expressed his willingness to deliver them
up to punishment, if they could be detected.
HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF PERU
257
He explained the dilapidated condition of the
town by the long wars carried on with the
fierce tribes of Puna, who had at length
succeeded in getting possession of the place,
and driving the inhabitants into the neigh-
boring woods and mountains. The Inca, to
whose cause they were attached, was too
much occupied with his own feuds to protect
them against their enemies.
Whether Pizarro gave any credit to the
cacique's exculpation of himself may be
doubted. He dissembled his suspicions,
however, and, as the Indian lord promised
obedience in his own name and that of his
vassals, the Spanish general consented to
take no further notice of the affair. He
seems now to have felt for the first time, in
its full force, that it was his policy to gain
the good-will of the people among whom he
had thrown himself in the face of such
tremendous odds. It was, perhaps, the ex-
cesses of which his men had been guilty in
the earlier stages of the expedition that had
shaken the confidence of the people of Tum-
bez, and incited them to this treacherous
retaliation.
Pizarro inquired of the natives who now,
under promise of impunity, came into the
camp, what had become of his two followers
that remained with them in the former ex-
pedition. The answers they gave were
obscure and contradictory. Some said they
had died of an epidemic; others, that they
had perished in the war with Puna; and
others intimated that they had lost their
lives in consequence of some outrage at-
tempted on the Indian women. It was
impossible to arrive at the truth. The last
account was not the least probable. But,
whatever might be the cause, there was no
doubt they had both perished.
This intelligence spread an additional
gloom over the Spaniards; which was not
dispelled by the flaming pictures now given
by the natives of the riches of the land, and
of the state and magnificence of the monarch
in his distant capital among the mountains.
Nor did they credit the authenticity of a
scroll of paper, which Pizarro had obtained
from an Indian, to whom it had been de-
livered by one of the white men left in the
country. "Know, whoever you may be,"
said the writing, "that may chance to set
foot in this country, that it contains more
gold and silver than there is iron in Biscay."
This paper, when shown to the soldiers,
excited only their ridicule, as a device of
their captain to keep alive their chimerical
hopes.
Pizarro now saw that it was not politic to
protract his stay in his present quarters,
where a spirit of disaffection would soon
creep into the ranks of his followers, unless
their spirits were stimulated by novelty or
a life of incessant action. Yet he felt deeply
anxious to obtain more particulars than he
had hitherto gathered of the actual con-
dition of the Peruvian empire, of its strength
and resources, of the monarch who ruled
over it, and of his present situation. He
was also desirous, before taking any decisive
step for penetrating the country, to seek out
some commodious place for a settlement,
which might afford him the means of a
regular communication with the colonies,
and a place of strength, on which he himself
might retreat in case of disaster.
He decided, therefore, to leave part of
his company at Tumbez, including those
who, from the state of their health, were
least able to take the field, and with the
remainder to make an excursion into the
interior, and reconnoiter the land, before
deciding on any plan of operations. He set
out early in May, 1532; and, keeping along
the more level regions himself, sent a small
detachment under the command of Her-
nando de Soto to explore the skirts of the
vast sierra.
He maintained a rigid discipline on the
march, commanding his soldiers to abstain
from all acts of violence, and punishing dis-
obedience in the most prompt and resolute
manner. The natives rarely offered re-
sistance. When they did so, they were
soon reduced, and Pizarro, far from vindic-
tive measures, was open to the first demon-
strations of submission. By this lenient
and liberal policy, he soon acquired a name
among the inhabitants which effaced the
unfavorable impressions made of him in the
earlier part of the campaign. The natives,
as he marched through the thick-settled
hamlets which sprinkled the level region
between the Cordilleras and the ocean,
welcomed him with rustic hospitality, pro-
viding good quarters for his troops, and
abundant supplies, which cost but little in
258
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT
the prolific soil of the tirrra caliente. Every-
where Pi/nrro made proclamation that he
came in the name of the Holy Vicar of Ciod
and of the so\ ereii^n of Spain, reqiiirino; the
obedience of the inhabitants as true children
of the Church, and vassals of his lord and
master. And as the simple people made no
opposition to a formula, of which they could
not comprehend a syllable, they were ad-
mitted as good subjects of the crown of
Castile, and their act of homage — or what
was readily interpreted as such — was duly
recorded and attested by the notary.
At the expiration of some three or four
weeks spent in reconnoitering the country,
Pizarro came to the conclusion that the
most eligible site for his new settlement was
in the rich valley of Tangarala, thirty leagues
south of Tumbez, traversed by more than
one stream that opens a communication
with the ocean. To this spot, accordingly,
he ordered the men left at Tumbez to repair
at once in their vessels; and no sooner had
they arrived, than busy preparations were
made for building up the town in a manner
suited to the wants of the colony. Timber
was procured from the neighboring woods.
Stones were dragged from their quarries, and
edifices gradually rose, some of which made
pretensions to strength, if not to elegance.
Among them were a church, a magazme for
public stores, a hall of justice, and a fortress.
A municipal government was organized,
consistmg of regidores, alcaldes, and the
usual civic functionaries. The adjacent
territory was parceled out among the resi-
dents, and each colonist had a certain num-
ber of the natives allotted to assist him in
his labors; for, as Pizarro's secretary re-
marks, "it being evident that the colonists
could not support themselves without the
services of the Indians, the ecclesiastics
and the leaders of the expedition all agreed
that a repartimiento of the natives would
serve the cause of religion, and tend greatly
to their spiritual welfare, since they would
thus have the opportunity of being initiated
in the true faith."
Having made these arrangements with
such conscientious regard to the welfare of
the benighted heathen, Pizarro gave his
infant city the name of San Miguel, in
acknowledgment of the service rendered
him by that saint in his battles with the
Indians of Puna. The site originally occu-
pied by the settlement was afterward found
to be so unhealthy, that it was abandoned
for another on the banks of the beautiful
Piura. I he town is still of some note for its
manufactures, though dwmdled from its
ancient importance; but the name of San
Miguel de Piura, which it bears, still com-
memorates the foundation of the first
European colony in the empire of the Incas.
Before quitting the new settlement,
Pizarro caused the gold and silver orna-
ments, which he had obtained in different
parts of the country, to be melted down into
one mass, and a fifth to be deducted for the
Crown. The remainder, which belonged to
the troops, he persuaded them to relinquish
for the present, under the assurance of being
repaid from the first spoils that fell into their
hands. With these funds, and other articles
collected in the course of the campaign, he
sent back the vessels to Panama. The gold
was applied to paying off the ship-owners
and those who had furnished the stores for
the expedition. That he should so easily
have persuaded his men to resign present
possession for a future contingency, is proof
that the spirit of enterprise was renewed in
their bosoms in all its former vigor, and that
they looked forward with the same buoyant
confidence to the results.
CHAPTER IV
SEVERE PASSAGE OF THE ANDES — EMBASSIES
FROM ATAHUALLPA THE SPANIARDS
REACH CAXAMALCA — EMBASSY TO THE
INCA — INTERVIEW WITH THE INCA —
DESPONDENCY OF THE SPANIARDS
1532
That night Pizarro held a council of his
principal officers, and it was determined that
he should lead the advance, consisting of
forty horse and sixty foot, and reconnoiter J
the ground; while the rest of the company, "
under his brother Hernando, should occupy
their present position till they received
further orders.
At early dawn the Spanish general and his
detachment were under arms, and prepared
to breast the difficulties of the sierra. These
proved even greater than had been foreseen.
HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF 1T:RU
259
The path had been conducted in the most
judicious manner round the rugged and
precipitous sides of the mountains, so as
best to avoid the natural impediments pre-
sented by the ground. But it was necessarily
so steep in many places, that the cavalry
were obliged to dismount, and, scrambling
up as they could, to lead their horses by the
bridle. In many places, too, where some
huge crag or eminence overhung the road,
this was driven to the very verge of the
precipice; and the traveler was compelled
to wind along the narrow ledge of rcxrk,
scarcely wide enough for his single steed,
where a mis-step would precipitate him
hundreds, nay, thousands, of feet into the
dreadful abyss! The wild passes of the
sierra, practicable for the half-naked Indian,
and even for the sure and circumspect
mule, — an animal that seems to have been
created for the roads of the Cordilleras, —
w^ere formidable to the man-at-arms, en-
cumbered with his panoply of mail. The
tremendous fissures, or quebradas, so fright-
ful in this mountain chain, yawned open, as
if the Andes had been split asunder by some
terrible convulsion, showing a broad ex-
panse of the primitive rock on their sides,
partially mantled over with the spontaneous
vegetation of ages; while their obscure
depths furnished a channel for the torrents,
that, rising in the hearts of the sierra, worked
their way gradually into light, and spread
over the savannas and green valleys of the
tierra caliente on their way to the great
ocean.
Many of these passes afforded obvious
points of defense; and the Spaniards, as
they entered the rocky defiles, looked with
apprehension lest they might rouse some foe
from his ambush. This apprehension was
heightened, as, at the summit of a steep and
narrow gorge, in which they were engaged,
they beheld a strong work, rising like a
fortress, and frowning, as it were, in gloomy
defiance on the invaders. As they drew
near this building, which was of solid stone,
commanding an angle of the road, they
almost expected to see the dusky forms of
the warriors rise over the battlements, and to
receive their tempest of missiles on their
bucklers; for it was in so strong a position,
that a few resolute men might easily have
held there an army at bay. But they had
the satisfaction to find the place untenanted;
and their spirits were greatly raised by the
conviction that the Indian monarch did not
intend to dispute their passage, when it
would have been easy to do so with success.
Pizarro now sent orders to his brother to
follow without delay; and, after refreshing
his men, continued his toilsome ascent, and
before nightfall reached an eminence crowned
by another fortress, of even greater strength
than the preceding. It was built of solid
masonry, the lower part excavated from the
living rock, and the whole work executed
with skill not inferior to that of the European
architect.
Here Pizarro took up his quarters for the
night. Without waiting for the arrival of
the rear, on the following morning he re-
sumed his march, leading still deeper into
the intricate gorges of the sierra. The
climate had gradually changed, and the men
and horses, especially the latter, suffered
severely from the cold, so long accustomed
as they had been to the sultry climate of the
tropics. The vegetation also had changed
its character; and the magnificent timber
which covered the lower level of the country
had gradually given way to the funereal
forest of pine, and, as they rose still higher,
to the stunted growth of numberless Alpine
plants, whose hardy natures found a con-
genial temperature in the icy atmosphere of
the more elevated regions. These dreary
solitudes seemed to be nearly abandoned by
the brute creation as well as by man. The
light-footed vicuiia, roaming in its native
state, might be sometimes seen looking
down from some airy cliff, where the foot of
the hunter dare not venture. But instead of
the feathered tribes whose gay plumage
sparkled in the deep glooms of the tropical
forests, the adventurers now beheld only
the great bird of the Andes, the loathsome
condor, who, sailing high above the clouds,
followed with doleful cries in the track of
the army, as if guided by instinct in the path
of blood and carnage.
At length they reached the crest of the
Cordillera, where it spreads out into a bold
and bleak expanse with scarce the vestige of
vegetation, except what is afforded by the
pajonal, a dried yellow grass, which, as it is
seen from below, encircling the base of the
snow-covered peaks, looks, with its brilliant
26o
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT
straw-color lighted up in the rays of an
ardent sun, like a setting of gold round
pinnacles of burnished silver. The land was
sterile, as usual in mining districts, and
they were drawing near the once famous
gold quarries on the way to Caxamalca: —
Rocks rich in gems, and mountains big with mines,
That on the high equator ridgy rise.
Here Pizarro halted for the coming up of the
rear. The air was sharp and frosty; and
the soldiers, spreading their tents, lighted
fires, and, huddling round them, endeavored
to find some repose after their laborious
march.
They had not been long in these quarters,
when a messenger arrived, one of those who
had accompanied the Indian envoy sent by
Pizarro, to Atahuallpa. He informed the
general that the road was free from enemies,
and that an embassy from the Inca was on
its way to the Castilian camp. Pizarro now
sent back to quicken rhe march of the rear,
as he was unwilling that the Peruvian envoy
should find him with his present diminished
numbers. The rest of the army were not far
distant, and not long after reached the
encampment.
In a short time the Indian embassy also
arrived, which consisted of one of the Inca
nobles and several attendants, bringing a
welcome present of llamas to the Spanish
commander. The Peruvian bore, also, the
greetings of his master, who wished to know
when the Spaniards would arrive at Caxa-
malca, that he might provide suitable
refreshments for them. Pizarro learned that
the Inca had left Guamachucho, and was
now lying with a small force in the neighbor-
hood of Caxamalca, at a place celebrated for
its natural springs of warm water. The
Peruvian was an intelligent person, and the
Spanish commander gathered from him
many particulars respecting the late contests
which had distracted the empire.
As the envoy vaunted in lofty terms the
military prowess and resources of his sov-
ereign, Pizarro thought it politic to show that
it had no power to overawe him. He ex-
pressed his satisfaction at the triumphs of
Atahuallpa, who, he acknowledged, had
raised himself high in the rank of Indian
warriors. But he was as inferior, he added,
with more policy than politeness, to the
monarch who ruled over the white men, as
the petty curacas of the country were in-
ferior to him. This was evident from the
ease with which a few Spaniards had overrun
this great continent, subduing one nation
after another, that had offered resistance to
their arms. He had been led by the fame of
Atahuallpa to visit his dominions, and to
offer him his services in his wars; and, if he
were received by the Inca in the same
friendly spirit with which he came, he was
willing, for the aid he could render him, to
postpone awhile his passage across the
country to the opposite seas. The Indian,
according to the Castilian accounts, listened
with awe to this strain of glorification from
the Spanish commander. Yet it is possible
that the envoy was a better diplomatist
than they imagined; and that he understood
it was only the game of brag at which he
was playing with his more civilized antag-
onist.
On the succeeding morning, at an early
hour, the troops were again on their march,
and for two days were occupied in threading
the air}- defiles of the Cordilleras. Soon after
beginning their descent on the eastern side,
another emissary arrived from the Inca,
bearing a message of similar import to the
preceding, and a present, in like manner,
of Peruvian sheep. This was the same noble
that had visited Pizarro in the valley. He
now came in more state, quaffing chicha —
the fermented juice of the maize — from
golden goblets borne by his attendants,
which sparkled in the eyes of the rapacious
adventurers.
While he was in the camp, the Indian
messenger, originally sent by Pizarro to the
Inca, returned, and no sooner did he behold
the Peruvian, and the honorable reception
which he met with from the Spaniards, than
he was filled with wrath, which would have
vented itself in personal violence, but for
the interposition of the bystanders. It was
hard, he said, that this Peruvian dog should
be thus courteously treated, when he himself
had nearly lost his life on a similar mission
among his countrymen. On reaching the
Inca's camp, he had been refused admission
to his presence, on the ground that he was
keeping a fast, and could not be seen. They
had paid no respect to his assertion that he
came as an envoy from the white men, and
HISTORY OF THE CONQTT.ST OF PERU
261
would, probably, not have suffered him to
escape with life, if he had not assured them
that any violence offered to him would be
retaliated in full measure on the persons of
the Peruvian envoys, now in the Spanish
quarters. There was no doubt, he con-
tinued, of the hostile intentions of Ata-
huallpa; for he was surrounded with a power-
ful army, strongly encamped about a league
from Caxamalca, while that city was entirely
evacuated by its inhabitants.
To all this the Inca's envoy coolly re-
plied, that Pizarro's messenger might have
reckoned on such a reception as he had
found, since he seemed to have taken with
him no credentials of his mission. As to the
Inca's fast, that was true; and, although he
would doubtless have seen the messenger,
had he known there was one from the
strangers, yet it was not safe to disturb him
at these solemn seasons, when engaged in
his religious duties. The troops by whom
he was surrounded were not numerous, con-
sidering that the Inca was at that time
carrying on an important war; and as to
Caxamalca, it was abandoned by the in-
habitants in order to make room for the
white men, who were so soon to occupy it.
This explanation, however plausible, did
not altogether satisfy the general, for he had
too deep a conviction of the cunning of
Atahuallpa, whose intentions towards the
Spaniards he had long greatly distrusted.
As he proposed, however, to keep on friendly
relations with the monarch for the present,
it was obviously not his cue to manifest
suspicion. Affecting, therefore, to give full
credit to the explanation of the envoy, he
dismissed him with reiterated assurances of
speedily presenting himself before the Inca.
The descent of the sierra, though the
Andes are less precipitous on their eastern
side than towards the west, was attended
with difficulties almost equal to those of the
upward march; and the Spanirads felt no
little satisfaction when, on the seventh day,
they arrived in view of the valley of Caxa-
malca, which, enameled with all the beauties
of cultivation, lay unrolled like a rich and
variegated carpet of verdure in strong con-
trast with the dark forms of the Andes that
rose up everywhere around it. The valley
is of an oval shape, extending about five
leagues in length by three in breadth. It
was inhabited by a population of a superior
character to any which the Spaniards had
met on the other side of the mountains, as
was argued by the .superior style of their
attire and the greater cleanliness and com-
fort visible both in their persons and dwell-
ings. As far as the eye could reach, the level
tract exhibited the show of a diligent and
thrifty husbandry. A broad river rolled
through the meadows, supplying facilities
for copious irrigation by means of the usual
canals and subterraneous aqueducts. The
land, intersected with verdant hedge-rows,
was checkered with patches of various culti-
vation; for the soil was rich, and the climate,
if less stimulating than that of the sultry
regions of the coast, was more favorable to
the hardy products of the temperate lati-
tudes. Below the adventurers, with its
white houses glittering in the sun, lay the
little city of Caxamalca, like a sparkling
gem on the dark skirts of the sierra. At the
distance of about a league farther across the
valley might be seen columns of vapor rising
up towards the heavens, indicating the place
of the famous hot baths, much frequented
by the Peruvian princes. And here too was
a spectacle less grateful to the eyes of the
Spaniards, for along the slope of the hills a
white cloud of pavilions was seen covering
the ground as thick as snow-flakes, for the
space apparently of several miles. "It
filled us all with amazement," exclaims one
of the Conquerors, "to behold the Indians
occupying so proud a position! So many
tents so well appointed as were never seen
in the Indies till now. The spectacle caused
something like confusion and even fear in
the stoutest bosom. But it was too late to
turn back or to betray the least sign of weak-
ness, since the natives in our own company
v.'ould in such case have been the first to rise
upon us. So with as bold a countenance as
we could, after coolly surveying the ground,
we prepared for our entrance into Caxa-
malca.
What were the feelings of the Peruvian
monarch we are not informed, when he gazed
on the martial cavalcade of the Christians,
as with banners streaming and bright pan-
oplies glistening in the rays of the evening
sun it emerged from the dark depths of the
sierra, and advanced in hostile array over
the fair domain which, to this period, had
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT
never been trodden by otber foot tban that
of the red man. It might be, as several of
the reports had stated, that the Inca had
purposely decoyed the adventurers into the
lieart of his populous empire that he might
envelop them with his legions, and the more
easily become master of their property and
persons. Or was it from a natural feeling of
curiosity, and relying on their professions of
friendship, that he had thus allowed them
without any attempt at resistance to come
into his presence.? At all events, he could
hardly have felt such confidence in himself
as not to look with apprehension mingled
with awe on the mysterious strangers, who,
coming from an unknown world and pos-
sessed of such wonderful gifts, had made
their way across mountain and valley in spite
of every obstacle which man and nature had
opposed to them.
Pizarro, meanwhile, forming his little
corps into three divisions, now moved for-
ward at a more measured pace, and in order
of battle, down the slopes that led towards
the Indian city. As he drew near, no one
came out to welcome him; and he rode
through the streets without meeting with a
living thing or hearing a sound, except the
echoes sent back from the deserted dwellings
of the tramp of the soldiery.
It was a place of considerable size, con-
taining about ten thousand inhabitants,
somewhat more probably than the popula-
tion assembled at this day within the walls
of the modern city of Caxamalca.^ The
houses for the most part were built of clay
hardened in the sun, the roofs thatched or
of timber. Some of the more ambitious
dwellings were of hewn stone; and there was
a convent in the place occupied by the Vir-
gins of the Sun, and a temple dedicated to
the same tutelar deity, which last was
hidden in the deep embowering shades of a
grove on the skirts of the city. On the
quarter towards the Indian camp was a
square — if square it might be called which
•According to Stevenson, this population, which is
of a very mixed character, amounts, or did amount
some thirty years ago [i.e., about 1815I, to about seven
thousand. That sagacious traveler gives an animated
description of the city, in which he resided some time,
and which he seems to have regarded with peculiar
predilection. Yet it does not hola probably the rela-
tive rank at the present day that it did in that of the
Incas. — Residence in South America, vol. ii. p. 131.
was almost triangular in form — of an im-
mense size, surrounded by low buildings.
These consisted of capacious halls, with wide
doors or openings communicating with the
square. They were probably intended as a
sort of barracks for the Inca's soldiers. At
the end of the plaza, looking towards the
country, was a fortress of stone, with a
stairway leading from the city and a private
entrance from the adjoining suburbs. There
was still another fortress on the rising ground
which commanded the town built of hewn
stone, and encompassed by three circular
walls, or rather one and the same wall, which
wound up spirally around it. It was a place
of great strength, and the workmanship
showed a better knowledge of masonry, and
gave a higher impression of the architectural
science of the people, than anything the
Spaniards had yet seen.
It was late in the afternoon of the 15th of
November, 1532, when the Conquerors
entered the city of Caxamalca. The weather,
which had been fair during the day, now
threatened a storm, and some rain mingled
with hail — for it was unusually cold — began
to fall. 2 Pizarro, however, was so anxious
to ascertain the dispositions of the Inca,
that he determined to send an embassy, at
once, to his quarters. He selected for this,
Hernando de Soto with fifteen horse, and,
after his departure, conceiving that the num-
ber was too small, in case of any unfriendly
demonstrations by the Indians, he ordered
his brother Hernando to follow with twenty
additional troopers. This captain and one
other of his party have left us an account
of the excursion.2
2 Caxamalca, in the Indian tongue, signifies "place
of frost"; for the temperature, though usually bland
and genial, is sometimes affected by frosty winds from
the east, very pernicious to vegetation. — -Stevenson.
Residence in South America, vol. ii. p. 129.
3 Carta de Htm. Pizarro, MS. The Letter of Her-
nando Pizarro, addressed to the Royal Audience of St.
Domingo, gives a full account of the extraordinary
events recorded in this and the ensuing chapter, in
which that cavalier took a prominent part. Allowing
for the partialities incident to a chief actor in the scenes
he describes, no authority can rank higher. The inde-
fatigable Oviedo, who resided in St. Domingo, saw its
importance, and fortunately incorporated the docu-
ment in his great work. Hist, de las Indias, MS., parte
iii. lib. viii. cap. xv. — The anonymous author of the
Relacion del Primer. Descub., MS., was also detached
on this service.
HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF IM':RI!
263
Between the city and the imperial camp
was a causeway, built in a substantial man-
ner across the meadow land that inter-
vened. Over this the cavalry galloped at a
rapid pace, and, before they had gone a
league, they came m front of the Peruvian
encampment, where it spread along the
gentle slope of the mountains. The lances
of the warriors were fixed in the ground
before their tents, and the Indian soldiers
were loitering without, gazing with silent
astonishment at the Christian cavalcade,
as with clangor of arms and shrill blast of
trumpet it swept by, like some fearful
apparition, on the wings of the wind.
The party soon came to a broad but
shallow stream, which, winding through the
meadow, formed a defense for the Inca's
position. Across it was a wooden bridge;
but the cavaliers, distrusting its strength,
preferred to dash through the waters, and
without difficulty gained the opposite bank.
A battalion of Indian warriors was drawn
up under arms on the farther side of the
bridge, but they offered no molestation to
the Spaniards; and these latter had strict
orders from Pizarro — scarcely necessary in
their present circumstances — to treat the
natives with courtesy. One of the Indians
pointed out the quarter occupied by the
Inca.
It was an open court-yard, with a light
building or pleasure house in the center,
having galleries running around it, and
opening in the rear on a garden. The w^alls
were covered with a shining plaster, both
white and colored, and in the ar.ea before
the edifice was seen a spacious tank or
reservoir of stone, fed by aqueducts that
supplied it with both warm and cold water.
A basin of hewn stone— it may be of a more
recent construction — still bears, on the spot,
the name of the "Inca's bath." The court
was filled with Indian nobles, dressed in
gaily ornamented attire, in attendance on
the monarch, and with women of the royal
household. Amidst this assembly it was not
difficult to distinguish the person of Atahu-
allpa, though his dress was simpler than that
of his attendants. But he wore on his head
the crimson borla or fringe, which, sur-
rounding the forehead, hung down as low as
the eyebrow. This was the well-known
badge of Peruvian sovereignty, and had been
assumed by the monarch only since the de-
feat of his brother Huascar. He was seated
on a low stool or cushion, somewhat after
the Morisco or Turkish fashion, and his
nobles and principal officers stood around
him, with great ceremony, holding the
stations suited to their rank.
The Spaniards gazed with much interest
on the prince, of whose cruelty and cunning
they had heard so much, and whose valor
had secured to him the possession of the
empire. But his countenance exhibited
neither the fierce passions nor the sagacity
which had been ascribed to him; and,
though in his bearing he showed a gravity
and a calm consciousness of authority well
becoming a king, he seemed to discharge all
expression from his features, and to discover
only the apathy so characteristic of the
American races. On the present occasion,
this must have been in part, at least,
assumed. For it is impossible that the
Indian prince should not have contemplated
with curious interest a spectacle so strange,
and, in some respects, appalling, as that of
these mysterious strangers, for which no
previous description could have prepared
him.
Hernando Pizarro and Soto, with two or
three only of their followers, slowly rode up
in front of the Inca; and the former, making
a respectful obeisance, but without dis-
mounting, informed Atahuallpa that he
came as an ambassador from his brother,
the commander of the white men, to acquaint
the monarch with their arrival in his city of
Caxamalca. They were the subjects of a
mighty prince across the waters, and had
come, he said, drawn thither by the report
of his great victories, to offer their services,
and to impart to him the doctrines of the
true faith which they professed; and he
brought an invitation from the general to
Atahuallpa that the latter would be pleased
to visit the Spaniards in their present
quarters.
To all this the Inca answered not a word;
nor did he make even a sign of acknowl-
edgment that he comprehended it; though
it was translated for him by Felipillo, one
of the interpreters already noticed. He
remained silent, with his eyes fastened on
the ground; but one of his nobles, standing
by his side, answered, "It is well." This
264
WILLIAM IIICKLING PRESCOTT
was ;in einbarrnssing situation for the
Spaniards, who seemed to be as wide from
ascertaining the real disposition of the
Peruvian monarch towards themselves, as
when the mountains were between them.
In a courteous and respectful manner,
Hernando Pizarro again broke silence by-
requesting the Inca to speak to them him-
self, and to inform them what was his pleas-
ure. To this Atahuallpa condescended to
reply, while a faint smile passed over his
features, — "Tell your captain that I am
keeping a fast, which will end to-morrow
morning. 1 will then visit him with my
chieftains. In the meantime, let him occupy
the public buildings on the square, and no
other, till I come, when I will order what
shall be done."
Soto, one of the party present at this in-
terview, as before noticed, was the best
mounted and perhaps the best rider in
Pizarro's troop. Observing that Atahuallpa
looked with some interest on the fiery steed
that stood before him, champmg the bit and
pawing the ground with the natural im-
patience of a war-horse, the Spaniard gave
him the rein, and, striking his iron heel into
his side, dashed furiously over the plain;
then, wheeling him round and round, dis-
played all the beautiful movements of his
charger, and his own excellent horseman-
ship. Suddenly checking him in full career,
he brought the animal almost on his
haunches, so near the person of the Inca,
that some of the foam that flecked his
horse's sides was thrown on the royal gar-
ments. But Atahuallpa maintained the
same marble composure as before, though
several of his soldiers, whom De Soto passed
in the course, were so much disconcerted by
it, that they drew back in manifest terror:
an act of timidity for which they paid
dearly, if, as the Spaniards assert, Atahu-
allpa caused them to be put to death that
same evening for betraying such unworthy
weakness to the strangers.
Refreshments were now offered by the
royal attendants to the Spaniards, which
they declined, being unwilling to dismount.
They did not refuse, however, to quaff the
sparkling chicha from golden vases of extra-
ordinary size, presented to them by the
dark-eyed beauties of the harem. Taking
then a respectful leave of the Inca, the
cavaliers rode back to Caxamaica, with
many moody speculations on what they had
seen; on the state and opulence of th» Indian
monarch; on the strength of his military
array, their excellent appointments, and the
apparent discipline in their ranks, — all argu-
ing a much higher degree of civilization, and
consequently of power, than anything they
had witnessed in the lower regions of the
country. As they contrasted all this with
their own diminutive force, too far advanced,
as they now were, for succor to reach them,
they felt they had done rashly in throwing
themselves into the midst of so formidable
an empire, and were filled with gloomy fore-
bodings of the result. Their comrades in
the camp soon caught the infectious spirit
of despondency, which was not lessened as
night came on, and they beheld the watch-
fires of the Peruvians lighting up the sides
of the mountains, and glittering in the dark-
ness, " as thick," says one who saw them, *' as
the stars of heaven."
Yet there was one bosom in that little
host which was not touched with the feeling
either of fear or dejection. That was
Pizarro's, who secretly rejoiced that he had
now brought matters to the issue for which
he had so long panted. He saw the neces-
sity of kindling a similar feeling in his
followers, or all would be lost. Without un-
folding his plans, he went round among his
men, beseeching them not to show faint
hearts at this crisis, when they stood face
to face with the foe whom they had been so
long seeking. "They were to rely on them-
selves, and on that Providence which had
carried them safe through so many fearful
trials. It would not now desert them; and
if numbers, however great, were on the side
of their enemy, it mattered httle when the
arm of heaven was on theirs." The Spanish
cavalier acted under the combined influence
of chivalrous adventure and religious zeal.
The latter was the most effective in the hour
of peril; and Pizarro, who understood well
the characters he had to deal with, by pre-
senting the enterprise as a crusade, kindled
the dying embers of enthusiasm in the
bosoms of his followers, and restored their
faltering courage.
He then summoned a council of his officers
to consider the plan of operations, or rather
to propose to them the extraordinary plan
HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF PERU
265
on which he had himself decided. This was
to lay an ambuscade for the Inca, and take
him prisoner in the face of his whole army!
It was a project full of peril, bordering, as it
might well seem, on desperation. But the
circumstances of the Spaniards were desper-
ate. Whichever way they turned, they were
menaced by the most appalling dangers;
and better was it bravely to confront the
danger, than weakly to shrink from it, when
there was no avenue for escape.
To fly was now too late. Whither could
they fly.^ At the first signal of retreat, the
whole army of the Inca would be upon them.
Their movements would be anticipated by
a foe far better acquainted with the intri-
cacies of the sierra than themselves; the
passes would be occupied, and they would
be hemmed in on all sides; while the mere
fact of this retrograde movement would
diminish the confidence, and with it the
effective strength of his own men, while it
doubled that of his enemy.
Yet to remain long inactive in his present
position seemed almost equally perilous.
Even supposing that Atahuallpa should
entertain friendly feelings towards the
Christians, they could not confide in the
continuance of such feelings. Familiarity
with the white men would soon destroy the
idea of anything supernatural, or even
superior, in their natures. He would feel
contempt for their diminutive numbers.
Their horses, their arms, and showy appoint-
ments, would be an attractive bait in the
eye of the barbaric monarch, and when con-
scious that he had the power to crush their
possessors, he would not be slow in finding
a pretext for it. A sufficient one had al-
ready occurred in the high-handed measures
of the Conquerors, on their march through
his dominions.
But what reason had they to flatter them-
selves that the Inca cherished such a disposi-
tion towards them? He was a crafty and
unscrupulous prince, and, if the accounts
they had repeatedly received on their march
were true, had ever regarded the coming of
the Spaniards with an evil eye. It was
scarcely possible he should do otherwise.
His soft messages had only been intended to
decoy them across the mountains, where,
with the aid of his warriors, he might over-
power them. They were entangled in the
toils which the cunning monarch had spread
for them.
Their only remedy, then, was to turn the
Inca's arts against himself; to take him, if
possible, in his own snare. There was no
time to be lost; for any day might bring
back the victorious legions who had recently
won his battles at the south, and thus make
the odds against the Spaniards far greater
than now.
Yet to encounter Atahuallpa in the open
field would be attended with great hazard;
and even if victorious, there would be little
probability that the person of the Inca, of
so much importance, would fall into the
hands of the victors. The invitation he had
so unsuspiciously accepted, to visit them in
their quarters, afforded the best means for
securing this desirable prize. Nor was the
enterprise so desperate, considering the
great advantages afforded by the character
and weapons of the invaders, and the unex-
pectedness of the assault. The mere cir-
cumstance of acting on a concerted plan
would alone make a small number more than
a match for a much larger one. But it was
not necessary to admit the whole of the
Indian force into the city before the attack;
and the person of the Inca once secured, his
followers, astounded by so strange an event,
were they few or many, would have no heart
for further resistance; — and with the Inca
once in his power, Pizarro might dictate laws
to the empire.
In this daring project of the Spanish chief,
it was easy to see that he had the brilliant
exploit of Cortes in his mind, when he carried
off the Aztec monarch in his capital. But
that was not by violence, — at least not by
open violence, — and it received the sanction,
compulsory though it were, of the monarch
himself. It was also true that the results in
that case did not altogether justify a repeti-
tion of the experiment; since the people
rose in a body to sacrifice both the prince
and his kidnapers. Yet this was owing, in
part, at least, to the indiscretion of the latter.
The experiment in the outset was perfectly
successful; and could Pizarro once become
master of the person of Atahuallpa, he
trusted to his own discretion for the rest. It
would, at least, extricate him from his
present critical position, by placing in
his power an inestimable guarantee for his
266
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT
safety; .hkI if lie could not innke his own
terms with rhi- I tun at once, the arrival of
reinforcements from home would, in all
prohahility, soon enable him to do so.
Pizarro having; concerted his plans for
the following day, the council broke up, and
the chief occupied himself with providing
for the security of the camp during the night.
The approaches to the town were defended;
sentinels were posted at different points,
especially on the summit of the fortress,
where they were to observe the position of
the enemy, and to report any movement
that menaced the tranquillity of the night.
After these precautions, the Spanish com-
mander and his followers withdrew to their
appointed quarters, — but not to sleep. At
least, sleep must have come late to those
who were aware of the decisive plan for the
morrow; that morrow which was to be the
crisis of their fate, — to crown their ambitious
schemes with full success, or consign them to
irretrievable ruin!
CHAPTER V
DESPERATE PLAN OF PIZARRO — ATAHUALLPA
VISITS THE SPANIARDS — HORRIBLE MAS-
SACRE— THE INCA A PRISONER — CON-
DUCT OF THE CONQUERORS — SPLENDID
PROMISES OF THE INCA — DEATH OF
HUASCAR
1532
The clouds of the evening had passed
away, and the sun rose bright on the follow-
ing morning, the most memorable epoch in
the annals of Peru. It was Saturday, the
l6th of November, 1532. The loud cry of
the trumpet called the Spaniards to arms
with the first streak of dawn; and Pizarro,
briefly acquainting them with the plan of the
assault, made the necessary dispositions.
The plaza, as mentioned in the preceding
chapter, was defended on its three sides by
low ranges of buildings, consisting of spacious
halls with wide doors or vomitories opening
into the square. In these halls he stationed
his cavalry in two divisions, one under his
brother Hernando, the other under De Soto.
The infantry he placed in another of the
buildings, reserving twenty chosen men to
act with himself as occasion might require.
Pedro de Candia, with a few soldiers and the
artillery, — comprehending under this im-
posing name two small pieces of ordnance,
called falconets, — he established in the
fortress. All received orders to wait at their
posts till the arrival of the Inca. After his
entrance into the great square, they were
still to remain under cover, withdrawn from
observation, till the signal was given by the
discharge of a gun, when they were to cry
their war-cries, to rush out in a body from
their covert, and putting the Peruvians to
the sword, bear off the person of the Inca.
The arrangement of the immense halls,
opening on a level with the plaza, seemed to
be contrived on purpose for a coup de
theatre. Pizarro particularly inculcated order
and implicit obedience, that in the hurry of
the moment there should be no confusion.
Everything depended on their acting with
concert, coolness, and celerity.
The chief next saw that their arms were
in good order; and that the breastplates of
their horses were garnished with bells, to
add by their noise to the consternation of
the Indians. Refreshments were also liber-
ally provided, that the troops should be in
condition for the conflict. These arrange-
ments being completed, mass was performed
with great solemnity by the ecclesiastics
who attended the expedition: the God of
battles was invoked to spread his shield
over the soldiers who were fighting to extend
the empire of the Cross; and all joined with
enthusiasm in the chant, '' Exsurge Domine"
l^" Rise, O Lord! and judge thine own
cause"). One might have supposed them a
company of martyrs, about to lay down their
lives in defense of their faith, instead of a
licentious band of adventurers, meditating
one of the most atrocious acts of perfidy on
the record of history! Yet, whatever were
the vices of the Castilian cavalier, hypocrisy
was not among the number. He felt that he
was battling for the Cross, and under this
conviction, exalted as it was at such a mo-
ment as this into predominant impulse, he
was blind to the baser motives which mingled
with the enterprise. With feelings thus
kindled to a flame of religious ardor, the
soldiers of Pizarro looked forward with
renovated spirits to the coming conflict; and
the chieftain saw with satisfaction, that in |
the hour of trial his men would be true to
their leader and themselves.
HISTORY OF THE CONQUESr OF I^FRII
267
It was late in the clay before any movement
was visible in the Peruvian camp, where
much preparation was making to approach
the Christian quarters with due state and
ceremony. A message was received from
Atahuallpa, informing the Spanish com-
mander that he should come with his war-
riors fully armed, in the same manner as
the Spaniards had come to his quarters the
night preceding. This was not an agree-
able intimation to Pizarro, though he had
no reason, probably, to expect the contrary.
But to object might imply distrust, or, per-
haps, disclose, in some measure, his own
designs. He expressed his satisfaction,
therefore, at the intelligence, assuring the
Inca, that, come as he would, he would be
received by him as a friend and brother.
It was noon before the Indian procession
was on its march, when it was seen occupying
the great causeway for a long extent. In
front came a large body of attendants, whose
office seemed to be to sweep away every
particle of rubbish from the road. High
above the crowd appeared the Inca, borne
on the shoulders of his principal nobles, while
others of the same rank marched by the sides
of his litter, displaying such a dazzling show
of ornaments on their persons, that, in the
language of one of the Conquerors, *'they
blazed like the sun." But the greater part
of the Inca's forces mustered along the fields
that lined the road, and were spread over
the broad meadows as far as the eye could
reach.
When the royal procession had arrived
within half a mile of the city, it came to a
halt; and Pizarro saw, with surprise, that
Atahuallpa was preparing to pitch his tents,
as if to encamp there. A messenger soon
after arrived, informing the Spaniards that
the Inca would occupy his present station
the ensuing night, and enter the city on the
following morning.
This intelligence greatly disturbed Pizarro,
who had shared in the general impatience
of his men at the tardy movements of the
Peruvians. The troops had been under arms
since daylight, the cavalry mounted, and the
infantry at their post, waiting in silence the
coming of the Inca. A profound stillness
reigned throughout the town, broken only
at intervals by the cry of the sentinel from
the summit of the fortress, as he proclaimed
the movements of the Indian army. Noth-
ing, Pizarro well knew, was so trying to
the soldier as prolonged suspense, in a
critical situation like the present; and he
feared lest his ardor might evaporate, and
be succeeded by that nervous feeling natural
to the bravest soul at such a crisis, and
which, if not fear, is near akin to it.i He
returned an answer, therefore, to Atahuallpa,
deprecating his change of purpose; and
adding, that he had provided everything
for his entertainment, and expected him
that night to sup with him.
This message turned the Inca from his pur-
pose; and, striking his tents again, he re-
sumed his march, first advising the general
that he should leave the greater part of his
warriors behind, and enter the place with
only a few of them, and without arms, as
he preferred to pass the night at Caxamalca.
At the same time he ordered accommoda-
tions to be provided for himself and his reti-
nue in one of the large stone buildings,
called, from a serpent sculptured on the
walls, "the House of the Serpent." — No
tidings could have been more grateful to
the Spaniards. It seemed as if the Indian
monarch was eager to rush into the snare
that had been spread for him! The fanatical
cavalier could not fail to discern in it the
immediate finger of Providence.
It is difficult to account for this wavering
conduct of Atahuallpa, so different from the
bold and decided character which history
ascribes to him. There is no doubt that he
made his visit to the white men in perfect
good faith; though Pizarro was probably
right in conjecturing that this amiable dis-
position stood on a very precarious footing.
There is as little reason to suppose that he
distrusted the sincerity of the strangers; or
he would not thus unnecessarily have pro-
posed to visit them unarmed. His original
purpose of coming with all his force was
doubtless to display his royal state, and per-
haps, also, to show greater respect for the
Spaniards; but when he consented to accept
their hospitality, and pass the night in their
quarters, he was willing to dispense with a
1 Pedro Pizarro says that an Indian spy reported to
Atahuallpa, that the white men were all huddled to-
gether in the great halls on the square, in much con-
sternation, llenos de viiedo; which was not far from
the truth, adds the cavalier. — Descub. y Conq.^ MS.
268
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT
great part of his armed soldiery, and visit
them in a manner that impHed entire confi-
dence in their good faith. He was too abso-
lute in liis own empire easily to suspect;
and he probably could not comprehend the
audacity with which a few men, like those
now assembled in Caxamalca, meditated an
assault on a powerful monarch in the midst
of his victorious army. He did not know
the character of the Spaniard.
It was not long before sunset when the
van of the royal procession entered the gates
of the city. First came some hundreds of
the menials, employed to clear the path from
every obstacle, and singing songs of triumph
as they came, "which, in our ears," says one
of the Conquerors, "sounded like the songs
of hell!" Then followed other bodies of
different ranks, and dressed in different
liveries. Some wore a showy stuff, checkered
white and red, like the squares of a chess-
board. Others w^ere clad in pure white, bear-
ing hammers or maces of silver or copper;
and the guards, together with those in
immediate attendance on the prince, were
distinguished by a rich azure livery, and a
profusion of gay ornaments, while the large
pendants attached to the ears indicated the
Peruvian noble.
Elevated high above his vassals came the
Inca Atahuallpa, borne on a sedan or open
litter, on which was a sort of throne made
of massive gold of inestimable value. The
palanquin was hned with the richly-colored
plumes of tropical birds, and studded with
shmmg plates of gold and silver. The
monarch's attire was much richer than on
the preceding evening. Round his neck was
suspended a collar of emeralds, of uncom-
mon size and brilliancy. His short hair was
decorated with golden ornaments, and the
imperial horla encircled his temples. The
bearing of the Inca was sedate and digni-
fied; and from his lofty station he looked
down on the multitudes below with an air of
composure, like one accustomed to command.
As the leading files of the procession en-
tered the great square, larger, says an old
chronicler, than any square in Spain, they
opened to the right and left for the royal
retinue to pass. Everything was conducted
with admirable order. The monarch was
permitted to traverse the plaza in silence, and
not a Spaniard was to be seen. When some
five or six thousand of his people had entered
the place, Atahuallpa halted, and, turning
round with an inquiring look, demanded,
"Where are the strangers.?"
At this moment Fray Vicente de Vai-
verde, a Dominican friar, Pizarro's chaplain,
and afterwards Bishop of Cuzco, came for-
ward with his breviary, or as other accounts
say, a Bible, in one hand, and a crucifix in the
other, and, approaching the Inca, told him
that he came by order of his commander to
expound to him the doctrines of the true
faith, for which purpose the Spaniards had
come from a great distance to his country.
The friar then explained, as clearly as he
could, the mysterious doctrine of the Trinity,
and, ascending high in his account, began
with the creation of man, thence passed to
his fall, to his subsequent redemption by
Jesus Christ, to the crucifixion, and the
ascension, when the Savior left the Apostle
Peter as his Vicegerent upon earth. This
power had been transmitted to the succes-
sors of the Apostle, good and wise men, who,
under the title of Popes, held authority over
all powers and potentates on earth. One of
the last of these Popes had commissioned the
Spanish emperor, the most mighty monarch
in the world, to conquer and convert the
natives in this western hemisphere; and his
general, Francisco Pizarro, had now come to
execute this important mission. The friar con-
cluded with beseeching the Peruvian monarch
to receive him kindly; to abjure the errors of
his own faith, and embrace that of the Chris-
tians now proffered to him, the only one by
which he could hope for salvation; and, fur-
thermore, to acknowledge himself a tributary
of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, who, in
that event, would aid and protect him as his
loyal vassal
Whether Atahuallpa possessed himself of
every link in the curious chain of argument by
which the monk connected Pizarro with St.
Peter, may be doubted. It is certain, how-
ever, that he must have had very incorrect
notions of the Trinity, if, as Garcilasso states,
the interpreter Felipillo explained it by say-
ing, that "the Christians believed in three
Gods and one God, and that made four."
But there is no doubt he perfectly compre-
hended that the drift of the discourse was to
persuade him to resign his scepter and ac-
knowledge the supremacy of another.
HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF PERU
269
The eyes of the Indian monarch flashed
fire, and his dark brow grew darker as he re-
plied, "I will be no man's tributary! I am
greater than any prince upon earth. Your
emperor may be a great prince; I do not
doubt it, when I see that he has sent his sub-
jects so far across the waters; and I am
willing to hold him as a brother. As for the
Pope of whom you speak, he must be crazy
to talk of giving away countries which do
not belong to him. For my faith, " he contin-
ued, "I will not change it. Your own God,
as you say, was put to death by the very men
whom he created. But mine," he con-
cluded, pointing to his deity, — then alas!
sinking in glory behind the mountains, —
"my God still lives in the heavens, and looks
down on his children."
He then demanded of Valverde by what
authority he had said these things. The
friar pointed to the book which he held as
his authority. Atahuallpa, taking it, turned
over the pages a moment, then, as the insult
he had received probably flashed across his
mind, he threw it down with vehemence,
and exclaimed, "Tell your comrades that
they shall give me an account of their
doings in my land. I will not go from here till
they have made me full satisfaction for all
the wrongs they have committed."
The friar, greatly scandalized by the indig-
nity offered to the sacred volume, stayed
only to pick it up, and, hastening to Pizarro,
informed him of what had been done, ex-
claiming at the same time, "Do you not see,
that, while we stand here wasting our breath
in talking with this dog, full of pride as he
is, the fields are filling with Indians! Set on
at once! I absolve you." Pizarro saw that
the hour had come. He waved a white scarf
in the air, the appointed signal. The fatal
gun was fired from the fortress. Then spring-
ing into the square, the Spanish captain and
his followers shouted the old war-cry of "St.
Jago and at them!" It was answered by the
battle-cry of every Spaniard in the city, as,
rushing from the avenues of the great halls
in which they were concealed, they poured
into the plaza, horse and foot, each in his own
dark column, and threw themselves into the
midst of the Indian crowd. The latter, taken
by surprise, stunned by the report of artillery
and muskets, the echoes of which reverber-
ated like thunder from the surrounding build-
ings, and blinded by the smoke which rolled
m sulphurous volumes along the square,
were seized with a panic. They knew not
whither to fly for refuge from the coming
ruin. Nobles and commoners — all were
trampled down under the fierce charge of the
cavalry, who dealt their blows right and left,
without sparing; while their swords, flashing
through the thick gloom, carried dismay into
the hearts of the wretched natives, who now,
for the first time, saw the horse and his rider
in all their terrors. They made no resistance,
— as, indeed, they had no weapons with
which to make it. Every avenue to escape
was closed, for the entrance to the square
was choked up with the dead bodies of men
who had perished in vain efforts to fly; and
such was the agony of the survivors under the
terrible pressure of their assailants, that a
large body of Indians, by their convulsive
struggles, burst through the wall of stone and
dried clay which formed part of the boundary
of the plaza! It fell, leaving an opening of
more than a hundred paces, through which
multitudes now found their way into the
country, still hotly pursued by the cavalry,
who, leaping the fallen rubbish, hung on the
rear of the fugitives, striking them down in
all directions.
Meanwhile the fight, or rather massacre,
continued hot around the Inca, whose person
was the great object of the assault. His
faithful nobles, rallying about him, threw
themselves in the w^ay of the assailants, and
strove, by tearing them from their saddles,
or, at least, by offering their own bosoms as
a mark for their vengeance, to shield their be-
loved master. It is said by some authorities,
that they carried weapons concealed under
their clothes. If so, it availed them little, as
it is not pretended that they used them.
But the most timid animal will defend itself
when at bay. That they did not so in the
present instance is proof that they had no
weapons to use. Yet they still continued to
force back the cavaliers, clinging to their
horses with dying grasp, and, as one was cut
down, another taking the place of his fallen
comrade with a loyalty truly affecting.
The Indian monarch, stunned and be-
wildered, saw his faithful subjects falling
round him without fully comprehending
his situation. The litter on which he rode
heaved to and fro, as the mighty pres?»
270
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT
swayed hackw.ird :\nd forward; and lie
gazed on the ovcrwlulminc; ruin Uke some
forlorn mariner, who, tossed about in
his hark by tlie furious elements, sees the
lightning's flash and hears the thunder
burstinii around liim, with the consciousness
that he can do nothing to avert his fate. At
length, weary with the work of destruction,
the Spaniards, as the shades of evening
grew deeper, felt afraid that the royal prize
might, after all, elude them; and some of the
cavaliers made a desperate attempt to end
the affray at once by taking Atahuallpa's
life. But Pizarro, who was nearest his per-
son, called out with stentorian voice, "Let no
one, who values his life, strike at the Inca";
and, stretching out his arm to shield him, re-
ceived a wound on the hand from one of his
own men, — the only wound received by a
Spaniard in the action.
The struggle now became fiercer than ever
round the royal litter. It reeled more and
more, and at length several of the nobles
who supported it having been slain, it was
overturned, and the Indian prince would
have come with violence to the ground, had
not his fall been broken by the efforts of Piz-
arro and some other of the cavaliers, who
caught him in their arms. The imperial
borla was instantly snatched from his tem-
ples by a soldier named Estete, and the un-
happy monarch, strongly secured, was re-
moved to a neighboring building, where he
was carefully guarded.
All attempt at resistance now ceased.
The fate of the Inca soon spread over town
and country. The charm which might
have held the Peruvians together was dis-
solved. Every man thought only of his own
safety. Even the soldiery encamped on the
adjacent fields took the alarm, and, learning
the fatal tidings, were seen flying in every
direction before their pursuers, who in the
heat of triumph showed no touch of mercy.
At length night, more pitiful than man, threw
her friendly mantle over the fugitives, and
the scattered troops of Pizarro rallied once
more at the sound of the trumpet in the
bloody square of Caxamalca.
The number of slain is reported, as usual,
with great discrepancy. Pizarro's secretary
says two thousand natives fell. A descend-
ant of the Incas, a safer authority than Gar-
cilasso, swells the number to ten thousand.
I ruth is generally found somewhere between
the extremes. The slaughter was incessant,
for there was nothing to check it. That there
should have been no resistance will not ap-
pear strange, when we consider the fact that
the wretched victims were without arms,
and that their senses must have been com-
pletely overwhelmed by the strange and
appalling spectacle which burst on them so
unexpectedly. " What wonder was it," said an
ancient Inca to a Spaniard, who repeats it,
"what wonder that our countrymen lost
their wits, seeing blood run like water, and
the Inca, whose person we all of us adore,
seized and carried off by a handful of men? "1
Yet though the massacre was incessant, it
was short in duration. The whole time con-
sumed by it, the brief twilight of the tropics,
did not exceed half an hour; a short period
indeed, — yet long enough to decide the fate
of Peru, and to subvert the dynasty of the
Incas.
That night Pizarro kept his engagement
with the Inca, since he had Atahuallpa to sup
w^ith him. The banquet was served in one of
the halls facing the great square, which a few
hours before had been the scene of slaugh-
ter, and the pavement of which was still en-
cumbered with the dead bodies of the Inca's
subjects. The captive monarch was placed
next his conqueror. He seemed like one who
did not yet fully comprehend the extent of
his calamity. If he did, he showed an am-
azing fortitude. "It is the fortune of war,"
he said; and, if w^e may credit the Spaniards,
he expressed his admiration of the adroitness
wnth w4iich they had contrived to entrap him
in the midst of his own troops. He added,
that he had been made acquainted wnth the
progress of the white men from the hour of
their landing; but that he had been led to
1 Montesinos, Annales, MS., ano 1532. According
to Naharro, the Indians were less astounded by the
wild uproar caused by the sudden assault of the Span-
iards, though "this was such that it seemed as if the
very heavens were falling," than by a terrible appari-
tion which appeared in the air during the onslaught.
It consisted of a woman and a child, and, at their side,
a horseman, all clothed in white on a milk-white charger
— doubtless the valiant St. James — who, with his sword
glancing lightning, smote down the infidel host, and
rendered them incapable of resistance. This miracle
the good father reports on the testimony of three of
his order, who were present in the action, and who
received it from numberless of the natives. — Relacion
Sumaria, MS.
HISTORY OF [UK CONQUESI^ OF PERU
271
unclervalue their strength from the insig-
nificance of their nunibers. He had no doubt
he should be easily able to overpower them
on their arrival at Caxamalca, by his supe-
rior strength; and, as he wished to see for
himself what manner of men they were, he
had suffered them to cross the mountains,
meaning to select such as he chose for his
own service, and getting possession of their
wonderful arms and horses, put the rest to
death. 1
That such may have been Atahuallpa's
purpose is not improbable. It explains his
conduct in not occupying the mountain
passes, which afforded such strong points of
defense against invasion. But that a prince
so astute, as by the general testimony of the
Conquerors he is represented to have been,
should have made so impolitic a disclosure of
his hidden motives, is not so probable. The
intercourse with the Inca was carried on
chiefly by means of the interpreter Felipillo,
or little Philip, as he was called from his as-
sumed Christian name, — a malicious youth,
as it appears, who bore no good will to
Atahuallpa, and whose interpretations were
readily admitted by the Conquerors, eager to
find some pretext for their bloody reprisals.
Atahuallpa, as elsewhere noticed, was, at
this time, about thirty years of age. He was
well made, and more robust than usual with
his countrymen. His head was large, and
his countenance might have been called hand-
some, but that his eyes, which were bloodshot,
gave a fierce expression to his features. He
was deliberate in speech, grave in manner,
and towards his own people stern even
to severity; though with the Spaniards he
showed himself affable, sometimes even in-
dulging in sallies of mirth.
Pizarro paid every attention to his royal
captive, and endeavored to lighten, if he
could not dispel, the gloom which, in spite
of his assumed equanimity, hung over the
monarch's brow. He besought him not to
be cast down by his reverses, for his lot had
only been that of every prince who had re-
sisted the white men. They had come into
the country to proclaim the Gospel, the re-
>"And in my opinion," adds the Conqueror, who
reports the speech, "he had good grounds for believing
he could do this, since nothing but the miraculous inter-
position of heaven could have saved us." — Relacion del
Primer, Descub., MS.
ligion of Jesus Christ, and it was no wonder
they had prevailed, when his shield was over
them. Heaven had permitted that Ata-
huallpa's pride should be humbled, because
of his hostile intentions towards the Span-
iards, and the insults he had offered to the
sacred volume. But he bade the Inca take
courage and confide in him, for the Spaniards
were a generous race, warring only against
those who made war on them, and showing
grace to all who submitted! — Atahuallpa
may have thought the massacre of that day
an indifferent commentary on this vaunted
lenity.
Before retiring for the night, Pizarro brief-
ly addressed his troops on their present sit-
uation. When he had ascertained that not
a man was wounded, he bade them offer up
thanksgivings to Providence for so great a
miracle; without its care they could never
have prevailed so easily over the host of
their enemies; and he trusted their lives had
been reserved for still greater things. But
if they would succeed, they had much to do
for themselves. They were in the heart of a
powerful kingdom, encompassed by foes
deeply attached to their own sovereign.
They must be ever on their guard, therefore,
and be prepared at any hour to be roused
fromtheirslumbersby the call of the trumpet.
Having then posted his sentinels, placed a
strong guard over the apartment of Atahu-
allpa, and taken all the precautions of a care-
ful commander, Pizarro withdrew to repose;
and, if he could really feel, that, in the bloody
scenes of the past day, he had been fighting
only the good fight of the Cross, he doubtless
slept sounder than on the night preceding the
seizure of the Inca.
On the following morning the first com-
mands of the Spanish chief were to have the
city cleansed of its impurities: and the pris-
oners, of whom there were many in the camp,
were employed to remove the dead, and give
them decent burial. His next care was to
dispatch a body of about thirty horse to the
quarters lately occupied by Atahuallpa at
the baths, to take possession of the spoil, and
disperse the remnant of the Peruvian forces
which still hung about the place.
Before noon, the party which he had de-
tached on this service returned with a large
troop of Indians, men and women, among
the latter of whom were many of the wives
272
WILLIAM IIICKLINC PRESCOTT
and attendants of the Inca, The Span-
iards had met with no resistance, since tlie
Peruvian warriors, thougli so superior in
number, excellent in appointments, and con-
sisting mostly of able-bodied youn^ men, —
for the greater part of the veteran forces
were with the Inca's generals at the south, —
lost all heart from the moment of their sov-
erei.c;n's captivity. There was no leader to
take his place; for they recognized no author-
ity but that of the Child of the Sun, and they
seemed to be held by a sort of invisible charm
near the place of his confinement, while they
gazed with superstitious aw'e on the white
men, who could achieve so audacious an
enterprise. 1
The number of Indian prisoners was so
great, that some of the Conquerors were for
putting them all to death, or at least, cut-
ting oft' their hands, to disable them from acts
of violence, and to strike terror into their
countrymen. The proposition, doubtless,
came from the lowest and most ferocious of
the soldiery. But that it shouM have been
made at all, shows what materials entered
into the composition of Pizarro's company.
The chief rejected it at once, as no less
impolitic than inhuman, and dismissed the
Indians to their several homes, with the assur-
ance that none should be harmed who did
not off"er resistance to the white men. A
sufficient number, how^ever, was retained to
wait on the Conquerors, who were so well
provided, in this respect, that the most com-
mon soldier was attended by a retinue of
menials that would have better suited the es-
tablishment of a noble.
The Spaniards had found immense droves
of llamas under the care of their shepherds
in the neighborhood of the baths, destined
for the consumption of the Court. Many of
them were now sufi^ered to roam abroad
among their native mountains; though Piz-
arro caused a considerable number to be re-
served for the use of the army. And this was
• From this time, says Ondegardo, the Spaniards,
who hitherto had been designated as the "men with
beards," barbudos, were called by the natives, from
their fair-complexioned deity, Viracochas. The people
of Cuzco, who bore no good-will to the captive Inca,
"looked upon the strangers," says the author, "as sent
by Viracocha himself." {Rel. Prim., MS.) It reminds
us of a superstition, or rather an amiable fancy, among
the ancient Greeks, that "the stranger came from
Jupiter."
no small quantity, if, as one of the Conquer-
ors says, a hundred and fifty of the Peruvian
sheep were frequently slaughtered in a day.
Indeed, the Spaniards were so improvident
in their destruction of these animals, that,
in a few years, the superb flocks, nurtured
with so much care by the Peruvian govern-
ment, had almost disappeared from the land.
The party sent to pillage the Inca's pleas-
ure house brought back a rich booty in gold
and silver, consisting chiefly of plate for the
royal table, which greatly astonished the
Spaniards by its size and weight. These, as
well as some large emeralds obtained there,
together with the precious spoils found on
the bodies of the Indian nobles who had per-
ished in the massacre, were placed in safe cus-
tody, to be hereafter divided. In the city of
Caxamalca, the troops also found magazines
stored with goods, both cotton and woolen,
far superior to any they had seen, for fineness
of texture, and the skill with which the
various colors were blended. They were piled
from the floors to the very roofs of the build-
ings, and in such quantity, that after every
soldier had provided himself with what he de-
sired, it made no sensible diminution of the
whole amount.
Pizarro would now gladly have directed
his march on the Peruvian capital. But the
distance was great, and his force was small.
This must have been still further crippled by
the guard required for the Inca, and the chief
feared to involve himself deeper in a hostile
empire so populous and powerful, with a
prize so precious in his keeping. With much
anxiety, therefore, he looked for reinforce-
ments from the colonies; and he dispatched
a courier to San Miguel, to inform the Span-
iards there of his recent successes, and to
ascertain if there had been any arrival from
Panama. Meanwhile he employed his men
in making Caxamalca a more suitable resi-
dence for a Christian host, by erecting a
church, or, perhaps, appropriating some
Indian edifice to this use, in which mass was
regularly performed by the Dominican
fathers, with great solemnity. The dilapida-
ted walls of the city were also restored in a
more substantial manner than before, and
every vestige was soon eflfaced of the hurri-
cane that had so recently swept over it.
It was not long before Atahuallpa dis-
covered, amidst all the show of religious zeal
HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF PERU
273
in his conquerors, a lurking appetite more
potent in most of their bosoms than either
rehgion or ambition. This was the love of
gold. He determined to avail himself of it
to procure his own freedom. The critical
posture of his affairs made it important that
this should not be long delayed. His brother
Huascar, ever since his defeat, had been de-
tained as a prisoner, subject to the victor's
orders. He was now at Andamarca, at no
great distance from Caxamalca, and Ata-
huallpa feared, with good reason, that, when
his own imprisonment was known, Huascar
would find it easy to corrupt his guards, make
his escape, and put himself at the head of
the contested empire, without a rival to dis-
pute it.
In the hope, therefore, to effect his purpose
by appealing to the avarice of his keepers, he
one day told Pizarro, that, if he would set
him free, he would engage to cover the floor
of the apartment on which they stood with
gold. Those present listened with an incred-
ulous smile; and, as the Inca received no an-
swer, he said, with some emphasis, that "he
would not merely cover the floor but would
fill the room with gold as high as he could
reach"; and, standing on tiptoe, he stretched
out his hand against the wall. All stared with
amazement; while they regarded it as the in-
sane boast of a man too eager to procure his
liberty to weigh the meaning of his words.
Yet Pizarro was sorely perplexed. As he had
advanced into the country, much that he had
seen, and all that he had heard, had confirmed
the dazzling reports first received of the
riches of Peru. Atahuallpa himself had given
him the most glowing picture of the wealth of
the capital, where the roofs of the temples
were plated with gold, while the walls were
hung with tapestry, and the floors inlaid
with tiles of the same precious metal. There
must be some foundation for all this. At
all events, it was safe to accede to the Inca's
proposition; since, by so doing, he could col-
lect, at once, all the gold at his disposal, and
thus prevent its being purloined or secreted
by the natives. He therefore acquiesced in
Atahuallpa's offer, and, drawing a red line
along the wall at the height which the Inca
had indicated, he caused the terms of the
proposal to be duly recorded by the notary.
The apartment was about seventeen feet
broad, by twenty-two feet long, and the line
round the walls was nine feet from the floor.
This space was to be filled with gold; but it
was understood that the gold was not to be
melted down into ingots, but to retain the
original form of the articles into which it was
manufactured, that the Inca might have the
benefit of the space which they occupied.
He further agreed to fill an adjoining room
of small dimensions twice full with silver, in
like manner; and he demanded two months
to accomplish all this.i
*******
1 In immediately following chapters Prescott tells
of the arrival of a vast amount of gold, almost sufficient
literally to fulfill the Inca's promise; and then of his
"trial" on the charge of exciting his people to insur-
rection, of his condemnation, and of his execution by
strangling on 29 August, 1533.
JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN (1782-1850)
Calhoun was born near Abbeville, South Carolina, on i8 March, 1782. His parents were both
children of Scotch-Irish immigrants, and they did not belong to the planter class of the Carolina low-
land. The family was poor but, nevertheless — an unusual thing for upland farmers at that time —
owned a few slaves, with whom Calhoun shared the hard work of the farm. He had no regular or
thorough school-training, and his youth was necessarily, in his surroundings, largely barren of pleasure
and friendship. When he was eighteen he began, under the direction of his brother-in-law, a clergy-
man, systematic preparation for college; and two years later he entered the junior class at Yale.
He was graduated with highest honors in 1804, and proceeded to study the law for the next three
years, spending half of that time at a law-school in Litchfield, Connecticut. He then began the prac-
tice of his profession at Abbeville, with, it is said, no great success, and perhaps with the intention
already formed of making that the stepping-stone to a political career. At all events he w^as soon in
the state legislature, and in 181 1 he was elected a member of the national House of Representatives.
In the same year he married Floride Calhoun, a cousin, whose social position was of the best and whose
fortune was sufficient to enable him to devote himself entirely to the public service. He soon made
himself felt in the House of Representatives, as a true statesman with broadly national ideals, and as
a man singularly powerful in rigorous argument. With the election of Monroe to the presidency, he
became Secretary of War (18 17), and held the post with high distinction for eight years. He was a man
of completely unassailable integrity, but, like too many other men of the age, he was eager to become
President. It is clear that this ambition was a factor in his actions throughout the remainder of his
life, but it is not clear that it remained wholly or even primarily a selfish aim, nor how much, at
various times, it influenced him.
In 1824 he was elected \'ice President under John Quincy Adams, and in 1828 he was again
chosen for the same office under Andrew Jackson. There was an understanding that he was to suc-
ceed Jackson, but the latter presently wanted to succeed himself and, too, Calhoun's enemies suc-
ceeded in causing a break between the two men. At the same time a proposal further to "protect"
northern manufacturers through tariffs led Calhoun to conclude that a fundamental and irreconcilable
difference of interest between the North and the South had come to exist, and he did not hesitate
to identify himself with the interest of his own state. While he was still Vice President he directed
South Carolina's courageous and dangerous protest against what was felt to be federal tyranny, and
in so doing announced the consideration which was at the basis of all his later advocacy of states'
rights. The dissimilarity between various sections of the country, and consequent "contrariety of
interests," he said, "are so great that they cannot be subjected to the unchecked will of a majority
of the whole without defeating the great end of government, without which it is a curse — justice."
Shortly before the close of his second term as Vice President Calhoun resigned that office to rep-
resent his state in the Senate, and there he remained — acting, however, as Secretary of State in the
middle 1840's, under Tyler — until his death on 31 March, 1850. During this whole period he lost no
occasion of reiterating with massive insistence his doctrine of states' rights, and no occasion of bring-
ing about, or of attempting to bring about, action in accordance with that doctrine. It had its origin,
as has been intimated, in an economic situation for which he could find no other solution; — the agri-
cultural South depended for its life upon free trade, while the manufacturing North equally needed
"protection." But this economic situation of the South was inseparably connected with slavery,
which made also for fundamental social and moral differences with the North. Thus it was that Cal-
houn came to be the leading defender of slavery. His defense of this form of property was not only
sincere, but took the bold form of a claim that the "peculiar institution" was positively valuable.
"I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished
by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now
existing in the slaveholding states between the two is, instead of an evil, a good — a positive good."
In this the world has judged him wrong. But it is now more than time for a realization that Cal-
houn was not merely the South's great defender of slavery. As a working statesman devoted to the
interests of his own people, he inevitably found the starting-point of his political thought in concrete
affairs, but he was also a profound theorist who tried to rest his conclusions on deep-lying general
274
A DISQUISITION ON GOVERNMENT
275
principles. Stimulated by the passing problems of his a^e, he carried back his scrutiny of political
orj^anization to its orij^in in human nature itself, and discussed a fundamental problem of sovereignty
which was not settled for ever by our Civil War, which is not now settled, and which cannot be per-
manently settled. In so doinjf he anticipated political thought of more recent times and wrote much
which is now and, as far as can be seen, permanently pertinent. His two treatises, A Disquisition on
Government and A Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States (both written in
the last years of his life and published posthumously, 1851) are, indeed, classics of the world's political
literature, and are notable for their sober and lucid style and for their rigorous logic as well as for their
profundity of insight and their vigorous handling of perennial problems.
A DISQUISITION ON GOVERN-
MENT^
In order to have a clear and just concep-
tion of the nature and object of government,
it is indispensable to understand correctly
what that constitution or law of our nature
is, in which government originates; or, to
express it more fully and accurately, — that
law, without which government would not,
and with which it must, necessarily exist.
Without this, it is as impossible to lay
any solid foundation for the science of gov-
ernment as it would be to lay one for that of
astronomy without a like understanding of
that constitution or law of the material
world, according to which the several bodies
composing the solar system mutually act on
each other, and by which they are kept in
their respective spheres. The first question,
accordingly, to be considered is: What is that
constitution or law of our nature, without
which government would not exist, and with
which its existence is necessary.''
In considering this, I assume, as an incon-
testable fact, that man is so constituted as
to be a social being. His inclinations and
wants, physical and moral, irresistibly impel
him to associate with his kind; and he has,
accordingly, never been found, in any age or
country, in any state other than the social.
In no other, indeed, could he exist; and in no
other, — were it possible for him to exist, —
could he attain to a full development of his
moral and intellectual faculties, or raise him-
self, in the scale of being, much above the
level of the brute creation.
I next assume, also, as a fact not less incon-
testable, that, while man is so constituted as
to make the social state necessary to his
existence and the full development of his
» Reprinted from Vol. I of Calhoun's fVorks, edited
in 6 vols, by R. K. Cralle, 1851. This is the earliest
edition of the Disquisition.
faculties, this state itself cannot exist with-
out government. The assumption rests on
universal experience. In no age or country
has any society or community ever been
found, whether enlightened or savage, with-
out government of some description.
Having assumed these, as unquestionable
phenomena of our nature, I shall, without
further remark, proceed to the investigation
of the primary and important question, —
What is that constitution of our nature,
which, while it impels man to associate with
his kind, renders it impossible for society to
exist without government.''
The answer will be found in the fact (not
less incontestable than either of the others),
that, while man is created for the social state,
and is accordingly so formed as to feel what
affects others, as well as what affects him-
self, he is, at the same time, so constituted
as to feel more intensely what affects him
directly than what affects him indirectly
through others; or, to express it differently,
he is so constituted that his direct or indi-
vidual affections are stronger than his sym-
pathetic or social feelings. I intentionally
avoid the expression, selfish feelings, as
applicable to the former; because, as com-
monly used, it implies an unusual excess of
the individual over the social feelings, in the
person to whom it is applied; and, conse-
quently, something depraved and vicious.
My object is to exclude such inference, and
to restrict the inquiry exclusively to facts in
their bearings on the subject under consider-
ation, viewed as mere phenomena apper-
taining to our nature, constituted as it is; and
which are as unquestionable as is that of
gravitation, or any other phenomenon of the
material world.
In asserting that our individual are
stronger than our social feelings, it is not
intended to deny that there are instances,
growing out of peculiar relations, — as that
of a mother and her infant, — or resulting
276
JOHN CALDWFXL CALHOUN
from the force of education and habit over
peciihar constitutions, in wliich the latter
have overpowered the former; but these in-
stances are few, and always regarded as
somethinc; extraordinary. The deep impres-
sion they make, whenever they occur, is the
strongest proof that they are regarded as
exceptions to some general and well under-
stood law of our nature; just as some of the
minor powers of the material world are appa-
rently to gravitation.
I might go farther, and assert this to be a
phenomenon, not of our nature only, but of
all animated existence, throughout its entire
range, so far as our knowledge extends. It
would, indeed, seem to be essentially con-
nected with the great law of self-preservation
which pervades all that feels, from man down
to the lowest and most insignificant reptile
or insect. In none is it stronger than in man.
His social feelings may, indeed, in a state of
safety and abundance, combined with high
intellectual and moral culture, acquire great
expansion and force; but not so great as to
overpower this all-pervading and essential
law of animated existence.
But that constitution of our nature which
makes us feel more intensely what affects us
directly than what affects us indirectly
through others, necessarily leads to conflict
between individuals. Each, in consequence,
has a greater regard for his own safety or
happiness than for the safety or happiness of
others; and, where these come in opposition,
is ready to sacrifice the interests of others to
his own. And, hence, the tendency to a
universal state of conflict between individual
and individual; accompanied by the con-
nected passions of suspicion, jealousy, anger,
and revenge, — followed by insolence, fraud,
and cruelty; — and, if not prevented by some
controlling power, ending in a state of uni-
versal discord and confusion, destructive of
the social state and the ends for which it is
ordained. This controlling power, wherever
vested, or by whomsoever exercised, is
GOVERNMENT.
It follows, then, that man is so constituted
that government is necessary to the existence
of society, and society to his existence, and
the perfection of his faculties. It follows,
also, that government has its origin in this
twofold constitution of his nature; the sym-
pathetic or social feelings constituting the
remote, and the individual or direct, the
proximate cause.
If man had been differently constituted in
either particular; — if, instead of being social
in his nature, he had been created without
sympathy for his kind, and independent of
others for his safety and existence; or if, on
the other hand, he had been so created, as to
feel more intensely what affected others than
wKat affected himself (if that were possible),
or, even, had this supposed interest been
equal, — it is manifest that, in either case,
there would have been no necessity for gov-
ernment, and that none would ever have
existed. But, although society and govern-
ment are thus intimately connected with and
dependent on each other, — of the two society
is the greater. It is the first in the order of
things, and in the dignity of its object; that
of society being primary, — to preserve and
perfect our race; and that of government
secondary and subordinate, to preserve and
perfect society. Both are, however, neces-
sary to the existence and well-being of our
race, and equally of Divine ordination.
I have said, — if it were possible for man
to be so constituted, as to feel what affects
others more strongly than what affects him-
self, or even as strongly, — because, it may
be well doubted, whether the stronger feeling
or affection of individuals for themselves,
combined w^ith a feebler and subordinate feel-
ing or affection for others, is not, in beings of
limited reason and faculties, a constitution
necessary to their preservation and existence.
If reversed, — if their feelings and affections
w^ere stronger for others than for themselves,
or even as strong, the necessary result would
seem to be that all individuality would be
lost; and boundless and remediless disorder
and confusion would ensue. For each, at the
same moment, intensely participating in all
the conflicting emotions of those around him,
would, of course, forget himself and all that
concerned him immediately, in his officious
intermeddling with the affairs of all others;
which, from his limited reason and faculties,
he could neither properly understand nor
manage. Such a state of things would, as far
as we can see, lead to endless disorder and
confusion, not less destructive to our race
than a state of anarchy. It would, besides,
be remediless, — for government would be
impossible; or, if it could by possibility exist,
A DISQUISITION ON GOVERNMENT
277
its object would be reversed. Selfishness
would have to be encouraged and benevo-
lence discouraged. Individuals would have
to be encouraged, by rewards, to become
more selfish, and deterred, by punishments,
from being too benevolent; and this, too, by
a government administered by those who,
on the supposition, would have the greatest
aversion for selfishness and the highest admi-
ration for benevolence.
To the Infinite Being, the Creator of all,
belongs exclusively the care and superin-
tendence of the whole. He, in his infinite
wisdom and goodness, has allotted to every
class of animated beings its condition and
appropriate functions; and has endowed each
with feelings, instincts, capacities, and facul-
ties, best adapted to its allotted condition.
To man he has assigned the social and politi-
cal state, as best adapted to develop the great
capacities and faculties, intellectual and
moral, with which he has endowed him; and
has, accordingly, constituted him so as not
only to impel him into the social state, but to
make government necessary for his preserva-
tion and well-being.
But government, although intended to pro-
tect and preserve society, has itself a strong
tendency to disorder and abuse of its powers,
as all experience and almost every page of
history testify. The cause is to be found in
the same constitution of our nature which
makes government indispensable. The
powers which it is necessary for government
to possess, in order to repress violence and pre-
serve order, cannot execute themselves. They
must be administered by men in whom, like
others, the individual are stronger than the
social feelings. And hence, the powers vested
in them to prevent injustice and oppression
on the part of others, will, if left unguarded,
be by them converted into instruments to
oppress the rest of the community. That,
by which this is prevented, by whatever name
called, is what is meant by constitution,
in its most comprehensive sense, when applied
to GOVERNMENT.
Having its origin in the same principle of
our nature, constitution stands to government,
as government stands to society; and, as the
end for which society is ordained would be
defeated without government, so that for
which government is ordained would, m a
great measure, be defeated without consti-
tution. But they differ in this striking par-
ticular. There is no difficulty in forming
government. It is not even a matter of
choice, whether there shall be one or not.
Like breathing, it is not permitted to depend
on our volition. Necessity will force it on
all communities in someone form or another.
Very different is the case as to constitution.
Instead of a matter of necessity, it is one of
the most difficult tasks imposed on man to
form a constitution worthy of the name;
while, to form a perfect one, — one that would
completely counteract the tendency of gov-
ernment to oppression and abuse, and hold
it strictly to the great ends for which it is
ordained, — has thus far exceeded human
wisdom, and possibly ever will. From this,
another striking diflference results. Con-
stitution is the contrivance of man, while
government is of Divine ordination. Man is
left to perfect what the wisdom of the Infi-
nite ordained as necessary to preserve the
race.
With these remarks, I proceed to the con-
sideration of the important and difficult
question: How is this tendency of govern-
ment to be counteracted .f* Or, to express it
more fully, — How can those who are invested
with the powers of government be prevented
from employing them as the means of ag-
grandizing themselves, instead of using them
to protect and preserve society.'' It cannot
be done by instituting a higher power to con-
trol the government, and those who admin-
ister it. This would be but to change the
seat of authority, and to make this higher
power, in reality, the government; with the
same tendency, on the part of those who
might control its powers, to pervert them
into instruments of aggrandizement. Nor
can it be done by limiting the powers of
government, so as to make it too feeble to be
made an instrument of abuse; for, passing
by the difficulty of so limiting its powers,
without creating a power higher than the
government itself to enforce the observance
of the limitations, it is a sufficient objection
that it would, if practicable, defeat the end
for which government is ordained, by mak-
ing it too feeble to protect and preserve
society. The powers necessary for this pur-
pose will ever prove sufficient to aggrandize
those who control it, at the expense of the
rest of the community.
278
JOHN CALim'KLL CALHOUN
In estimatini; what amount of power would
be reijuisitc to secure the objects of govern-
ment, we nuist take into tlie reckoning; what
would he necessary to defend the coinnuinity
against external, as well as internal, dangers.
Government must be able to repel assaults
from abroad, as well as to repress violence
and disorders within. It must not be over-
looked that the human race is not compre-
hended in a single society or community.
The limited reason and faculties of man, the
great diversity of language, customs, pur-
suits, situation and complexion, and the dif-
ficulty of intercourse, with various other
causes, have, by their operation, formed a
great many separate communities, acting
independently of each other. Between these
there is the same tendency to conflict, — and
from the same constitution of our nature, —
as between men individually; and even
stronger, — because the sympathetic or social
feelings are not so strong between different
communities, as between individuals of the
same community. So powerful, indeed, is
this tendency that it has led to almost inces-
sant wars between contiguous communities
for plunder and conquest, or to avenge in-
juries, real or supposed.
So long as this state of things continues,
exigencies will occur in which the entire
powers and resources of the community will
be needed to defend its existence. When this
is at stake, every other consideration must
yield to it. Self-preservation is the supreme
law, as well with communities as individuals.
And hence the danger of withholding from
government the full command of the power
and resources of the state; and the great dif-
ficulty of limiting its powers consistently
with the protection and preservation of the
community. And hence the question recurs,
— By what means can government, without
being divested of the full command of the
resources of the community, be prevented
from abusing its powers?
The question involves difficulties which,
from the earliest ages, wise and good men
have attempted to overcome; — but hitherto
with but partial success. For this purpose
many devices have been resorted to, suited
to the various stages of intelligence and
civilization through which our race has
passed, and to the different forms of govern-
ment to which they have been applied. The
aid of superstition, ceremonies, education,
religion, organic arrangements, both of the
government and the community, has been,
from time to time, appealed to. Some of the
most remarkable of these devices, whether
regarded in reference to their wisdom and the
skill displayed in their application, or to the
permanency of their effects, are to be found
in the early dawn of civilization; — in the in-
stitutions of the Egyptians, the Hindoos, the
Chinese, and the Jews. The only materials
which that early age afforded for the con-
struction of constitutions, when intelligence
was so partially diffused, were applied with
consummate wisdom and skill. To their
successful application may be fairly traced
the subsequent advance of our race in civil-
ization and intelligence, of which we now
enjoy the benefits. For, without a constitu-
tion,— something to counteract the strong
tendency of government to disorder and
abuse, and to give stability to political in-
stitutions,— there can be little progress or
permanent improvement.
In answering the important question under
consideration, it is not necessary to enter into
an examination of the various contrivances
adopted by these celebrated governments to
counteract this tendency to disorder and
abuse, nor to undertake to treat of constitu-
tion in its most comprehensive sense. What
I propose is far more limited, — to explain on
what principles government must be formed,
in order to resist, by its own interior struc-
ture,— or, to use a single term, organism, —
the tendency to abuse of power. This struc-
ture, or organism, is what is meant by con-
stitution, in its strict and more usual sense;
and it is this which distinguishes what are
called constitutional governments from abso-
lute. It is in this strict and more usual
sense that I propose to use the term here-
after.
How government, then, must be con-
structed, in order to counteract, through its
organism, this tendency on the part of those
who make and execute the laws to oppress
those subject to their operation, is the next
question which claims attention.
There is but one way in w^hich this can
possibly be done; and that is by such an
organism as will furnish the ruled with the
means of resisting successfully this tendency
on the part of the rulers to oppression and
A DISQUISniON ON GOVERNMENT
279
abuse. Power can only be resisted by
power, — and tendency by tendency. 1 hose
who exercise power and those subject to its
exercise, — the rulers and the ruled, — stand
in antagonistic relations to each other. Ihe
same constitution of our nature which leads
rulers to oppress the ruled, — regardless of
the object for which government is ordained,
— will, with equal strength, lead the ruled to
resist, when possessed of the means of mak-
ing peaceable and effective resistance. Such
an organism, then, as will furnish the means
by which resistance may be systematically
and peaceably made on the part of the ruled,
to oppression and abuse of power on the
part of the rulers, is the first and indis-
pensable step towards forming a constitu-
tional government. And as this can only be
effected by or through the right of suffrage, —
the right on the part of the ruled to choose
their rulers at proper intervals, and to hold
them thereby responsible for their conduct; —
the responsibility of the rulers to the ruled,
through the right of suffrage, is the indis-
pensable and primary principle in the
foundation of a constitutional government.
When this right is properly guarded, and the
people sufficiently enlightened to understand
their own rights and the interests of the com-
munity, and duly to appreciate the motives
and conduct of those appointed to make and
execute the law^s, it is all-sufficient to give to
those who elect, effective control over those
they have elected.
I call the right of suffrage the indispensable
and primary principle; for it would be a great
and dangerous mistake to suppose, as many
do, that it is, of itself, sufficient to form con-
stitutional governments. To this erroneous
opinion may be traced one of the causes why
so few attempts to form constitutional gov-
ernments have succeeded; and why, of the
few which have, so small a number have had
durable existence. It has led, not only to
mistakes in the attempts to form such gov-
ernments, but to their overthrow, when they
have, by some good fortune, been correctly
formed. So far from being, of itself, suffi-
cient,— however well guarded it might be,
and however enlightened the people, — it
would, unaided by other provisions, leave
the government as absolute as it would be
in the hands of irresponsible rulers; and with
a tendency, at least as strong, towards
oppression and abuse of its powers; as I
shall next proceed to explain.
The right of suffrage, of itself, can do no
more than give complete control to those
who elect over the conduct of those they
have elected. In doing this, it accomplishes
all it possibly can accomplish. This is its
aim, — and when this is attained, its end is
fulfilled. It can do no more, however en-
lightened the people, or however widely
extended or well guarded the right may be.
The sum total, then, of its effects, when most
successful, is to make those elected the true
and faithful representatives of those who
elected them, — instead of irresponsible rulers,
— as they would be without it; and thus, by
converting it into an agency, and the rulers
into agents, to divest government of all
claims to sovereignty, and to retain it unim-
paired to the community. But it is manifest
that the right of suffrage, in making these
changes, transfers, in reality, the actual con-
trol over the government from those who
make and execute the laws to the body of
the community; and, thereby, places the
powers of the government as fully in the
mass of the community as they would be if
they, in fact, had assembled, made, and
executed the laws themselves, without the
intervention of representatives or agents.
The more perfectly it does this, the more
perfectly it accomplishes its ends; but in
doing so, it only changes the seat of authority,
without counteracting, in the least, the tend-
ency of the government to oppression and
abuse of its powers.
If the whole community had the same
interests, so that the interests of each and
every portion would be so affected by the
action of the government that the laws which
oppressed or impoverished one portion would
necessarily oppress and impoverish all others,
— or the reverse, — then the right of suffrage,
of itself, would be all-sufficient to counter-
act the tendency of the government to
oppression and abuse of its powers; and, of
course, would form, of itself, a perfect con-
stitutional government. The interest of all
being the same, by supposition, as far as the
action of the government was concerned, all
would have like interests as to what laws
should be made, and how they should be
executed. All strife and struggle would cease
as to who should be elected to make and
28o
JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN
execute them, llie only question would be,
who wns most fit; who the wisest and most
capable of understanding; the common inter-
est of the whole. 1 his decided, the election
would pass off quietly, and without party
discord; as no one portion could advance its
own peculiar interest without regard to the
rest, by electing a favorite candidate.
Hut such is not the case. On the contrary,
nothing is more difficult than to equalize the
action of the government in reference to the
various and diversified interests of the com-
munity; and nothing more easy. than to per-
vert its powers into instruments to aggran-
dize and enrich one or more interests by
oppressing and impoverishing the others;
and this, too, under the operation of laws
couched in general terms; — and which, on
their face, appear fair and equal. Nor is this
the case in some particular communities
only. It is so in all; the small and the great,
— the poor and the rich, — irrespective of pur-
suits, productions, or degrees of civilization;
— with, however, this diflPerence, that the
more extensive and populous the country,
the more diversified the condition and pur-
suits of its population, and the richer, more
luxurious, and dissimilar the people, the
more difficult is it to equalize the action of
the government, — and the more easy for one
portion of the community to pervert its
powers to oppress, and plunder the other.
Such being the case, it necessarily results
that the right of suffrage, by placing the con-
trol of the government in the community
must, from the same constitution of our
nature which makes government necessary
to preserve society, lead to conflict among
its different interests, — each striving to ob-
tain possession of its powers, as the means
of protecting itself against the others; — or of
advancing its respective interests, regardless
of the interests of others. P or this purpose,
a struggle will take place between the various
interests to obtain a majority, in order to
control the government. If no one interest
be strong enough, of itself, to obtain it, a
combination will be formed between those
whose interests are most alike; — each con-
ceding something to the others, until a suf-
ficient number is obtained to make a major-
ity. The process may be slow, and much
time may be required before a compact,
organized majority can thus be formed; but
formed it will be in time, even without pre-
concert or design, by the sure workings of
that principle or constitution of our nature
in which government itself originates. When
once formed, the community will be divided
into two great parties, — a major and minor, —
between which there will be incessant strug-
gles on the one sideto retain, and on the other
to obtain the majority, — and, thereby, the
control of the government and the advan-
tages it confers.
So deeply seated, indeed, is this tendency
to conflict between the different interests or
portions of the community, that it would
result from the action of the government
itself, even though it were possible to find a
community, where the people were all of the
same pursuits, placed in the same condition
of life, and in every respect so situated as to
be without inequality of condition or diver-
sity of interests. The advantages of pos-
sessing the control of the powers of the
government, and, thereby, of its honors and
emoluments, are, of themselves, exclusive
of all other considerations, ample to divide
even such a community into two great
hostile parties.
*******
As, then, the right of suffrage, without
some other provision, cannot counteract this
tendency of government, the next question
for consideration is: — What is that other
provision? This demands the most serious
consideration; for, of all the questions em-
braced in the science of government, it
involves a principle the most important and
the least understood; and when understood,
the most difficult of application in practice.
It is, indeed, emphatically, that principle
which makes the constitution, in its strict
and limited sense.
From what has been said, it is manifest
that this provision must be of a character
calculated to prevent any one interest, or
combination of interests, from using the
powers of government to aggrandize itself
at the expense of the others. Here lies the
evil; and just in proportion as it shall pre-
vent, or fail to prevent it, in the same degree
it will effect, or fail to effect the end intended
to be accomplished. There is but one certain
mode in which this result can be secured;
and that is by the adoption of some restric-
tion or limitation, which shall so effectually
A DISQUISITION ON GOVERNMENT
281
prevent any one interest, or combination of
interests, from obtaining the exclusive con-
trol of the government as to render hopeless
all attempts directed to that end. There
is, again, but one mode in which this can be
effected; and that is by taking the sense of
each interest or portion of the community,
which may be unequally and injuriously
affected by the action of the government,
separately, through its own majority, or in
some other way by which its voice may be
fairly expressed; and to require the consent
of each interest, either to put or to keep the
government in action. Thi.s, too, can be
accomplished only in one way, — and that is
by such an organism of the government, —
and, if necessary for the purpose, of the com-
munity also, — as will, by dividing and dis-
tributing the powers of government, give to
each division or interest, through its appro-
priate organ, either a concurrent voice in
making and executing the laws, or a veto on
their execution. It is only by such an
organism that the assent of each can be
made necessary to put the government in
motion; or the power made effectual to arrest
its action, when put in motion; — and it is
only by the one or the other that the differ-
ent interests, orders, classes, or portions, into
which the community may be divided, can
be protected, and all conflict and struggle
between them prevented, — by rendering it
impossible to put or to keep it in action,
without the concurrent consent of all.
Such an organism as this, combined with
the right of suffrage, constitutes, in fact, the
elements of constitutional government. The
one, by rendering those who make and exe-
cute the laws responsible to those on whom
they operate, prevents the rulers from op-
pressing the ruled; and the other, by making
it impossible for any one interest or combina-
tion of interests or class, or order, or portion
of the community, to obtain exclusive con-
trol, prevents any one of them from oppress-
ing the other. It is clear that oppression and
abuse of power must come, if at all, from the
one or the other quarter. From no other can
they come. It follows that the two, suffrage
and proper organism combined, are sufficient
to counteract the tendency of government to
oppression and abuse of power; and to
restrict it to the fulfillment of the great ends
for which it is ordained.
In coming to this conclusion, I have
assumed the organism to be perfect, and the
different interests, portions, or classes of the
community to be sufficiently enlightened to
understand its character and object, and to
exercise, with due intelligence, the right of
suffrage. To the extent that either may be
defective, to the same extent the government
would fall short of fulfilling its end. But this
does not impeach the truth of the principles
on which it rests. In reducing them to
proper form, in applying them to practical
uses, all elementary principles are liable to
difficulties; but they are not, on this account,
the less true, or valuable. Where the organ-
ism is perfect, every interest will be truly
and fully represented, and of course the
whole community must be so. It may be
difficult, or even impossible, to make a per-
fect organism, — but, although this be true,
yet even when, instead of the sense of each
and of all, it takes that of a few great and
prominent interests only, it would still,
in a great measure, if not altogether, fulfill
the end intended by a constitution. For, in
such case, it would require so large a portion
of the community, compared with the whole,
to concur, or acquiesce in the action of the
government, that the number to be plun-
dered would be too few, and the number to
be aggrandized too many, to afford adequate
motives to oppression and the abuse of its
powers. Indeed, however imperfect the
organism, it must have more or less effect in
diminishing such tendency.
It may be readily inferred, from what has
been stated, that the effect of organism is
neither to supersede nor diminish the im-
portance of the right of suffrage; but to aid
and perfect it. The object of the latter is to
collect the sense of the community. The
more fully and perfectly it accomplishes this,
the more fully and perfectly it fulfills its end.
But the most it can do, of itself, is to collect
the sense of the greater number; that is, of
the stronger interests, or combination of
interests; and to assume this to be the sense
of the community. It is only when aided
by a proper organism that it can collect the
sense of the entire community, — of each and
all its interests; of each, through its appro-
priate organ, and of the whole, through all
of them united. This would truly be the
sense of the entire community; for, what-
282
JOHN CALDWFXL CALHOUN
ever diversity each interest mi^lit liave
witliin itself, as all would have the same
interest in reference to the action of the
government, the individuals composing each
would be fully and truly represented by its
own majority or appropriate organ, regarded
in reference to the other interests. In brief,
every individual of every interest might
trust, with confidence, its majority or appro-
priate organ, against that of every other
interest.
It results, from what has been said, that
there are two different modes in which the
sense of the community may be taken; one,
simply by the right of suffrage, unaided; the
other, by the right through a proper organ-
ism. Each collects the sense of the majority.
But one regards numbers only, and con-
siders the whole community as a unit, having
but one common interest throughout; and
collects the sense of the greater number of
the whole, as that of the community. The
other, on the contrary, regards interests as
well as numbers; — considering the com-
munity as made up of different and con-
flicting interests, as far as the action of the
government is concerned; and takes the sense
of each, through its majority or appropriate
organ, and the united sense of all, as the
sense of the entire community. The former
of these I shall call the numerical, or abso-
lute majority; and the latter, the concurrent,
or constitutional majority. I call it the con-
stitutional majority, because it is an essen-
tial element in every constitutional govern-
ment,— be its form what it may. So great
is the difference, politically speaking, be-
tween the two majorities, that they cannot
be confounded without leading to great and
fatal errors; and yet the distinction between
them has been so entirely overlooked that,
when the term majority is used in political
discussions, it is applied exclusively to desig-
nate the numerical, — as if there were no
other. Until this distinction is recognized,
and better understood, there will continue
to be great liability to error in properly con-
structing constitutional governments, espe-
cially of the popular form, and of preserving
them when properly constructed. Until
then, the latter will have a strong tendency
to slide, first, into the government of the
numerical majority, and, finally, into abso-
lute government of some other form. To
sliow that such must be the case, and at the
same time to mark more strongly the differ-
ence between the two, in order to guard
against the danger of overlooking it, I pro-
pose to consider the subject more at length.
The first and leading error which naturally
arises from overlooking the distinction re-
ferred to, is to confound the numerical
majority with the people; and this so com-
pletely as to regard them as identical. Ihis
is a consequence that necessarily results
from considering the numerical as the only
majority. All admit that a popular govern-
ment, or democracy, is the government of
the people; for the terms imply this. A per-
fect government of the kind would he one
which would embrace the consent of every
citizen or member of the community; but as
this is impracticable, in the opinion of those
who regard the numerical as the only major-
ity, and who can perceive no other way by
which the sense of the people can be taken, —
they are compelled to adopt this as the only
true basis of popular government, in contra-
distinction to governments of the aristo-
cratical or monarchical form. Being thus
constrained, they are, in the next place,
forced to regard the numerical majority, as,
in effect, the entire people; that is, the greater
part as the whole; and the government of
the greater part as the government of the
whole. It is thus the two come to be con-
founded, and a part made identical with the
whole. And it is thus, also, that all the
rights, powers, and immunities of the whole
people come to be attributed to the nu-
merical majority; and, among others, the
supreme, sovereign authority of establish-
ing and abolishing governments at pleasure.
This radical error, the consequence of con-
founding the two, and of regarding the
numerical as the only majority, has contrib-
uted more than any other cause to prevent
the formation of popular constitutional gov-
ernments,— and to destroy them even when
they have been formed. It leads to the con-
clusion that, in their formation and estab-
lishment, nothing more is necessary than
the right of suffrage, — and the allotment to
each division of the community a repre-
sentation in the government, in proportion
to numbers. If the numerical majority were
really the people; and if to take its sense
truly were to take the sense of the people
A DISQUISITION ON GOVERNMENT
283
truly, a government so constituted would
be a true and perfect model of a popular
constitutional government; and every depar-
ture from it would detract from its excel-
lence. IJut, as such is not the case, — as the
numerical majority, instead of being the
people, is only a portion of them, — such a
government, instead of being a true and
perfect model of the people's government,
that is, a people self-governed, is but the
government of a part, over a part, — the
major over the minor portion.
But this misconception of the true elements
of constitutional government does not stop
here. It leads to others equally false and
fatal, in reference to the best means of pre-
serving and perpetuating them, when, from
some fortunate combination of circum-
stances, they are correctly formed. For they
who fall into these errors regard the restric-
tions w^hich organism imposes on the will of
the numerical majority as restrictions on the
will of the people, and, therefore, as not
only useless, but wrongful and mischievous.
And hence they endeavor to destroy organ-
ism, under the delusive hope of making
government more democratic.
Such are some of the consequences of con-
founding the two, and of regarding the
numerical as the only majority. And in this
may be found the reason why so few popu-
lar governments have been properly con-
structed, and why, of these few, so small a
number have proved durable. Such must
continue to be the result, so long as these
errors continue to be prevalent.
There is another error, of a kindred char-
acter, whose influence contributes much to
the same results: I refer to the prevalent
opinion that a written constitution, con-
taining suitable restrictions on the powers of
government, is sufficient, of itself, without
the aid of any organism, — except such as is
necessary to separate its several departments
and render them independent of each other,
— to counteract the tendency of the numeri-
cal majority to oppression and the abuse of
power.
A written constitution certainly has many
and considerable advantages; but it is a great
mistake to suppose that the mere insertion
of provisions to restrict and limit the powers
of the government, without investing those
for whose protection they are inserted with
the means of enforcing their observance, will
be sufficient to prevent the major and domi-
nant party from abusing its powers. Being
the party in possession of the government,
they will, from the same constitution of man
which makes government necessary to pro-
tect society, be in favor of the powers
granted by the constitution, and opposed to
the restrictions intended to limit them. As
the major and dominant party, they will
have no need of these restrictions for their
protection. The ballot-box, of itself, would
be ample protection to them. Needing no
other, they would come, in time, to regard
these limitations as unnecessary and im-
proper restraints; — and endeavor to elude
them, with the view of increasing their power
and influence.
The minor, or weaker party, on the con-
trary, would take the opposite direction; —
and regard them as essential to their pro-
tection against the dominant party. And,
hence, they would endeavor to defend and
enlarge the restrictions, and to limit and
contract the powers. But where there are
no means by which they could compel the
major party to observe the restrictions, the
only resort left them would be a strict con-
struction of the constitution, — that is, a con-
struction which would confine these powers
to the narrowest limits which the meaning
of the words used in the grant would admit.
To this the major party would oppose a
liberal construction, — one which would give
to the words of the grant the broadest mean-
ing of which they were susceptible. It would
then be construction against construction;
the one to contract, and the other to enlarge
the powers of the government to the utmost.
But of what possible avail could the strict
construction of the minor party be, against
the liberal interpretation of the major, when
the one would have all the powers of the
government to carry its construction into
effect, — and the other be deprived of all
means of enforcing its construction.? In a
contest so unequal, the result would not be
doubtful. The party in favor of the restric-
tions would be overpowered. At first, they
might command some respect, and do some-
thing to stay the march of encroachment;
but they would, in the progress of the con-
test, be regarded as mere abstractionists;
and, indeed, deservedly, if they should in-
2^4
JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN
dulse the folly of supposing that the party
in possession of the ballot-box and the physi-
cal force of the country could be successfully
resisted by an appeal to reason, truth, jus-
tice, or the obligations imposed by the con-
stitution. For when these, of themselves,
shall exert sufficient influence to stay the
hand of power, then government will be no
longer necessary to protect society, nor con-
stitutions needed to prevent government
from abusing its powers. The end of the
contest would be the subversion of the con-
stitution, either by the undermining pro-
cess of construction, — where its meaning
would admit of possible doubt, — or by sub-
stituting in practice what is called party-
usage, in place of its provisions; — or, finally,
when no other contrivance would subserve
the purpose, by openly and boldly setting
them aside. By the one or the other, the
restrictions would ultimately be annulled,
and the government be converted into one
of unlimited powers.
Nor would the division of government into
separate, and, as it regards each other, inde-
pendent departments, prevent this result.
Such a division may do much to facilitate its
operations, and to secure to its administra-
tion greater caution and deliberation; but
as each and all the departments, — and, of
course, the entire government, — would be
under the control of the numerical majority,
it is too clear to require explanation, that a
mere distribution of its powers among its
agents or representatives could do little or
nothing to counteract its tendency to oppres-
sion and abuse of power. To effect this, it
would be necessary to go one step further,
and make the several departments the organs
of the distinct interests or portions of the
community; and to clothe each with a nega-
tive on the others. But the effect of this
would be to change the government from
the numerical into the concurrent majority.
Having now explained the reasons why it
is so difficult to form and preserve popular
constitutional government, so long as the
distinction between the two majorities is
overlooked, and the opinion prevails that a
written constitution, with suitable restric-
tions and a proper division of its powers, is
sufficient to counteract the tendency of the
numerical majority to the abuse of its
power, — I shall next proceed to explain.
more fully, why the concurrent majority is
an indispensable element in forming con-
stitutional governments; and why the nu-
merical majority, of itself, must, in all cases,
make governments absolute.
The necessary consequence of taking the
sense of the community by the concurrent
majority is, as has been explained, to give
to each interest or portion of the community
a negative on the others. It is this mutual
negative among its various conflicting inter-
ests which invests each with the power of
protecting itself; — and places the rights and
safety of each, where only they can be
securely placed, under its own guardianship.
Without this there can be no systematic,
peaceful, or eflPective resistance to the natural
tendency of each to come into conflict with
the others; and without this there can be no
constitution. It is this negative power, —
the power of preventing or arresting the
action of the government, — be it called by
what term it may, — veto, interposition, nul-
lification, check, or balance of power, —
which, in fact, forms the constitution. They
are all but diflPerent names for the negative
power. In all its forms, and under all its
names, it results from the concurrent major-
ity. Without this there can be no negative;
and, without a negative, no constitution.
The assertion is true in reference to all con-
stitutional governments, be their forms what
they may. It is, indeed, the negative power
which makes the constitution, — and the
positive which makes the government. The
one is the power of acting; — and the other
the power of preventing or arresting action.
The two, combined, make constitutional
governments.
But, as there can be no constitution with-
out the negative power, and no negative
power without the concurrent majority; — it
follows, necessarily, that where the numeri-
cal majority has the sole control of the
government there can be no constitution;
as constitution implies limitation or restric-
tion,— and, of course, is inconsistent with
the idea of sole or exclusive power. And
hence, the numerical, unmixed with the con-
current majority, necessarily forms, in all
cases, absolute government.
It is, indeed, the single, or one power^
which excludes the negative, and constitutes
absolute government; and not the number
A DISQUISITION ON GOVERNMENT
285
in whom the power is vested. The numerical
majority is as truly a single power ^ and ex-
cludes the negative as completely as the
absolute government of one, or of the few.
The former is as much the absolute govern-
ment of the democratic, or popular form, as
the latter of the monarchical or aristocrati-
cal. It has, accordingly, in common with
them, the same tendency to oppression and
abuse of power.
Constitutional governments, of whatever
form, are, indeed, much more similar to each
other, in their structure and character, than
they are, respectively, to the absolute gov-
ernments, even of their own class. All con-
stitutional governments, of whatever class
they may be, take the sense of the commu-
nity by its parts, — each through its appro-
priate organ; and regard the sense of all its
parts, as the sense of the whole. They all
rest on the right of suffrage, and the respon-
sibility of rulers, directly or indirectly. On
the contrary, all absolute governments, of
whatever form, concentrate power in one
uncontrolled and irresponsible individual or
body, whose will is regarded as the sense of
the community. And, hence, the great and
broad distinction between governments is, —
not that of the one, the few, or the many, —
but of the constitutional and the absolute.
From this there results another distinction,
which, although secondary in its character,
very strongly marks the difference between
these forms of government. I refer to their
respective conservative principle; — that is,
the principle by which they are upheld and
preserved. This principle, in constitutional
governments, is compromise; — and in abso-
lute governments, is force; — as will be next
explained.
It has been already shown that the same
constitution of man which leads those who
govern to oppress the governed, — if not pre-
vented,— will, with equal force and cer-
tainty, lead the latter to resist oppression,
when possessed of the means of doing so
peaceably and successfully. But absolute
governments, of all forms, exclude all other
means of resistance to their authority than
that of force; and, of course, leave no other
alternative to the governed but to acquiesce
in oppression, however great it may be, or
to resort to force to put down the govern-
ment. But the dread of such a resort must
necessarily lead the government to prepare
to meet force in order to protect itself; and
hence, of necessity, force becomes the con-
servative principle of all such governments.
On the contrary, the government of the
concurrent majority, where the organism is
perfect, excludes the possibility of oppres-
sion, by giving to each interest, or portion,
or order, — where there are established
classes, — the means of protecting itself, by
its negative, against all measures calculated
to advance the peculiar interests of others
at its expense. Its effect, then, is to cause
the different interests, portions, or orders, —
as the case may be, — to desist from attempt-
ing to adopt any measure calculated to pro-
mote the prosperity of one, or more, by
sacrificing that of others; and thus to force
them to unite in such measures only as
would promote the prosperity of all, as the
only means to prevent the suspension of the
action of the government; — and, thereby, to
avoid anarchy, the greatest of all evils. It is
by means of such authorized and effectual
resistance that oppression is prevented, and
the necessity of resorting to force super-
seded, in governments of the concurrent
majority; — and, hence, compromise, instead
of force, becomes their conservative principle.
It would, perhaps, be more strictly correct
to trace the conservative principle of con-
stitutional governments to the necessity
which compels the different interests, or por-
tions, or orders, to compromise, — as the only
way to promote their respective prosperity,
and to avoid anarchy, — rather than to the
compromise itself. No necessity can be more
urgent and imperious than that of avoiding
anarchy. It is the same as that which makes
governmentindispensable to preserve society;
and is not less imperative than that which
compels obedience to superior force. Traced
to this source, the voice of a people, — uttered
under the necessity of avoiding the greatest
of calamities, through the organs of a gov-
ernment so constructed as to suppress the
expression of all partial and selfish interests,
and to give a full and faithful utterance to
the sense of the whole community, in refer-
ence to its common welfare, — may, without
impiety, be called the voice of God. To call
any other so, would be impious.
In stating that force is the conservative
principle of absolute, and compromise of
286
JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN
constitutional governments, I have assumed
both to he perfect in their kind; but not with-
out bearini: in mind that few or none, in
fact, have ever been so absolute as not to be
under some restraint, and none so perfectly
organized as to represent fully and perfectly
the voice of the whole community. Such
being the case, all must, in practice, depart
more or less from the principles by which
they are respectively upheld and preserved;
and depend more or less for support, on
force, or compromise, as the absolute or the
constitutional form predominates in their
respective organizations.
*******
In another particular, governments of the
concurrent majority have greatly the advan-
tage. I allude to the difference in their
respective tendency, in reference to dividing
or uniting the community. That of the con-
current, as has been shown, is to unite the
community, let its interests be ever so diver-
sified or opposed; while that of the numerical
is to divide it into two conflicting portions,
let its interests be, naturally, ever so united
and identified.
That the numerical majority will divide
the community, let it be ever so homogene-
ous, into two great parties, which will be
engaged in perpetual struggles to obtain the
control of the government, has already been
established. The great importance of the
object at stake must necessarily form
strong party attachments and party antip-
athies;— attachments on the part of the
members of each to their respective parties,
through whose eflPorts they hope to accom-
plish an object dear to all; and antipathies
to the opposite party, as presenting the only
obstacle to success.
In order to have a just conception of their
force, it must be taken into consideration
that the object to be won or lost appeals to
the strongest passions of the human heart, —
avarice, ambition, and rivalry. It is not,
then, wonderful that a form of government
which periodically stakes all its honors and
emoluments as prizes to be contended for,
should divide the community into two great
hostile parties; or that party attachments,
in the progress of the strife, should become
so strong among the mem^ers of each respec-
tively as to absorb almost every feeling of
our nature, both social and individual; or
that their mutual antipathies should be car-
ried to such an excess as to destroy, almost
entirely, all sympathy between them, ^nd to
substitute in its place the strongest aversion.
Nor is it surprising that, under their joint
influence, the community should cease to be
the common center of attachment, or that
each party should find that center only in
itself. It is thus, that, in such governments,
devotion to party becomes stronger than
devotion to country; — the promotion of the
interests of party more important than the
promotion of the common good of the whole,
and Its triumph and ascendency, objects of
far greater solicitude than the safety and
prosperity of the community. It is thus,
also, that the numerical majority, by regard-
ing the community as a unit, and having, as
such, the same interests throughout all its
parts, must by its necessary operation divide
it into two hostile parts, waging, under the
forms of law, incessant hostilities against
each other.
The concurrent majority, on the other
hand, tends to unite the most opposite and
conflicting interests, and to blend the whole
in one common attachment to the country.
By giving to each interest, or portion, the
power of self-protection, all strife and struggle
between them for ascendency is prevented;
and, thereby, not only every feeling calcu-
lated to weaken the attachment to the whole
is suppressed, but the individual and the
social feelings are made to unite in one com-
mon devotion to country. Each sees and
feels that it can best promote its own pros-
perity by conciliating the good-will, and pro-
moting the prosperity of the others. And,
hence, there will be diffused throughout the
whole community kind feelings between its
diflerent portions; and, instead of antipathy,
a rivalry amongst them to promote the inter-
ests of each other, as far as this can be done
consistently with the interest of all. Under
the combined influence of these causes, the
interests of each would be merged in the
common interests of the whole; and thus the
community would become a unit, by becom-
ing the common center of attachment of all
its parts. And hence, instead of faction, strife,
and struggle for party ascendency, thert.
would be patriotism, nationality, harmony,
and a struggle only for supremacy in prcK
moting the common good of the whole.
A DISQUISITION ON GOVERNMENT
287
But the difference in their operation, in
this respect, would not end here. Its effects
would be as ^reat in a moral, as I have
attempted to show they would be in a politi-
cal point of view. Indeed, public and private
morals are so nearly allied, that it would be
difficult for it to be otherwise. That which
corrupts and debases the community, politi-
cally, must also corrupt and debase it
morally. The same cause, which, in govern-
ments of the numerical majority, gives to
party attachments and antipathies such
force as to place party triumph and ascend-
ency above the safety and prosperity of the
community, will just as certainly give them
sufficient force to overpower all regard for
truth, justice, sincerity, and moral obliga-
tions of every description. It is, accordingly,
found that, in the violent strifes between
parties for the high and glittering prize of
governmental honors and emoluments, false-
hood, injustice, fraud, artifice, slander, and
breach of faith, are freely resorted to, as
legitimate w^eapons; — followed by all their
corrupting and debasing influences.
In the government of the concurrent
majority, on the contrary, the same cause
which prevents such strife, as the means of
obtaining power, and which makes it the
interest of each portion to conciliate and
promote the interests of the others, would
exert a powerful influence towards purifying
and elevating the character of the govern-
ment and the people, morally as well as
politically. The means of acquiring power, —
or, more correctly, influence, — in such gov-
ernments, would be the reverse. Instead of
the vices, by which it is acquired in that of
the numerical majority, the opposite virtues
— truth, justice, integrity, fidelity, and all
others, by which respect and confidence are
inspired, would be the most certain and
effectual means of acquiring it.
Nor would the good effects resulting thence
be confined to those who take an active part
in political affairs. They would extend to
the whole community. For, of all the causes
which contribute to form the character of a
people, those by which power, influence, and
standing in the government are most cer-
tainly and readily obtained, are, by far, the
most powerful. These are the objects most
eagerly sought of all others by the talented
and aspiring; and the possession of which
commands the greatest respect and admira-
tion. But, just in proportion to this respect
and admiration will be their appreciation by
those whose energy, intellect, and position
in society are calculated to exert the greatest
influence in forming the character of a peo-
ple. If knowledge, wisdom, patriotism, and
virtue be the most certain means of acquiring
them, they will be most highly appreciated
and assiduously cultivated; and this would
cause them to become prominent traits in
the character of the people. But if, on the
contrary, cunning, fraud, treachery, and
party devotion be the most certain, they
will be the most highly prized, and become
marked features in their character. So
powerful, indeed, is the operation of the con-
current majority, in this respect, that, if it
were possible for a corrupt and degenerate
community to establish and maintain a w^ell-
organized government of the kind, it would
of itself purify and regenerate them; while,
on the other hand, a government based
wholly on the numerical majority, would
just as certainly corrupt and debase the most
patriotic and virtuous people. So great is
their difference in this respect, that, just as
the one or the other element predominates
in the construction of any government, in
the same proportion will the character of the
government and the people rise or sink in the
scale of patriotism and virtue. Neither
religion nor education can counteract the
strong tendency of the numerical majority
to corrupt and debase the people.
If the two be compared, in reference to
the ends for which government is ordained,
the superiority of the government of the
concurrent majority will not be less striking.
These, as has been stated, are twofold: to
protect, and to perfect society. But to pre-
serve society, it is necessary to guard the
community against injustice, violence, and
anarchy within, and against attacks from
without. If it fail in either, it would fail in
the primary end of government, and would
not deserve the name.
To perfect society, it is necessary to de-
velop the faculties, intellectual and moral,
with which man is endowed. But the main-
spring to their development, and, through
this, to progress, improvement, and civiliza-
tion, with all their blessings, is the desire of
individuals to better their condition. For
2 88
JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN
tliis purpose, liberty and siecurity are indis-
pensable. Liberty leaves each free to pur-
sue the course he may deem best to promote
his interest and happiness, as far as it may
be compatible with the primary end for
which government is ordained; — while secu-
rity gives assurance to each, that he shall not
be deprived of the fruits of his exertions to
better his condition. These combined, give
to this desire the strongest impulse of which
it is susceptible. For to extend liberty be-
yond the limits assigned would be to weaken
the government and to render it incompetent
to fulfill its primary end, — the protection of
society against dangers, internal and exter-
nal. The effect of this would be, insecurity;
and, of insecurity, — to weaken the impulse
of individuals to better their condition, and
thereby retard progress and improvement.
On the other hand, to extend the powers of
the government, so as to contract the sphere
assigned to liberty, would have the same
effect, by disabling individuals in their
efforts to better their condition.
Herein is to be found the principle which
assigns to power and liberty their proper
spheres, and reconciles each to the other
under all circumstances. For, if power be
necessary to secure to liberty the fruits of
its exertions, liberty, in turn, repays power
with interest, by increased population,
wealth, and other advantages, which progress
and improvement bestow on the community.
By thus assigning to each its appropriate
sphere, all conflicts between them cease; and
each is made to co-operate with and assist
the other, in fulfilling the great ends for
which government is ordained.
But the principle, applied to different
communities, will assign to them different
limits. It will assign a larger sphere to
power and a more contracted one to liberty,
or the reverse, according to circumstances.
To the former, there must ever be allotted,
under all circumstances, a sphere sufficiently
large to protect the community against
danger from without and violence and anar-
chy within. The residuum belongs to liberty.
More cannot be safely or rightly allotted
to it.
But some communities require a far greater
amount of power than others to protect them
against anarchy and external dangers; and,
of course, the sphere of liberty in such must
be proportionally contracted. The causes
calculated to enlarge the one and contract
the other are numerous and various. Some
are physical; — such as open and exposed
frontiers, surrounded by powerful and hos-
tile neighbors. Others are moral; — such as
the different degrees of intelligence, patriot-
ism, and virtue among the mass of the com-
munity, and their experience and proficiency
in the art of self-government. Of these, the
moral are, by far, the most influential. A
community may possess all the necessary
moral qualifications in so high a degree as to
be capable of self-government under the
most adverse circumstances; while, on the
other hand, another may be so sunk in igno-
rance and vice as to be incapable of forming
a conception of liberty, or of living, even
when most favored by circumstances, under
any other than an absolute and despotic
government.
The principle, in all communities, accord-
ing to these numerous and various causes,
assigns to power and liberty their proper
spheres. To allow to liberty, in any case, a
sphere of action more extended than this
assigns, would lead to anarchy; and this,
probably, in the end, to a contraction instead
of an enlargement of its sphere. Liberty,
then, when forced on a people unfit for it,
would, instead of a blessing, be a curse; as it
would, in its reaction, lead directly to
anarchy, — the greatest of all curses. No
people, indeed, can long enjoy more liberty
than that to which their situation and
advanced intelligence and morals fairly
entitle them. If more than this be allowed,
they must soon fall into confusion and dis-
order,— to be followed, if not by anarchy
and despotism, by a change to a form of
government more simple and absolute; and,
therefore, better suited to their condition.
And hence, although it may be true that a
people may not have as much liberty as they
are fairly entitled to, and are capable of
enjoying, — yet the reverse is unquestionably
true, — that no people can long possess more
than they are fairly entitled to.
Liberty, indeed, though among the great-
est of blessings, is not so great as that of pro-
tection; inasmuch as the end of the former
is the progress and improvement of the race,
while that of the latter is its preservation
and perpetuation. And hence, when the
i
A DISQUISITION ON GOVf:RNMENT
289
two come into conflict, liberty must, and
ever ought to, yield to protection; as the
existence of the race is of greater moment
than its improvement.
It follows, from what has been stated, that
it is a great and dangerous error to suppose
that all people are equally entitled to liberty.
It is a reward to be earned, not a blessing to
be gratuitously lavished on all alike; — a
reward reserved for the intelligent, the patri-
otic, the virtuous and deserving; — and not
a boon to be bestowed on a people too
ignorant, degraded, and vicious to be capable
either of appreciating or of enjoying it. Nor
is it any disparagement to liberty that such
is, and ought to be, the case. On the con-
trary, its greatest praise, its proudest dis-
tinction is, that an all-wise Providence has
reserved it as the noblest and highest reward
for the development of our faculties, moral
and intellectual. A reward more appro-
priate than liberty could not be conferred
on the deserving; — nor a punishment in-
flicted on the undeserving more just, than
to be subject to lawless and despotic rule.
This dispensation seems to be the result of
some fixed law; — and every eff^ort to dis-
turb or defeat it, by attempting to elevate
a people in the scale of liberty above the
point to which they are entitled to rise, must
ever prove abortive, and end in disappoint-
ment. The progress of a people rising from
a lower to a higher point in the scale of
liberty is necessarily slow; — and by attempt-
ing to precipitate, we either retard, or per-
manently defeat it.
There is another error, not less great and
dangerous, usually associated with the one
which has just been considered. I refer to
the opinion that liberty and equality are so
intimately united that liberty cannot be per-
fect without perfect equality.
That they are united to a certain extent, —
and that equality of citizens, in the eyes of
the law, is essential to liberty in a popular
government, is conceded. But to go further,
and make equality of condition essential to
liberty, would be to destroy both liberty and
progress. The reason is that inequality of
condition, while it is a necessary conse-
quence of liberty, is, at the same time, indis-
pensable to progress. In order to understand
why this is so, it is necessary to bear in mind
that the mainspring to progress is the desire
of individuals to better their condition; and
that the strongest impulse which can be
given to it is to leave individuals free to
exert themselves in the manner they may
deem best for that purpose, as far at least
as it can be done consistently with the ends
for which government is ordained, — and to
secure to all the fruits of their exertions.
Now, as individuals diflPer greatly from each
other, in intelligence, sagacity, energy, per-
severance, skill, habits of industry and econ-
omy, physical power, position and oppor-
tunity,— the necessary eflPect of leaving all
free to exert themselves to better their con-
dition must be a corresponding inequality
between those who may possess these
qualities and advantages in a high degree,
and those who may be deficient in them.
The only means by which this result can be
prevented are, either to impose such restric-
tions on the exertions of those who may pos-
sess them in a high degree as will place them
on a level with those who do not; or to
deprive them of the fruits of their exertions.
But to impose such restrictions on them
would be destructive of liberty, — while to
deprive them of the fruits of their exertions
would be to destroy the desire of bettering
their condition. It is, indeed, this inequality
of condition between the front and rear ranks,
in the march of progress, which gives so
strong an impulse to the former to maintain
their position, and to the latter to press for-
ward into their files. This gives to progress
its greatest impulse. To force the front rank
back to the rear, or attempt to push forward
the rear into line with the front, by the inter-
position of the government, would put an end
to the impulse, and eflPectually arrest the
march of progress.
These great and dangerous errors have
their origin in the prevalent opinion that all
men are born free and equal; — than which
nothing can be more unfounded and false.
It rests upon the assumption of a fact which
is contrary to universal observation, in what-
ever light it may be regarded. It is, indeed,
difficult to explain how an opinion so desti-
tute of all sound reason ever could have
been so extensively entertained, unless we
regard it as being confounded with another,
which has some semblance of truth; — but
which, when properly understood, is not less
false and dangerous. I refer to the assertion
290
JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN
that all men arc equal in the state of nature;
meaning, by a state of nature, a state of
individuality, supposed to have existed prior
to the social and political state; and in which
men lived apart and independent of each
other. If such a state ever did exist, all men
would have been, indeed, free and equal in
it; that is, free to do as they pleased, and
exempt from the authority or control of
others — as, by supposition, it existed ante-
rior to society and government. But such
a state is purely hypothetical. It never did,
nor can exist; as it is inconsistent with the
preservation and perpetuation of the race.
It is, therefore, a great misnomer to call it
the state of nature. Instead of being the
natural state of man, it is, of all conceivable
states, the most opposed to his nature — most
repugnant to his feelings, and most incom-
patible with his wants. His natural state is
the social and political — the one for which
his Creator made him, and the only one in
which he can preserve and perfect his race.
As, then, there never was such a state as the
so-called state of nature, and never can be,
it follows that men, instead of being born in
it, are born in the social and political state;
and of course, instead of being born free and
equal, are born subject, not only to parental
authority, but to the laws and institutions
of the country where born, and under whose
protection they draw their first breath.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882)
Emerson was born in Boston on 25 May, 1803. His ancestry was not only Puritan but clerical;
yet, as an indication how greatly conditions had changed since the seventeenth century, it may be
mentioned that his father tended towards Unitarian views and that he at one time hoped to found a
church which should have no written expression of creed or covenant. In 181 1 this father died, leav-
ing Mrs. Emerson with five young boys to bring up and with practically no money. Her task was the
more difficult because she thought first of her sons' educations, and only after^vards of food and
clothes; nevertheless, somehow she managed, the sons loyally helping as far as they could. Probably
the influence she exerted can best be seen from a letter she wrote to Waldo just after he had entered
Harvard, in answer to one in which he had described his new living quarters. "Everything respect-
ing you is doubtless interesting to me," she said, "but your domestic arrangements the least of any-
thing, as these rnake no part of the man or the character any further than he learns humility from
his dependence on such trifles as convenient accommodations for his happiness. You, I trust, will rise
superior to these little things, for though small indeed, they consume much time that might be appro-
priated to better purpose and far nobler pursuits." Emerson was to live very completely in the spirit
of this counsel, but this did not immediately become apparent. He was graduated from Harvard in
1821, not at the head, but near the middle of his class, and was chosen class-poet only after seven
others had declined the honor. There followed several years of school-teaching, and preparation for
entrance into the ministry — he was "approbated to preach" in 1826 — and a trip to the South necessi-
tated by ill-health. In 1829 he was called to the Second Church of Boston, as the junior colleague of
Henry Ware, and in the same year he married Miss Ellen Louisa Tucker, of Concord, New Hampshire.
Emerson was now happily settled for his life's work, or so it seemed, for a brief space. But early
in 183 1 his wife died from tuberculosis, and a year and a half afterwards he was compelled to
resign his pastorate. His reasons for this step were characteristic. For some time he had felt an
increasing difficulty about prayer; his position required him to pray at certain stated times, but he
could not pray sincerely unless he was in prayerful mood, and he could not command such a mood
at will. He had likewise come to feel a difficulty about the Lord's Supper, regarding it as an oppres-
sive symbolic rite which he could no longer administer without doing violence to his own convictions.
He explained this to his congregation, concluding: "I have no hostility to this institution: I am only
stating my want of sympathy with it. . . . That is the end of my opposition, that I am not interested
in it." And when his congregation refused to follow him in this, he resigned. It was the courageous
act of a sincere man, bound at any cost to preserve his integrity; or, to put it a little differently, it
was the act of an individualist, sure that his most sacred duties were to himself.
The condition of Emerson's health in the fall of 1832 made travel advisable, and on Christmas
day of this year he sailed for Malta. Thence he went to Sicily, Naples, Rome, Florence, and through
France to England. He was chiefly anxious to encounter a great mind. He sought out Landor.
Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Carlyle — all of them men whose writings had impressed him — but
was disappointed. Carlyle disappointed him least, and this was the beginning of a long friendship
between the two. But, on the whole, he came home (October, 1833) feeling that the work he had
to do must be done independently and could best be done here. That work, which he now faced with
renewed strength and hopefulness, was nothing less than the formulatijiiLof a new ^religion. It is enough
to say here, concerning it, that it was to be a religion without forms, a religion setting^ free the inmost
spiiJL of jTian. not binding the spirit down to the service of alien material symbols. It should be real-
ized that Emerson was not alone in his great aspiration. In America as well as in Europe in the early
nineteenth century there were men almost everywhere who felt that the fabric of society was rotten,
that the old religion was helpless and well-nigh lifeless, and that, if men were to be saved from the
death-like corruption of a materialized civilization given over wholly to the chase after wealth, salva-
tion could come only through a new religion. But Emerson felt, as many others did not, that the
new religion could not be forced, that it could be no sudden discovery, that it must be a growth, and
that he must advance towards it through the gateway of ever-increasing self-knowledge.
In later years, indeed, he concluded that in modern life the school — aiding the individual to
discover, to trust, and to develop his best self through the study of history, literature, and philosophy
291
l()2
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
— had come to take the place which religion had formerly occupied; but apparently when he returned
from F.urope he still hoped that he might find some congregation which would be willing to venture
with him on a path of religious discovery which, whatever else it might come to mean, would
certainly mean the disappearance of creeds and churches. For a time he preached here and there,
where opportunity offered; but it was not long until he was forced to recognize that he could never
find in the pulpit the freedom he needed. At the same time he began to give a few lectures, and so
made the discovery that people would listen with gladness, even with enthusiasm, to whatever he
might say from the lecture-platform, even though those same people would not tolerate him in their
churches. It was a period when the lyceum, with its courses of lectures, was spreading throughout
the country, as if providentially to give Emerson a means of untrammeled communication with people
everywhere, and this determined the outward manner of his life from about 1835 until he became too
old to endure the hardships of an extended winter lecture-tour. The fees from lectures for many years
were small, but he had inherited a small income from his wife, and the total was usually sufficient for
his needs, while he kept the independence which for him was an essential condition of existence. In
1834 he wrote in his Journal: "Henceforth I design not to utter any speech, poem, or book that is not
entirely and peculiarly my work. I will say at public lectures and the like those things which I have
meditated for their own sake and not for the first time with a view to that occasion." To this resolve
he was true. And his method of giving form to his message was as much his own as its substance.
Throughout his life he kept in his Journal a daily record of his thoughts and reading. As this mate-
rial accumulated, he indexed it, gathering it together under general heads which served as the titles of
his lectures. Thus his lectures were made, sometimes with the result that they had no very obvious
coherency. And his essays were in turn compressed from the lectures.
In 1834 Emerson determined to take up his abode in Concord. At first he had quarters in the
Old Manse, where Hawthorne later lived and wrote. In the following year he bought a house at the
edge of the village, and married Miss Lydia Jackson, of Plymouth. And here he and his wife lived
happily during the rest of their days. In the winters he was away, delivering his lectures. In the
winter of 1847-1848 he made a second visit to England, and lectured there. In 1872 the Concord
house burned, but was at once rebuilt, while Emerson made a third journey abroad. During his last
years his mind gradually weakened, and he died at Concord on 27 April, 1882. His position as the
greatest of American men of letters is uncontested and does not need to be insisted upon or justified
here. Mr. John Jay Chapman's essay on him (reprinted in the later portion of this work) serves
as an excellent commentary, and sufficiently explains Emerson's perennial value and significance.
THE RHODORA:
ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE
FLOWERpi
In May, when sea-winds pierced our soli-
tudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods.
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the redbird come his plumes to
cool.
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
1 The selections from Emerson reprinted in this
volume are used by permission of, and by arrangement
with, Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized
publishers.
Emerson collected the greater number of his poems
in two volumes: Poems, 1847, ^"d May-Day and
Other Pieces, 1867. In 1876 he also published a volume
entitled Selected Poems, which contained six previously
uncollected. The Rhodora was written in 1834 and
first published in the fVestern Messenger, 1839.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
Thischarmiswastedontheearth andsky, 10
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for
seemg,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew:
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self-same Power that brought me there
brought you.
EACH AND ALL2
Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked
clown
Of thee from the hill-top looking down;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight.
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
2 Probably written in 1834 or soon thereafter;
first published in Western Messenger, 1839.
CONCORD HYMN
293
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. 10
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.
I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
He sings the song, but it cheers not now.
For I did not bring home the river and sky; —
He sang to my ear, — they sang to my eye.
The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave 20
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave,
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore
With the sun and the sand and the wild up-
roar.
The lover watched his graceful maid,
As 'mid the virgin train she strayed, 30
Nor knew her beauty's best attire
Was woven still by the snow-white choir.
At last she came to his hermitage.
Like the bird from the woodlands to the
cage;—
The gay enchantment was undone,
A gentle wife, but fairy none.
Then I said, 'T covet truth;
Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;
I leave it behind with the games of youth:" —
As I spoke, beneath my feet 40
The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath.
Running over the club-moss burrs;
I inhaled the violet's breath;
Around me stood the oaks and firs;
Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;
Over me soared the eternal sky.
Full of light and of deity;
Again I saw, again I heard,
The rolling river, the morning bird; —
Beauty through my senses stole; 50
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.
THE APOLOGYi
Think me not unkind and rude
That I walk alone in grove and glen;
I go to the god of the wood
To fetch his word to men.
1 Written in 1834 or soon thereafter.
Tax not my sloth that I
Fold my arms beside the brook;
Each cloud that floated in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.
Chide me not, laborious band.
For the idle flowers I brought; 10
Every aster in my hand
Goes home loaded with a thought.
There was never mystery
But 'tis figured in the flowers;
Was never secret history
But birds tell it in the bowers.
One harvest from thy field
Homeward brought the oxen strong;
A second crop thine acres yield.
Which I gather in a song. 20
CONCORD HYMN 2
SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE BATTLE
MONUMENT, JULY 4, 1 83 7
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled.
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward
creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream.
We set to-day a votive stone; 10
That memory may their deed redeem.
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free.
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
* Written probably not long before the day on
which it was sung.
294
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
THE HUMBLE-BEE 1
Burly, dozing Inimhle-hec,
W'hcTo tlioii art is clinic for me.
Let them sail for l*orto Riqiic,
Far-ofF heats through seas to seek;
I will follow thcc alone,
Thou animated torrid-zone!
Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer,
Let me chase thy waving lines;
Keep me nearer, me thy hearer,
Singing over shrubs and vines.
Insect lover of the sun,
Joy of th}^ dominion!
Sailor of the atmosphere;
Swimmer through the waves of air;
Voyager of light and noon;
Epicurean of June;
Wait, I prithee, till I come
Within earshot of thy hum, —
All without is martyrdom.
When the south wind, in May days,
With a net of shinmg haze
Silvers the horizon wall.
And with softness touching all.
Tints the human countenance
With a color of romance,
And infusing subtle heats.
Turns the sod to violets.
Thou, in sunny solitudes.
Rover of the underwoods,
The green silence dost displace
With thy mellow, breezy bass.
Hot midsummer's petted crone,
Sweet to me thy drowsy tone
Tells of countless sunny hours.
Long days, and solid banks of flowers;
Of gulfs of sweetness without bound
In Indian wildernesses found;
Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure.
Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure.
Aught unsavory or unclean
Hath my insect never seen;
But violets and bilberry bells.
Maple-sap and dafFodels,
10
20
30
40
1 Written probably in 1837. In the Journal for
this year there is entered under 9 May: "Yesterday
in the woods I followed the fine humble-bee with
rhymes and fancies fine."
SO
60
Grass with green flag half-mast high.
Succory to match the sky.
Columbine with horn of honey.
Scented fern, and agrimony.
Clover, catchfly, adder's-tongue
And brier-roses, dwelt among;
All beside was unknown waste,
All was picture as he passed.
Wiser far than human seer.
Yellow-breeched philosopher!
Seeing only what is fair.
Sipping only what is sweet.
Thou dost mock at fate and care.
Leave the chaflF, and take the wheat.
When the fierce northwestern blast
Cools sea and land so far and fast.
Thou already slumberest deep;
Woe and want thou canst outsleep;
Want and woe, which torture us,
Thy sleep makes ridiculous.
THE PROBLEM 2
I LIKE a church; I like a cowl;
I love a prophet of the soul;
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles;
Yet not for all his faith can see
Would I that cowled churchman be.
Why should the vest on him allure.
Which I could not on me endure?
Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
Never from lips of cunning fell
The thrilling Delphic oracle;
Out from the heart of nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame.
Up from the burning core below, — ■
The canticles of love and woe:
The hand that rounded Peter's dome
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome 20
Wrought in a sad sincerity:
Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew; —
The conscious stone to beauty grew.
10
2 Written on 10 November, 1839; first published in
the Dial, 1840.
THE SPHINX
295
Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's
nest
Of leaves, and feathers from her breast?
Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
Painting with morn each annual cell?
Or how the sacred pine-tree adds
To her old leaves new myriads? 30
Such and so grew these holy piles.
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,
As the best gem upon her zone,
And Morning opes with haste her lids
To gaze upon the Pyramids;
O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,
As on its friends, with kindred eye;
For out of Thought's interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air; 40
And Nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race.
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat.
These temples grew as grows the grass;
Art might obey, but not surpass.
The passive Master lent his hand
To the vast soul that o'er him planned;
And the same power that reared the shrine
Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. 50
Ever the fiery Pentecost
Girds with one flame the countless host.
Trances the heart through chanting choirs.
And through the priest the mind inspires.
The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sibyls told.
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind. 60
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost.
I know what say the fathers wise, —
The Book itself before me lies.
Old Chrysostoniy best Augustine,
And he who blent both in his line,
The younger Golden Lips or mines,
Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines. ^
His words are music in my ear,
I see his cowled portrait dear; 70
And yet, for all his faith could see,
I would not the good bishop be.
1 Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), Bishop of Down and
Connor. In a letter of 8 January, 1 761 , William Mason
wrote to Thomas Gray: "After all, why will you not read
Jeremy Taylor? Take my word and more for it, he is
the Shakespeare of divines."
THE SPHINX2
The Sphinx is drowsy.
Her wings are furled:
Her ear is heavy.
She broods on the world.
"Who'll tell me my secret,
The ages have kept? —
I awaited the seer
While they slumbered and slept: —
"The fate of the man-child,
The meaning of man; lO
Known fruit of the unknown;
Daedalian plan;
Out of sleeping a waking.
Out of waking a sleep;
Life death overtaking;
Deep underneath deep?
"Erect as a sunbeam,
Upspringeth the palm;
The elephant browses.
Undaunted and calm; 20
In beautiful motion
The thrush plies his wings;
Kind leaves of his covert,
Your silence he sings.
"The waves, unashamed,
In diflference sweet.
Play glad with the breezes,
Old playfellows meet;
The journeying atoms,
PrinK)rdial wholes, ' 30
Firmly draw, firmly drive.
By their animate poles.
"Sea, earth, air, sound, silence,
Plant, quadruped, bird.
By one music enchanted,
One deity stirred, —
Each the other adorning,
Accompany still;
Night veileth the morning.
The vapor the hill. 40
2 First published in the Dial, January, 184I. Emer-
son's statement of the meaning of this poem (quoted
by E. W. F^mcrson) is as follows: "The perception of
identity unites all things and explains one by another,
and the most rare and strange is equally facile as the
most common. But if the mind live only in particulars,
and see only differences (wanting the power to see tlie
whole — all in each), then the world addresses to this
mind a question it cannot answer, and each new fact
tears it in pieces, and it is vanquished by the distracting
variety."
296
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"The babe by its mother
Lies bathed in joy;
Glide its hours uncounted, —
The sun is its toy;
Shines the peace of all being,
Without cloud, in its eyes;
And the sum of the world
In soft miniature lies.
**But man crouches and blushes,
Absconds and conceals; 50
He creepeth and peepcth,
He palters and steals;
Infirm, melancholy,
Jealous glancing around,
An oaf, an accomplice,
He poisons the ground.
"Out spoke the great mother.
Beholding his fear; —
At the sound of her accents
Cold shuddered the sphere: — 60
'Who has drugged my boy's cup?
Who has mixed my boy's bread?
Who, with sadness and madness,
Has turned my child's head?"*
I heard a poet answer
Aloud and cheerfully,
"Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges
Are pleasant songs to me.
Deep love lieth under
These pictures of time; , 70
They fade in the light of
Their meaning sublime.
"The fiend that man harries
Is love of the Best;
Yawns the pit of the Dragon,
Lit by rays from the Blest.
The Lethe of Nature
Can't trance him again.
Whose soul sees the perfect.
Which his eyes seek in vain. 80
"lb vision profounder,
Man's spirit must dive;
His aye-rolling orb
At no goal will arrive;
The heavens that now draw him
With sweetness untold,
Once found, — for new heavens
He spurneth the old.
90
100
"Pride ruined the angels,
Their shame them restores;
Lurks the joy that is sweetest
In stings of remorse.
Have I a lover
Who is noble and free? —
I would he were nobler
Than to love me.
"Eterne alternation
Now follows, now flies;
And under pain, pleasure, —
Under pleasure, pain lies.
Love works at the center.
Heart-heaving alway;
Forth speed the strong pulses
To the borders of day.
"Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits;
Thy sight is growing blear;
Rue, myrrh and cummin for the Sphinx,
Her muddy eyes to clear!"
The old Sphinx bit her thick lip, —
Said, "Who taught thee me to name? no
I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow;
Of thine eye I am eyebeam.
"Thou art the unanswered question;
Couldst see thy proper eye,
Alway it asketh, asketh;
And each answer is a lie.
So take thy quest through nature.
It through thousand natures ply;
Ask on, thou clothed eternity;
Time is the false reply."
120
Uprose the merry Sphinx,
And crouched no more in stone;
She melted into purple cloud.
She silvered in the moon;
She spired into a yellow flame;
She flowered in blossoms red;
She flowed into a foaming wave:
She stood Monadnoc's head.
Thorough a thousand voices
Spoke the universal dame;
"Who telleth one of my meanings
Is master of all I am."
130
TO J. W.
297
THE SNOW-STORM 1
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight; the whited air
Hides hills and woods; the river, and the
heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's
end.
The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's
feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates
sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north wind's masonry. 10
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected
roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or
door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, 20
Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the
world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not.
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished
Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone.
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work.
The frolic architecture of the snow.
FABLE 2
The mountain and the squirrel
Had a quarrel.
And the former called the latter "Little
Prig";
Bun replied,
"You are doubtless very big;
But all sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together,
To make up a year
And a sphere.
1 First published in the Dialy January, 184I.
'Probably written in 1845.
And I think it no disgrace 10
lo occupy my place.
If I'm not so large as you,
You are not so small as I,
And not half so spry.
I'll not deny you make
A very pretty squirrel track;
Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;
If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut."
FORBEARANCE.'
Hast thou named all the birds w ithout a gun ?
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?
At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse?
Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust?
And loved so well a high behavior,
In man or maid, that thou from speech re-
frained,
Nobility more nobly to repay?
O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!
TO J. W.4
Set not thy foot on graves;
Hear what wine and roses say;
The mountain chase, the summer waves.
The crowded town, thy feet may well delay.
Set not thy foot on graves;
Nor seek to unwind the shroud
Which charitable Time
And Nature have allowed
To wrap the errors of a sage sublime.
Set not thy foot on graves; 10
Care not to strip the dead
Of his sad ornament.
His myrrh, and wine, and rings,
His sheet of lead.
And trophies buried:
Go, get them where he earned them when
alive;
As resolutely dig or dive.
Life is too short to waste
In critic peep or cynic bark.
Quarrel or reprimand: 20
'Twill soon be dark;
Up! mind thine own aim, and
God speed the mark!
» First published in the Dialy January, 1842.
< I.e., John Weiss, clergyman and writer, who,
Emerson thought, dwelt too much on Goethe's failings.
First published in 1847.
298
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
DESTlNYi
That you are fair or wise is vain,
Or stroni;, or rich, or generous;
Y'ou must have also the untaught strain
That sheds beauty on a rose.
There's a melody born of melody,
Which melts the world into a sea.
Toil could never compass it;
Art its height could never hit;
It came never out of wit;
But a music music-born lo
Well may Jove and Juno scorn.
Thy beauty, if it lack the fire
Which drives me mad with sweet desire.
What boots it.** What the soldier's mail.
Unless he conquer and prevail.''
What all the goods thy pride which lift,
If thou pine for another's gift.''
Alas! that one is born in blight.
Victim of perpetual slight:
When thou lookest on his face, 20
Thy heart saith, "Brother, go thy ways!
None shall ask thee what thou doest.
Or care a rush for what thou knowest,
Or listen when thou repliest,
Or remember where thou liest,
Or how thy supper is sodden";
And another is born
To make the sun forgotten.
Surely he carries a talisman
Under his tongue; 30
Broad his shoulders are and strong;
And his eye is scornful,
Threatening, and young.
I hold it of little matter
Whether your jewel be of pure water,
A rose diamond or a white.
But whether it dazzle me with light.
I care not how you are dressed.
In coarsest weeds or in the best;
Nor whether your name is base or brave; 40
Nor for the fashion of your behavior;
But whether you charm me,
Bid my bread feed and my fire warm me,
And dress up Nature in your favor.
One thing is forever good;
That one thing is Success, —
Dear to the Eumenides,
And to all the heavenly brood.
Who bides at home, nor looks abroad,
Carries the eagles, and masters the sword. 50
* First published in the D/W, October, 1841, under a
different title, Fate.
10
ODE
INSCRIBED TO W. H. CHANNING
Though loath to grieve
The evil time's sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My honeyed thought
For the priest's cant,
Or statesman's rant.
If I refuse
My study for their politique,
Which at the best is trick,
The angry Muse
Puts confusion in my brain.
But who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind.
Of better arts and life.?
Go, blindworm, go.
Behold the famous States
Harrying Mexico
With rifle and with knife!
Or who, with accent bolder.
Dare praise the freedom-loving moun-
taineer.'' 20
I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook!
And in thy valleys, Agiochook!
The jackals of the negro-holder.
The God who made New Hampshire
Taunted the lofty land
With little men; —
Small bat and wren
House in the oak: —
If earth-fire cleave
The upheaved land, and bury the folk, 30
The southern crocodile would grieve.
Virtue palters; Right is hence;
Freedom praised, but hid;
Funeral eloquence
Rattles the coffin-lid.
What boots thy zeal,
O glowing friend,
That would indignant rend
The northland from the south?
Wherefore.? to what good end.?
Boston Bay and Bunker Hill
Would serve things still; —
Things are of the snake.
40
2 Probably written in 1846, as a statement of his
position when (as E. W. Emerson conjectares)
Channing was urging him to join the ranks of the
abolitionists. Published in 1847.
GIVE ALL TO LOVE
299
The horseman serves the horse,
The neatherd serves the neat,
The merchant serves the purse,
The eater serves his meat;
'Tis the day of the chattel,
Web to v^eave, and corn to grind;
Things are in the saddle, 50
And ride mankind.
There are two laws discrete,
Not reconciled, —
Law for man, and law for thing;
The last builds town and fleet,
But it runs wild,
And doth the man unking.
'Tis fit the forest fall.
The steep be graded,
The mountain tunneled, 60
The sand shaded.
The orchard planted.
The glebe tilled.
The prairie granted,
The steamer built.
Let man serve law for man;
Live for friendship, live for love.
For truth's and harmony's behoof;
The state may follow how it can.
As Olympus follows Jove. 70
Yet do not I implore
The wrinkled shopman to my sounding
woods.
Nor bid the unwilling senator
Ask votes of thrushes in the solitudes.
Every one to his chosen work; —
Foolish hands may mix and mar;
Wise and sure the issues are.
Round they roll till dark is light,
Sex to sex, and even to odd; —
The over-god 80
Who marries Right to Might,
Who peoples, unpeoples, —
He who exterminates
Races by stronger races.
Black by white faces, —
Knows to bring honey
Out of the lion;
Grafts gentlest scion
On pirate and Turk.
The Cossack eats Poland,
Like stolen fruit;
90
Her last noble is ruined.
Her last poet mute:
Straight, into double band
The victors divide;
Half for freedom strike and stand; —
The astonished Muse finds thousands at
her side.
GIVE ALL TO LOVEi
Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good-fame.
Plans, credit, and the Muse, —
Nothing refuse.
'Tis a braver master;
Let it have scope:
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope:
High and more high ,
It dives into noon.
With wing unspent,
Untold intent;
But it is a god.
Knows its own path
And the outlets of the sky.
10
It was never for the mean;
It requireth courage stout.
Souls above doubt.
Valor unbending.
It will reward, —
They shall return
More than they were,
And ever ascending.
Leave all for love;
Yet, hear me, yet,
One word more thy heart behoved.
One pulse more of firm endeavor, —
Keep thee to-day,
To-morrow, forever.
Free as an Arab
Of thy beloved.
Cling with life to the maid;
But when the surprise.
First vague shadow of surmise
Flits across her bosom young.
Of a joy apart from thee,
Free be she, fancy-free;
1 First published in 1847.
20
30
300
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Nor tliou detain her vesture's hem, 40
Nor the palest rose she flung
From her summer diadem.
Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Though her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive;
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive.
MUSKETAQUIDi
Because I was content with these poor fields,
Low, open meads, slender and sluggish
streams,
And found a home in haunts which others
scorned,
The partial wood-gods overpaid my love,
And granted me the freedom of their state.
And in their secret senate have prevailed
With the dear, dangerous lords that rule our
life.
Made moon and planets parties to their
bond,
And through my rock-like, solitary wont
Shot million rays of thought and tender-
ness. 10
For me, in showers, in sweeping showers, the
Spring
Visits the valley; — break away the clouds, —
I bathe in the morn's soft and silvered air.
And loiter willing by yon loitering stream.
Sparrows far off, and nearer, April's bird.
Blue-coated, — flying before from tree to
tree.
Courageous sing a delicate overture
To lead the tardy concert of the year.
Onward and. nearer rides the sun of May;
And wide around, the marriage of the
plants 20
Is sweetly solemnized. Then flows amain
The surge of summer's beauty; dell and crag.
Hollow and lake, hillside and pine arcade.
Are touched with genius. Yonder ragged
cliff
Has thousand faces in a thousand hours.
Beneath low hills, in the broad interval
Through which at will our Indian rivulet
Winds mindful still of sannup and of squaw,
1 First published in 1847.
Whose pipe and arrowoft the plough unburies.
Here in pine houses built of new-fallen
trees, 30
Supplanters of the tribe, the farmers dwell.
Traveler, to thee, perchance, a tedious road,
Or, it may be, a picture; to these men.
The landscape is an armory of powers.
Which, one by one, they know to draw and
use.
They harness beast, bird, insect, to their
work;
They prove the virtues of each bed of rock,
And, like the chemist 'mid his loaded jars.
Draw from each stratum its adapted use
To drug their crops or weapon their arts
withal. 40
They turn the frost upon their chemic heap.
They set the wind to winnow pulse and grain.
They thank the spring-flood for its fertile
slime.
And, on cheap summit-levels of the snow,
Slide with the sledge to inaccessible woods
O'er meadows bottomless. So, year by year.
They fight the elements with elements
(That one would say, meadow and forest
walked.
Transmuted in these men to rule their like).
And by the order in the field disclose 50
The order regnant in the yeoman's brain.
What these strong masters wrote at large in
miles,
I followed in small copy in my acre;
For there's no rood has not a star above it;
The cordial quality of pear or plum
Ascends as gladly in a single tree
As in broad orchards resonant with bees;
And every atom poises for itself.
And for the whole. The gentle deities
Showed me the lore of colors and of
sounds, 60
The innumerable tenements of beauty.
The miracle of generative force.
Far-reaching concords of astronomy
Felt in the plants and in the punctual birds;
Better, the linked purpose of the whole,
And, chiefest prize, found I true liberty
In the glad home plain-dealing Nature gave.
The polite found me impolite; the great
Would mortify me, but in vain; for still
I am a willow of the wilderness, 70
Loving the wind that bent me. All my hurts
My garden spade can heal. A woodland
walk,
ODE
301
A quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush,
A wild-rose, or rock-loving columbine,
Salve my worst wounds.
For thus the wood-gods murmured in my
ear:
"Dost love our manners? Canst thou silent
lie?
Canst thou, thy pride forgot, like Nature pass
Into the winter night's extinguished mood ?
Canst thou shine now, then darkle, 80
And being latent, feel thyself no less?
As, when the all-worshiped moon attracts
the eye,
The river, hill, stems, foliage are obscure,
Yet envies none, none are unenviable."
DAYSi
Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes.
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will.
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds
them all.
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp.
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late, 10
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.
TWO RIVERS 2
Thy summer voice, Musketaquit,
Repeats the music of the rain;
But sweeter rivers pulsing flit
Through thee, as thou through Concord
Plain.
Thou in thy narrow banks art pent:
The stream I love unbounded goes
Through flood and sea and firmament;
Through light, through life, it forward flows.
I see the inundation sweet,
I hear the spending of the stream 10
Through years, through men, through Na-
ture fleet,
Through love and thought, through power
and dream.
Musketaquit, a goblin strong.
Of shard and flint makes jewels gay;
They lose their grief who hear his song,
And where he winds is the day of day.
So forth and brighter fares my stream, —
Who drink it shall not thirst again;
No darkness stains its equal gleam
And ages drop in it like rain. 20
BRAHMA^
If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt.
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.
ODE
SUNG IN THE TOWN HALL, CONCORD,
JULY 4, 1857
O TENDERLY the haughty day
Fills his blue urn with fire;
One morn is in the mighty heaven,
And one in our desire.
The cannon booms from town to town.
Our pulses beat not less,
The joy-bells chime their tidings down, '
Which children's voices bless.
For He that flung the broad blue fold
O'er-mantling land and sea,
One third part of the sky unrolled
For the banner of the free.
10
10
^Written in 1851 or 1852; first published in 1857,
in the first number of The Atlantic Monthly.
' Begun, though possibly not finished, in 1856; first
published in The Atlantic Monthly^ January, 1858.
3 First published in the first number of The Atlantic
Monthly^ 1857. When Emerson heard that people
were puzzled by this poem he remarked to his daughter:
"If you tell them to say Jehovah instead of Brahma
they will not feel any perplexity."
302
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The men arc ripe of Saxon kind
To build an equal state, —
To take the statute from the mind,
And make of duty fate.
United States! the ao:es plead, —
Present and Past in under-song, —
Go put your creed into your deed,
Nor speak with double tongue. 20
For sea and land don't understand,
Nor skies without a frown
See rights for which the one hand fights
By the other cloven down.
Be just at home; then write your scroll
Of honor o'er the sea,
And bid the broad Atlantic roll,
A ferry of the free.
And henceforth there shall be no chain.
Save underneath the sea 30
The wires shall murmur through the main
Sweet songs of liberty.
The conscious stars accord above.
The waters wild below,
And under, through the cable wove,
Her fiery errands go.
For He that worketh high and wise,
Nor pauses in his plan,
Will take the sun out of the skies
Ere freedom out of man. 40
WALDEINSAMKEITi
I DO not count the hours I spend
In wandering by the sea;
The forest is my loyal friend.
Like God it useth me.
In plains that room for shadows make
Of skirting hills to lie,
Bound in by streams which give and take
Their colors from the sky;
Or on the mountain-crest sublime,
Or down the oaken glade, 10
O what have I to do with time?
For this the day was made.
1 I.e.y Forest Solitude. Begun in the summer of
1857; published in Atlantic Monthly , October, 1858.
Cities of mortals woe-begone
Fantastic care derides,
But in the serious landscape lone
Stern benefit abides.
Sheen will tarnish, honey cloy.
And merry is only a mask of sad.
But, sober on a fund of joy,
1 he woods at heart are glad. 20
There the great Planter plants
Of fruitful worlds the grain,
And with a million spells enchants
The souls that walk in pain.
Still on the seeds of all he made
I he rose of beauty burns;
Through times that wear and forms that
fade,
Immortal youth returns.
The black ducks mounting from the lake.
The pigeon in the pines, 30
The bittern's boom, a desert make
Which no false art refines.
Down in yon watery nook.
Where bearded mists divide.
The gray old gods whom Chaos knew,
The sires of Nature, hide.
Aloft, in secret veins of air.
Blows the sweet breath of song,
O, few to scale those uplands dare.
Though they to all belong! 40
See thou bring not to field or stone
The fancies found in books;
Leave authors' eyes, and fetch your own,
To brave the landscape's looks.
Oblivion here thy wisdom is.
Thy thrift, the sleep of cares;
For a proud idleness like this
Crowns all thy mean aflFairs.
NATURE 2
A subtle chain of countless rings
The next unto the farthest brings;
The eye reads omens where it goes,
And speaks all languages the rose;
And, striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.
2 Emerson's first volume, publjshed 1836 (the verses
under the title were added in the second edition, 1849).
The volume is here reprinted in its entirety.
NATURE
303
INTRODUCTION
Our age is retrospective. It builds the
sepulchers of the fathers. It writes biogra-
phies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing
generations beheld God and nature face
to face; we, through their eyes. Why should
not we also enjoy an original relation to the
universe.'' Why should not we have a poetry
and philosophy of insight and not of tradi-
tion, and a religion by revelation to us, and
not the history of theirs.^ Embosomed for a
season in nature, whose floods of life stream
around and through us, and invite us, by the
powers they supply, to action proportioned to
nature, why should we grope among the dry
bones of the past, or put the living genera-
tion into masquerade out of its faded ward-
robe? The sun shines to-day also. There is
more wool and flax in the fields. There are
new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us
demand our own works and laws and wor-
ship.
Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask
which are unanswerable. We must trust the
perfection of the creation so far as to believe
that whatever curiosity the order of things
has awakened in our minds, the order of
things can satisfy. Every man's condition
is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inqui-
ries he would put. He acts it as life, before
he apprehends it as truth. In like manner,
nature is already, in its forms and tendencies,
describing its ow^n design. Let us interrogate
the great apparition that shines so peacefully
around us. Let us inquire, to what end is
nature.''
All science has one aim, namely, to find a
theory of nature. W^e have theories of races
and of functions, but scarcely yet a remote
approach to an idea of creation. We are
now so far from the road to truth, that re-
ligious teachers dispute and hate each other,
and speculative men are esteemed unsound
and frivolous. But to a sound judgment,
the most abstract truth is the most practical.
Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its
own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain
all phenomena. Now many are thought not
only unexplained but inexplicable; as lan-
guage, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts, sex.
Philosophically considered, the universe is
composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly
speaking, therefore, all that is separate from
us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the
NOT ME, that is, both nature and art, all
other men and my own body, must be
ranked under this name. Nature. In
enumerating the values of nature and casting
up their sum, I shall use the word in both
senses; — in its common and in its philosoph-
ical import. In inquiries so general as our
present one, the inaccuracy is not material;
no confusion of thought will occur. Nature^
in the common sense, refers to essences un-
changed by man; space, the air, the river, the
leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of his will
with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a
statue, a picture. But his operations taken
together are so insignificant, a little chipping,
baking, patching, and washing, that in an im-
pression so grand as that of the world on the
human mind, they do not vary the result.
I. NATURE
To go into solitude, a man needs to retire
as much from his chamber as from society.
I am not solitary whilst I read and write,
though nobody is with me. But if a man
would be alone, let him look at the stars.
The rays that come from those heavenly
worlds will separate between him and what
he touches. One might think the atmo-
sphere was made transparent with this de-
sign, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the
perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in
the streets of cities, how great they are! If
the stars should appear one night in a thou-
sand years, how would men believe and
adore; and preserve for many generations the
remembrance of the city of God which had
been shown! But every night come out these
envoys of beauty, and light the universe
with their admonishing smile.
The stars awaken a certain reverence, be-
cause though always present, they are inac-
cessible; but all natural objects make a kin-
dred impression, when the mind is open to
their influence. Nature never wears, a mean
a^ppearance. Neither does the wisest man
extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by
finding out all her perfection. Nature never
became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers,
the animals, the mountains, reflected the
wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had
delighted the simplicity of his childhood.
W hen we speak of nature in this manner,
304
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
we have a distinct but most poetical sense in
the mind. We mean the intef^rity of impres-
sion made by manifold natural objects. It is
this which distinguishes the stick of timber
of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet.
The charminji landscape which I saw this
morninp: is indubitably made up of some
twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this
field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland
beyond. But none of them owns the land-
scape. There is a property in the horizon
which no man has but he whose eye can inte-
grate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is
the best part of these men's farms, yet to this
their warranty-deeds give no title.
To speak truly, few adult persons can see
nature. Most persons do not see the sun.
At least they have a very superficial seeing.
The sun illuminates only the eye of the man,
but shines into the eye and the heart of the
child. The lover of nature is he whose in-
ward and outward senses are still truly ad-
justed to each other; who has retained the
spiritof infancy even into the era of manhood.
His intercourse with heaven and earth be-
comes part of his daily food. In the presence
of nature a wild delight runs through the man,
in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, — he is
my creature, and maugre all his impertinent
griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun
or the summer alone, but every hour and
season yields its tribute of delight; for every
hour and change corresponds to and author-
izes a different state of the mind, from breath-
less noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is
a setting that fits equally well a comic or a
mourning piece. In good health, the air is a
cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare
common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under
a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts
any occurrence of special good fortune, I
have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am
glad to the brink of fear. In the woods, too,
a man casts off his years, as the snake his
slough, and at what period soever of life, is
always a child. In the woods is perpetual
youth. Within these plantations of God, a
decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial fes-
tival is dressed, and the guest sees not how
he should tire of them in a thousand years.
In the woods, we return to reason and faith.
There I feel that nothing can befall me in life,
— no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my
eyes), which nature cannot repair. Stariding
on the bare ground, — my head bathed by
the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite
space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I be-
come a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I
see all; the currents of the Universal Being
circulate through me; I am part or parcel of
God. The name of the nearest fr'end sounds
then foreign and accidental: to be brothers,
to be acquaintances, master or servant, is
then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the
lover of uncontained and immortal beauty.
In the wilderness, I find something mo e dear
and connate than in streets or villages. In
the tranquil landscape, and especially in the
distant line of the horizon, man beholds
somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.
The greatest delight which the fields and
woods minister is the suggestion of an occult
relation between man and the vegetable. I
am not alone and unacknowledged. They
nod to me, and I to them. The waving of
the boughs in the storm is new to me and old.
It takes me by surprise, and yet is not un-
known. Its eflPect is like that of a higher
thought or a better emotion coming over me,
when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing
right.
Yet it is certain that the power to produce
this delight does not reside in nature, but in
man, or in a harmony of both. It is neces-
sary to use these pleasures with great tem-
perance. For nature is not always tricked in
holiday attire, but the same scene which
yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as
for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread
with melancholy to-day. Nature always
wears the colors of the spirit. To a man
laboring under calamity, the heat of his own
fire hath sadness in it. Then there is a kind
of contempt of the landscape felt by him who
has just lost by death a dear friend. The
sky is less grand as it shuts down over less
worth in the population.
II. COMMODITY
Whoever considers the final cause of the
world will discern a multitude of uses that
enter as parts into that result. They all ad-
mit of being thrown into one of the following
classes: Commodity; Beauty; Language; and
Discipline.
Under the general name of commodity, I
rank all those advantages which our senses
NATURE
305
owe to nature. This, of course, is a benefit
which is temporary and mediate, not ulti-
mate, like its service to the soul. Yet al-
though low, it is perfect in its kind, and is the
only use of nature which all men apprehend.
The misery of man appears like childish
petulance, when we explore the steady and
prodigal provision that has been made for
his support and delight on this green ball
which floats him through the heavens. What
angels invented these splendid ornaments,
these rich conveniences, this ocean of air
above, this ocean of water beneath, this
firmament of earth between? this zodiac of
lights, this tent of dropping clouds, this
striped coat of climates, this fourfold year.^*
Beasts, fire, water, stones, and corn serve
him. The field is at once his floor, his work-
yard, his play-ground, his garden, and his
bed.
More servants wait on man
Than he'll take notice of.
Nature, in its ministry to man, is not only
the material, but is also the process and the
result. All the parts incessantly work into
each other's hands for the profit of man.
The wind sows the seed; the sun evaporates
the sea; the wind blows the vapor to the
field; the ice, on the other side of the planet,
condenses rain on this; the rain feeds the
plant; the plant feeds the animal; and thus
the endless circulations of the divine charity
nourish man.
The useful arts are reproductions or new
combinations by the wit of man, of the same
natural benefactors. He no longer waits for
favoring gales, but by means of steam, he
realizes the fable of iEolus's bag, and carries
the two and thirty winds in the boiler of his
boat. To diminish friction, he paves the
road with iron bars, and, mounting a coach
with a ship-load of men, animals, and mer-
chandise behind him, he darts through the
country, from town to town, like an eagle or a
swallow through the air. By the aggregate
of these aids, how is the face of the world
changed, from the era of Noah to that of
Napoleon! The private poor man hath
cities, ships, canals, bridges, built for him.
He goes to the post-oflRce, and the human
race run on his errands; to the book-shop,
and the human race read and write of all that
happens, for him; to the court-house, and
nations repair his wrongs. He sets his house
upon the road, and the human race go forth
every morning, and shovel out the snow, and
cut a path for him.
But there is no need of specifying particu-
lars in this class of uses. 1 he catalogue is
endless, and the examples so obvious, that I
shall leave them to the reader's reflection,
with the general remark, that this mercenary
benefit is one which has respect to a farther
good. A man is fed, not that he may be fed,
but that he may work.
HI. BEAUTY
A NOBLER want of man is served by nature,
namely, the love of Beauty.
The ancient Greeks called the world /cocr/ios,
beauty. Such is the constitution of all
things, or such the plastic power of the
human eye, that the primary forms, as the sky,
the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a
delight in and for themselves; a pleasure aris-
ing from outline, color, motion, and grouping.
This seems partly owing to the eye itself.
The eye is the best of artists. By the mutual
action of its structure and of the laws of
light, perspective is produced, which inte-
grates every mass of objects, of what char-
acter soever, into a well colored and shaded
globe, so that where the particular objects are
mean and unaffecting, the landscape which
they compose is round and symmetrical.
And as the eye is the best composer, so light
is the first of painters. There is no object so
foul that intense light will not make beauti-
ful. And the stimulus it affords to the sense,
and a sort of infinitude which it hath, like
space and time, make all matter gay. Even
the corpse has its own beauty. But besides
this general grace diffused over nature, al-
most all the individual forms are agreeable to
the eye, as is proved by our endless imitations
of some of them, as the acorn, the grape, the
pine-cone, the wheat-ear, the egg, the wings
and forms of most birds, the lion's claw, the
serpent, the butterfly, sea-shells, flames,
clouds, buds, leaves, and the forms of many
trees, as the palm.
For better consideration, we may dis-
tribute the aspects of Beauty in a threefold
manner.
I. First, the simple perception of natural
forms is a delight. The influence of the
3o6
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
forms ami actions in nature is so needful to
man, that, in its lowest functions, it seems to
lie on the confines of commodity and beauty.
To the body and mind which have been
cramped by noxious work or company,
nature is medicinal and restores their tone.
The tradesman, the attorney comes out of
the din and craft of the street and sees the
sky and the woods, and is a man again. In
their eternal calm, he finds himself. 1 he
health of the eye seems to demand a horizon.
We are never tired, so long as we can see far
enough.
Hut in other hours, Nature satisfies by its
loveliness, and without any mixture of cor-
poreal benefit. I see the spectacle of morning
from the hill-top over against my house, from
day-break to sun-rise, with emotions which
an angel might share. The long slender bars
of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson
light. From the earth, as a shore, I look out
into that silent sea. I seem to partake its
rapid transformations; the active enchant-
ment reaches my dust, and I dilate and con-
spire with the morning wind. How does
Nature deify us with a few and cheap ele-
ments! Give me health and a day, and I
will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.
The dawn is my Assyria; the sunset and
moon-rise my Paphos, and unimaginable
realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my
England of the senses and the understanding;
the night shall be my Germany of mystic
philosophy and dreams.
Not less excellent, except for our less sus-
ceptibility in the afternoon, was the charm,
last evening, of a January sunset. The
western clouds divided and subdivided them-
selves into pink flakes modulated with tints
of unspeakable softness, and the air had so
much life and sweetness that it was a pain to
come within doors. What was it that nature
would say.'* Was there no meaning in the live
repose of the valley behind the mill, and which
Homer or Shakespeare could not re-form for
me in words? The leafless trees become
spires of flame in the sunset, with the blue
east for their background, and the stars of
the dead calices of flowers, and every with-
ered stem and stubble rimed with frost, con-
tribute something to the mute music.
The inhabitants of cities suppose that the
country landscape is pleasant only half the
year. I please myself with the graces of
the winter scenery, and believe that we are as
much touched by it as by the genial influ-
ences of summer. To the attentive eye, each
moment of the year has its own beauty, and
in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a
picture which was never seen before, and
which shall never be seen again. The heavens
change every moment, and reflect their glory
or gloom on the plains beneath. The state
of the crop in the surrounding farms alters
the expression of the earth from week to
week. The succession of native plants in the
pastures and roadsides, which ma.kes the
silent clock by which time tells the summer
hours, will make even the divisions of the day
sensible to a keen observer. The tribes of
birds and insects, like the plants punctual to
their time, follow each other, and the year has
room for all. By watercourses, the variety
is greater. In July, the blue pontederia
or pickerel-weed blooms in large beds in the
shallow parts of our pleasant river, and
swarms with yellow butterflies in continual
motion. Art cannot rival this pomp of
purple and gold. Indeed the river is a per-
petual gala, and boasts each month a new
ornament.
But this beauty of Nature which is seen
and felt as beauty, is the least part. The
shows of day, the dewy morning, the rain-
bow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars,
moonlight, shadows in still water, and the
like, if too eagerly hunted, become shows
merely, and mock us with their unreality.
Go out of the house to see the moon, and 'tis
mere tinsel; it will not please as when its
light shines upon your necessary journey.
The beauty that shimmers in the yellow after-
noons of October, who ever could clutch it.''
Go forth to find it and it is gone; 'tis only a
mirage as you look from the windows of dili-
gence.
2. The presence of a higher, namely, of the
spiritual element is essential to its perfection.
The high and divine beauty which can be
loved without effeminacy, is that which is
found in combination with the human will.
Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue.
Every natural action is graceful. Every
heroic act is also decent, and causes the place
and the bystanders to shine. We are taught
by great actions that the universe is the
property of every individual in it. Every
rational creature has all nature for his dowry
NATURE
307
and estate. It is his, if he will. He may
divest himself of it; he may creep into a
corner, and abdicate his kingdom, as most
men do, but he is entitled to the world by his
constitution. In proportion to the energy of
his thought and will, he takes up the world
into himself. "All those things for which
men plough, build, or sail, obey virtue," said
Sallust. "The winds and waves," said Gib-
bon, "are always on the side of the ablest
navigators." So are the sun and moon and
all the stars of heaven. When a noble act is
done, — perchance in a scene of great nat-
ural beauty; when Leonidas and his three
hundred martyrs consume one day in dying,
and the sun and moon come each and look at
them once in the steep defile of Thermopylae;
when Arnold Winkelried, in the high Alps,
under the shadow of the avalanche, gathers in
his side a sheaf of Austrian spears to break
the line for his comrades; are not these heroes
entitled to add the beauty of the scene to
the beauty of the deed.'' When the bark of
Columbus nears the shore of America; —
before it, the beach lined with savages, fleeing
out of all their huts of cane; the sea behind;
and the purple mountains of the Indian
Archipelago around, can we separate the man
from the living picture .f* Does not the New
W^orld clothe his form with her palm-groves
and savannahs as fit drapery.? Ever does
natural beauty steal in like air, and envelop
great actions. When Sir Harry Vane was
dragged up the Tower-hill, sitting on a sled,
to suffer death as the champion of the Eng-
lish laws, one of the multitude cried out to
him, "You never sate on so glorious a seat!"
Charles II, to intimidate the citizens of
London, caused the patriot Lord Russell to
be drawn in an open coach through the prin-
cipal streets of the city on his way to the
scaffold. "But," his biographer says, "the
multitude imagined they saw liberty and vir-
tue sitting by his side." In private places,
among sordid objects, an act of truth or
heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky
as its temple, the sun as its candle. Nature
stretches out her arms to embrace man,
only let his thoughts be of equal greatness.
Willingly does she follow his steps with the
rose and the violet, and bend her lines of
grandeur and grace to the decoration of her
darling child. Only let his thoughts be of
equal scope, and the frame will suit the pic-
ture. A virtuous man is in unison with her
works, and makes the central figure of the
visible sphere. Homer, Pindar, Socrates,
Phocion, associate themselves fitly in our
memory with the geography and climate of
Greece. The visible heavens and earth sym-
pathize with Jesus. And in common life
whosoever has seen a person of powerful
character and happy genius, will have re-
marked how easily he took all things along
with him, — the persons, the opinions and the
day, and nature became ancillary to a man.
3. There is still another aspect under
which the beauty of the world may be viewed,
namely, as it becomes an object of the intel-
lect. Beside the relation of things to virtue,
they have a relation to thought. The in-
tellect searches out the absolute order of
things as they stand in the mind of God, and
without the colors of affection. The intel-
lectual and the active powers seem to suc-
ceed each other, and the exclusive activity of
the one generates the exclusive activity of
the other. There is something unfriendly in
each to the other, but they are like the
alternate periods of feeding and working in
animals; each prepares and will be followed
by the other. Therefore does beauty, which,
in relation to actions, as we have seen, comes
unsought, and comes because it is unsought,
remain for the apprehension and pursuit of
the intellect; and then again, in its turn, of
the active power. Nothing divine dies. All
good is eternally reproductive. The beauty
of nature re-forms itself in the mind, and
not for barren contemplation, but for new
creation.
All men are in some degree impressed by
the face of the world; some men even to
delight. This love of beauty is Tiiste. Others
have the same love in such excess, that, not
content with admiring, they seek to embody
it in new forms. The creation of beimty is
Art.
The production of a work of art throws a
light upon the mystery of humanity. A
work of art is an abstract or epitome of the
world. It is the result or expression of
nature, in miniature. For although the works
of nature are innumerable and all different,
the result or the expression of them all is
similar and single. Nature is a sea of forms
radically alike and even unique. A leaf, a
sunbeam, a landscape, the ocean, make an
^o8
RAT.PII WALDO EMERSON
analogous impression on the mind. What is
common to thtin all, — that perfectness and
harmony, is heaiity. The standard of heauty
is the entire circuit of natural forms, — the
to*:ality of nature; which the Italians ex-
pressed by dcHninp; heauty "i7 piu nelF nno."
Nothing is quite beautiful alone; nothing but
is beautiful in the whole. A single object
is only so far beautiful as it suggests this
universal grace. The poet, the painter, the
sculptor, the musician, the architect, seek
each to concentrate this radiance of the
world on one point, and each in his several
work to satisfy the love of beauty which
stimulates him to produce. Thus is Art a
nature passed through the alembic of man.
Thus in art does Nature work through the
will of a man filled with the beauty of her
first works.
The world thus exists to the soul to satisfy
the desire of beauty. This element I call an
ultimate end. No reason can be asked or
given why the soul seeks beauty. Beauty, in
its largest and profoundest sense, is one ex-
pression for the universe. God is the all-
fair. Truth, and goodness, and beauty, are
but different faces of the same All. But
beauty in nature is not ultimate. It is the
herald of inward and eternal beauty, and is
not alone a solid and satisfactory good. It
must stand as a part, and not as yet the last
or highest expression of the final cause of
Nature.
IV. LANGUAGE
Language is a third use which Nature sub-
serves to man. Nature is the vehicle of
thought, and in a simple, double, and three-
fold degree.
1. Words are signs of natural facts.
2. Particular natural facts are symbols of
particular spiritual facts.
3. Nature is the symbol of spirit.
I. Words are signs of natural facts. The
use of natural history is to give us aid in
supernatural history; the use of the outer
creation, to give us language for the beings
and changes of the inward creation. Every
word which is used to express a moral or in-
tellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to
be borrowed from some material appearance.
Right means straight; zvrong means twisted.
Spirit primarily means wind; transgression,
the crossing of a line; supercilious, the raising
of the eyebrow. We say the heart to express
emotion, the head to denote thought; and
thought and emotion are words borrowed from
sensible things, and now appropriated to
spiritual nature. Most of the process by
which this transformation is made, is hidden
from us in the remote time when language
was framed; but the same tendency may be
daily observed in children. Children and
savages use only nouns or names of things,
which they convert into verbs, and apply to
analogous mental acts.
2. But this origin of all words that convey
a spiritual import, — so conspicuous a fact in
the history of language, — is our least debt to
nature. It is not words only that are em-
blematic; it is things which are emblematic.
Every natural fact is a symbol of some
spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature
corresponds to some state of the mind, and
that state of the mind can only be described
by presenting that natural appearance as its
picture. An enraged man is a lion, a cun-
ning man is a fox, a firm man is a rock, a
learned man is a torch. A lamb is innocence;
a snake is subtle spite; flowers express to us
the delicate affections. Light and darkness
are our familiar expression for knowledge and
ignorance; and heat for love. Visible dis-
tance behind and before us, is respectively
our image of memory and hope.
Who looks upon a river in a meditative
hour and is not reminded of the flux of all
things .f' Throw a stone into the stream, and
the circles that propagate themselves are the
beautiful type of all influence. Man is con-
scious of a universal soul within or behind his
individual life, wherein, as in a firmament,
the natures of Justice, Truth, Love, Free-
dom, arise and shine. This universal soul he
calls Reason: it is not mine, or thine, or his,
but we are its; we are its property and men.
And the blue sky in which the private earth
is buried, the sky with its eternal calm, and
full of everlasting orbs, is the type of Reason.
That which intellectually considered we call
Reason, considered in relation to nature, we
call Spirit. Spirit is the Creator. Spirit
hath life in itself. And man in all ages and
countries embodies it in his language as the
Father.
It is easily seen that there is nothing lucky
or capricious in these analogies, but that
NATURE
309
they are constant, and pervade nature.
These are not the dreams of a few poets, here
and there, but man is an analogist, and
studies relations in all objects. He is placed
in the center of beings, and a ray of relation
passes from every other being to him. And
neither can man be understood without these
objects, nor these objects without man. All
the facts in natural history taken by them-
selves, have no value, but are barren, like a
single sex. But marry it to human history,
and it is full of life. Whole floras, all Lin-
naeus's and BufFon's volumes, are dry cata-
logues of facts; but the most trivial of these
facts, the habit of a plant, the organs, or
work, or noise of an insect, applied to the il-
lustration of a fact in intellectual philosophy,
or in any way associated to human nature,
affects us in the most lively and agreeable
manner. The seed of a plant, — to what af-
fecting analogies in the nature of man is that
little fruit made use of, in all discourse, up
to the voice of Paul, who calls the human
corpse a seed, — "It is sown a natural body;
it is raised a spiritual body." The motion of
the earth round its axis and round the sun,
makes the day and the year. These are cer-
tain amounts of brute light and heat. But is
there no intent of an analogy between man's
life and the seasons.'' And do the seasons
gain no grandeur or pathos from that anal-
ogy.'' The instincts of the ant are very un-
important considered as the ant's; but the
moment a ray of relation is seen to extend
from it to man, and the little drudge is seen
to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty
heart, then all its habits, even that said to be
recently observed, that it never sleeps,
become sublime.
Because of this radical correspondence be-
tween visible things and human thoughts,
savages, who have only what is necessary,
converse in figures. As we go back in history,
language becomes more picturesque, until its
infancy, when it is all poetry; or all spiritual
facts are represented by natural symbols.
The same symbols are found to make the
original elements of all languages. It has
moreover been observed, that the idioms of
all languages approach each other in pas-
sages of the greatest eloquence and power.
And as this is the first language, so is it the
last. This immediate dependence of lan-
guage upon nature, this conversion of an out-
ward phenomenon into a type of somewhat
in human life, never loses its power to affect
us. It is this which gives that pi(juancy to
the conversation of a strong-natured farmer
or backwoodsman, which all men relish.
A man's power to connect his thought with
its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends
on the simplicity of his character, that is,
upon his love of truth and his desire to com-
municate it without loss. The corruption of
man is followed by the corruption of lan-
guage. When simplicity of character and
the sovereignty of ideas is broken up by the
prevalence of secondary desires, — the desire
of riches, of pleasure, of power, and of
praise, — and duplicity and falsehood take
place of simplicity and truth, the power over
nature as an interpreter of the will is in a
degree lost; new imagery ceases to be created,
and old words are perverted to stand for
things which are not; a paper currency is em-
ployed, when there is no bullion in the vaults.
In due time the fraud is manifest, and words
lose all power to stimulate the understanding
or the affections. Hundreds of writers may
be found in every long-civilized nation who
for a short time believe and make others be-
lieve that they see and utter truths, who do
not of themselves clothe one thought in its
natural garment, but who feed unconsciously
on the language created by the primary
writers of the country, those, namely, who
hold primarily on nature.
But wise men pierce this rotten diction and
fasten words again to visible things; so that
picturesque language is at once a command-
ing certificate that he who employs it is a
man in alliance with truth and God. The
moment our discourse rises above the
ground line of familiar facts and is inflamed
with passion or exalted by thought, it clothes
itself in images. A man conversing in ear-
nest, if he watch his intellectual processes,
will find that a material image more or less
luminous arises in his mind, contemporane-
ous with every thought, which furnishes the
vestment of the thought. Hence, good writ-
ing and brilliant discourse are perpetual
allegories. This imagery is spontaneous. It
is the blending of experience with the present
action of the mind. It is proper creation. It
is the working of the Original Cause through
the instruments he has already made.
These facts may suggest the advantage
310
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
which the country life possesses, for a power-
ful mind, over the artificial and curtailed life
of cities. N\ c know more from nature than
we can at will communicate. Its lit^ht flows
into the mind evermore, and we forget its
presence. The poet, the orator, bred in the
woods, whose senses have been nourished by
their fair and appeasing changes, year after
j'ear, without design and without heed, —
shall not lose their lesson altogether, in the
roar of cities or the broil of politics. Long
hereafter, amidst agitation and terror in
national councils, — in the hour of revolu-
tion,— these solemn images shall reappear
in their morning luster, as fit symbols and
words of the thoughts which the passing
events shall awaken. At the call of a noble
sentiment, again the woods wave, the pines
murmur, the river rolls and shines, and the
cattle low upon the mountams, as he saw and
heard them in his infancy. And with these
forms, the spells of persuasion, the keys of
power are put into his hands.
3. We are thus assisted by natural objects
in the expression of particular meanings.
But how great a language to convey such
pepper-corn informations! Did it need such
noble races of creatures, this profusion of
forms, this host of orbs in heaven, to furnish
man with the dictionary and grammar of his
municipal speech? Whilst we use this grand
cipher to expedite the affairs of our pot and
kettle, we feel that we have not yet put it to
its use, neither are able. We are like travel-
ers using the cinders of a volcano to roast
their eggs. Whilst we see that it always
stands ready to clothe what we would say,
we cannot avoid the question whether the
characters are not significant of themselves.
Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no
significance but what we consciously give
them when we employ them as emblems of
our thoughts.' The world is emblematic.
Parts of speech are metaphors, because the
whole of nature is a metaphor of the human
mind. The laws of moral nature answer to
those of matter as face to face in a glass.
"The visible world and the relation of its
parts, is the dial plate of the invisible." The
axioms of physics translate the laws of
ethics. Thus, "the whole is greater than its
part"; "reaction is equal to action"; "the
smallest weight may be made to lift the
greatest, the difference of weight being com-
pensated by time"; and many the like propo-
sitions, which have an ethical as well as phys-
ical sense. These propositions have a much
more extensive and universal sense when
applied to human life, than when confined
to technical use.
In like manner, the memorable words of
history and the proverbs of nations consist
usually of a natural fact, selected as a picture
or parable of a moral truth. Thus: A rolling
stone gathers no moss; A bird in the hand is
worth two in the bush; A cripple in the right
way will beat a racer in the wrong; Make hay
while the sun shines; ' Tis hard to carry a full
cup even; Vinegar is the son of wine; The last
ounce broke the camel's back; Long-lived
trees make roots first; — and the like. In
their primary sense these are trivial facts,
but we repeat them for the value of their
analogical import. What is true of proverbs,
is true of all fables, parables, and allegories.
This relation between the mind and matter
is not fancied by some poet, but stands in the
will of God, and so is free to be known by all
men. It appears to men, or it does not ap-
pear. When in fortunate hours we ponder
this miracle, the wise man doubts if at all
other times he is not blind and deaf:
Can these things be,
And overcome us like a summer's cloud.
Without our special wonder.'
for the universe becomes transparent, and the
light of higher laws than its own shines
through it. It is the standing problem
which has exercised the wonder and the
study of every fine genius since the world be-
gan; from the era of the Egyptians and the
Brahmins to that of Pythagoras, of Plato, of
Bacon, of Leibnitz, of Swedenborg. There
sits the Sphinx at the road-side, and from age
to age, as each prophet comes by, he tries his
fortune at reading her riddle. There seems
to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in
material forms; and day and night, river and
storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali, pre-
exist in necessary Ideas in the mind of God,
and are what they are by virtue of preceding
affections in the world of spirit. A Fact is the
end or last issue of spirit. The visible crea-
tion is the terminus or the circumference
of the invisible w^orld. "Material objects,"
said a French philosopher, "are necessarily
kinds o^ scoricB of the substantial thoughts of
NATURE
3"
the Creator, wliich must always preserve an
exact relation to their first origin; in other
words, visible nature must have a spiritual
and moral side."
This doctrine is abstruse, and though the
images of "garment," "scoriae," "mirror,"
etc., may stimulate the fancy, we must sum-
mon the aid of subtler and more vital exposi-
tors to make it plain. "Every scripture is to
be interpreted by the same spirit which gave
it forth," — is the fundamental law of crit-
icism. A life in harmony with Nature, the
love of truth and of virtue, will purge the
eyes to understand her text. By degrees we
may come to know the primitive sense of the
permanent objects of nature, so that the
world shall be to us an open book, and every
form significant of its hidden life and final
cause.
A new interest surprises us, whilst, under
the view now suggested, we contemplate the
fearful extent and multitude of objects; since
"every object rightly seen, unlocks a new
faculty of the soul." That which was un-
conscious truth, becomes, when interpreted
and defined in an object, a part of the domain
of knowledge, — a new weapon in the maga-
zine of power.
V. DISCIPLINE
In view of the significance of nature, we
arrive at once at a new fact, that nature is a
discipline. This use of the world includes
the preceding uses, as parts of itself.
Space, time, society, labor, climate, food,
locomotion, the animals, the mechanical
forces, give us sincerest lessons, day by day,
whose meaning is unlimited. They educate
both the Understanding and the Reason.
Every property of matter is a school for the
understanding, — its solidity or resistance,
its inertia, its extension, its figure, its divisi-
bility. The understanding adds, divides,
combines, measures, and finds nutriment and
room for its activity in this worthy scene.
Meantime, Reason transfers all these lessons
into its own world of thought, by perceiving
the analogy that marries Matter and Mind.
I. Nature is a discipline of the understand-
ing in intellectual truths. Our dealing with
sensible objects is a constant exercise in the
necessary lessons of difference, of likeness, of
order, of being and seeming, of progressive
arrangement; of ascent from particular to
general; of combmation to one end of mani-
fold forces. Proportioned to the importance
of the organ to be formed, is the extreme care
with which its tuition is provided, — a care
pretermitted in no single case. What tedious
training, day after day, year after year,
never ending, to form the common sense;
what continual reproduction of annoyances,
inconveniences, dilemmas; what rejoicing
over us of little men; what disputing of prices,
what reckonings of interest, — and all to
form the Hand of the mind; — to instruct us
that "good thoughts are no better than good
dreams, unless they be executed!"
The same good office is performed by
Property and its filial systems of debt and
credit. Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face
the widow, the orphan, and the sons of genius
fear and hate; — debt, which consumes so
much time, which so cripples and disheartens
a great spirit with cares that seem so base, is
a preceptor whose lessons cannot be forgone,
and is needed most by those who suffer from
it most. Moreover, property, which has
been well compared to snow, — "if it fall
level to-day, it will be blown into drifts to-
morrow,"— is the surface action of internal
machinery, like the index on the face of a
clock. Whilst now it is the gymnastics of
the understanding, it is hiving, in the fore-
sight of the spirit, experience in profounder
laws.
The whole character and fortune of the in-
dividual are affected by the least inequal-
ities in the culture of the understanding; for
example, in the perception of differences.
Therefore is Space, and therefore Time,, that
man may know that things are not huddled
and lumped, but sundered and individual. A
bell and a plough have each their use, and
neither can do the office of the other. Water
is good to drink, coal to burn, wool to wear;
but wool cannot be drunk, nor water spun,
nor coal eaten. The wise man shows his
wisdom in separation, in gradation, and his
scale of creatures and of merits is as wide as
nature. The foolish have no range in their
scale, but suppose every man is as every other
man. What is not good they call the worst,
and what is not hateful, they call the best.
In like manner, what good heed Nature
forms in us! She pardons no mistakes. Her
yea is yea, and her nay, nay.
312
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The first steps in Agriculture, Astronomy,
Zoology (those first steps which the farmer,
the liunter, and the sailor take), teach that
Nature's dice are always loaded; that in her
heaps and rubbish are concealed sure and
useful results.
How calmly and genially the mind appre-
hends one after another the laws of physics!
What noble emotions dilate the mortal as he
enters into the councils of the creation, and
feels by knowledge the privilege to Be! His
insight refines him. The beauty of nature
shines in his own breast. Man is greater
that he can see this, and the universe less
because Time and Space relations vanish as
laws are known.
Here again we are impressed and even
daunted by the immense Universe to be ex-
plored. "What we know is a point to what
we do not know." Open any recent journal
of science, and weigh the problems suggested
concerning Light, Heat, Electricity, Magnet-
ism, Physiology, Geology, and judge whether
the interest of natural science is likely to be
soon exhausted.
Passing by many particulars of the disci-
pline of nature, we must not omit to specify
two.
The exercise of the Will, or the lesson of
power, is taught in every event. From the
child's successive possession of his several
senses up to the hour when he saith, "Thy
will be done!" he is learning the secret that
he can reduce under his will, not only particu-
lar events but great classes, nay, the whole
series of events, and so conform all facts to
his character. Nature is thoroughly mediate.
It is jnade to serve. It receives the dominion
of man as meekly as the ass on which the Sav-
ior rode. It offers all its kingdoms to man
as the raw material which he may mold into
what is useful. Man is never weary of work-
ing it up. He forges the subtile and delicate
air into wise and melodious words, and gives
them wing as angels of persuasion and com-
mand. One after another his victorious
thought comes up with and reduces all things,
until the world becomes at last only a real-
ized will, — the double of the man.
2. Sensible objects conform to the pre-
monitions of Reason and reflect the con-
science. All things are moral; and in their
boundless changes have an unceasing refer-
ence to spiritual nature. Therefore is nature
glorious with form, color, and motion: that
every globe in the remotest heaven, every
chemical change from the rudest crystal up
to the laws of life, every change of vegetation
from the first principle of growth in the eye of
a leaf, to the tropical forest and antediluvian
coal-mme, every animal function from the
sponge up to Hercules, shall hint or thunder
to man the laws of right and wrong, and
echo the Ten Commandments. Therefore is
Nature ever the ally of Religion: lends all
her pomp and riches to the religious senti-
ment. Prophet and priest, David, Isaiah,
Jesus, have drawn deeply from this source.
This ethical character so penetrates the bone
and marrow of nature, as to seem the end for
which it was made. Whatever private pur-
pose is answered by any member or part, this
is its public and universal function, and is
never omitted. Nothing in nature is ex-
hausted in its first use. When a thing has
served an end to the uttermost, it is wholly
new for an ulterior service. In God, every
end is converted into a new means. Thus
the use of commodity, regarded by itself, is
mean and squalid. But it is to the mind an
education in the doctrine of Use, namely,
that a thing is good only so far as it serves;
that a conspiring of parts and efforts to the
production of an end is essential to any being.
The first and gross manifestation of this
truth is our inevitable and hated training'in
values and wants, in corn and meat.
It has already been illustrated, that every
natural process is a version of a moral sen- ■
tence. The moral law lies at the center of
nature and radiates to the circumference. It
is the pith and marrow of every substance,
every relation, and every process. All things
with which we deal, preach to us. What is a
farm but a mute gospel.'' The chaff and the
wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, in-
sects, sun, — it is a sacred emblem from the
first furrow of spring to the last stack which
the snow of winter overtakes in the fields.
But the sailor, the shepherd, the miner, the
merchant, in their several resorts, have each
an experience precisely parallel, and leading
to the same conclusion: because all organiza-
tions are radically alike. Nor can it be
doubted that this moral sentiment which
thus scents the air, grows in the grain, and
impregnates the waters of the world, is
caught by man and sinks into his soul. The
NATURE
313
moral influence of nature upon every individ-
ual is that amount of truth which it ilhis-.
trates to him. Who can estimate this? Who
can j^uess how much firmness the sea-beaten
rock has taught the fisherman? how much
tranquillity has been reflected to man from
the azure sky, over whose unspotted deeps
the winds forevermore drive flocks of stormy
clouds, and leave no wrinkle or stain? how
much industry and providence and aflPection
we have caught from the pantomime of
brutes? What a searching preacher of self-
command is the varying phenomenon of
Health!
Herein is especially apprehended the unity
of Nature, — the unity in variety, — which
meets us everywhere. All the endless variety
of things make an identical impression.
Xenophanes complained in his old age that,
look where he would, all things hastened
back to Unity. He was weary of seeing the
same entity in the tedious variety of forms.
The fable of Proteus has a cordial truth. A
leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time, is
related to the whole, and partakes of the per-
fection of the whole. Each particle is a
microcosm, and faithfully renders the like-
ness of the world.
Not only resemblances exist in things
whose analogy is obvious, as when we detect
the type of the human hand in the flipper of
the fossil saurus, but also in objects wherein
there is great superficial unlikeness. Thus
architecture is called "frozen music," by De
Stael and Goethe. Vitruvius thought an
architect should be a musician. "A Gothic
church," said Coleridge, "is a petrified re-
ligion." Michael Angelo maintained that,
to an architect, a knowledge of anatomy is
essential. In Haydn's oratorios, the notes pre-
sent to the imagination not only motions, as
of the snake, the stag, and the elephant, but
colors also; as the green grass. The law of
harmonic sounds reappears in the harmonic
colors. The granite is diflPerenced in its laws
only by the more or less of heat from the
river that wears it away. The river^ as it
flows, resembles the air that flows over it; the
air resembles the light which traverses it with
more subtile currents; the light resembles the
heat which rides with it through Space. Each
creature is only a modification of the other;
the likeness in them is more than the difi^er-
ence, and their radical law is one and the
same. A rule of one art, or a law of one
organization, holds true throughout nature.
So intimate is this Unity that, it is easily
seen, it lies under the undermost garment of
nature, and betrays its source in Univer-
sal Spirit. For it pervades Thought also.
Every universal truth which we express in
words, implies or supposes every other truth.
Omne verum vero consonat. It is like a great
circle on a sphere, comprising all possible cir-
cles; which, however, may be drawn and
comprise it in like manner. Every such
truth is the absolute Ens seen from one side.
But it has innumerable sides.
The central Unity is still more conspicuous
in actions. Words are finite organs of the in-
finite mind. They cannot cover the dimen-
sions of what is in truth. They break, chop,
and impoverish it. An action is the perfec-
tion and publication of thought. A right
action seems to fill the eye, and to be related
to all nature. "The wise man, in doing one
thing, does all; or, in the one thing he does
rightly, he sees the likeness of all which is
done rightly."
Words and actions are not the attributes of
brute nature. They introduce us to the
human form, of which all other organizations
appear to be degradations. When this ap-
pears among so many that surround it, the
spirit prefers it to all others. It says, "From
such as this have I drawn joy and knowledge;
in such as this have I found and beheld my-
self; I will speak to it; it can speak again; it
can yield me thought already formed and
alive." In fact, the eye, — the mind, — is
always accompanied by these forms, male
and female; and these are incomparably the
richest informations of the power and order
that lie at the heart of things. Unfortunately
every one of them bears the marks as of some
injury; is marred and superficially defec-
tive. Nevertheless, far different from the
deaf and dumb nature around them, these all
rest like fountain-pipes on the unfathomed
sea of thought and virtue whereto they
alone, of all organizations, are the entrances.
It were a pleasant inquiry to follow into
detail their ministry to our education, but
where would it stop? We are associated in
adolescent and adult life with some friends,
who, like skies and waters, are coextensive
with our idea; who, answering each to a
certain affection of the soul, satisfy our desire
314
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
on that side; whom we lack power to put at
such focal distance from us, that we can mend
or even analyze them. We cannot choose
but love them. When much intercourse with
a friend has supplied us with a standard of
excellence, and has increased our respect for
the resources of God who thus sends a real
person to outgo our ideal; when he has, more-
over, become an object of thought, and,
whilst his character retains all its unconscious
effect, is converted in the mind into solid and
sweet wisdom, — it is a sign to us that his
office is closing, and he is commonly with-
drawn from our sight in a short time.
VL IDEALLSM
Thus is the unspeakable but intelligible
and practicable meaning of the world con-
veyed to man, the immortal pupil, in every
object of sense. To this one end of Disci-
pline, all parts of nature conspire.
A noble doubt perpetually suggests itself,
— whether this end be not the Final Cause of
the Universe; and whether nature outwardly
exists. It is a sufficient account of that Ap-
pearance we call the World, that God will
teach a human mind, and so makes it the
receiver of a certain number of congruent
sensations, which we call sun and moon, man
and woman, house and trade. In my utter
impotence to test the authenticity of the
report of my senses, to know whether the im-
pressions they make on me correspond with
outlying objects, what difference does it
make, whether Orion is up there in heaven,
or some god paints the image in the firma-
ment of the soul .'' The relations of parts and
the end of the whole remaining the same,
what is the difference, whether land and sea
mteract, and worlds revolve and mtermingle
without number or end, — deep yawning
under deep, and galaxy balancing galaxy,
throughout absolute space, — or whether,
without relations of time and space, the same
appearances are inscribed in the constant
faith of man."* Whether nature enjoy a sub-
stantial existence without, or is only in the
apocalypse of the mind, it is alike useful and
alike venerable to me. Be it what it niay, it
is ideal to me so long as I cannot try the
accuracy of my senses.
The frivolous make themselves merry with
the Ideal theory, as if its consequences were
burlesque; as if it affected the stability of
nature. It surely does not. God never jests
with us, and will not compromise the end of
nature by permitting any inconsequence in
its procession. Any distrust of the per-
manence of laws would paralyze the faculties
of man. Their permanence is sacredly re-
spected, and his faith therein is perfect.
The wheels and springs of man are all set to
the hypothesis of the permanence of nature.
We are not built like a ship to be tossed, but
like a house to stand. It is a natural conse-
quence of this structure, that so long as the
active powers predominate over the reflec-
tive, we resist with indignation any hint that
nature is more short-lived or mutable than
spirit. The broker, the wheelwright, the-
carpenter, the tollman, are much displeased
at the intimation.
But whilst we acquiesce entirely in the per-
manence of natural laws, the question of the
absolute existence of nature still remains
open. It is the uniform effect of culture on
the human mind, not to shake our faith in
the stability of particular phenomena, as of
heat, water, azote; but to lead us to regard
nature as phenomenon, not a substance; to
attribute necessary existence to spirit; to
esteem nature as an accident and an effect.
To the senses and the unrenewed under-
standing, belongs a sort of instinctive belief
in the absolute existence of nature. In their
view man and nature are indissolubly joined.
Things are ultimates, and they never look
beyond their sphere. The presence of Reason
mars this faith. The first effort of thought
tends to relax this despotism of the senses
which binds us to nature as if we were a part
of it, and shows us nature aloof, and, as it
were, afloat. Until this higher agency inter-
vened, the animal eye sees, with wonderful
accuracy, sharp outlines and colored surfaces.
When the eye of Reason opens, to outline and
surface are at once added grace and expres-
sion. These proceed from imagination and
affection, and abate somewhat of the angular
distinctness of objects. If the Reason be
stimulated to more earnest vision, outlines
and surfaces become transparent, and are no
longer seen; causes and spirits are seen
through them. The best moments of life are
these delicious awakenings of the higher
powers, and the reverential withdrawing of
nature before its God.
NATURE
315
Let us proceed to indicate the effects of
culture.
I. Our first institution in the Ideal philos-
ophy is a hint from Nature herself. Na-
ture is made to conspire with spirit to
emancipate us. Certain mechanical changes,
a small alteration in our local position, ap-
prises us of a dualism. We are strangely
affected by seeing the shore from a moving
ship, from a balloon, or through the tints of
an unusual sky. The least change in our
point of view gives the whole world a pictorial
air. A man who seldom rides, needs only to
get into a coach and traverse his own town,
to turn the street into a puppet-show. The
men, the women, — talking, running, barter-
ing, fighting, — the earnest mechanic, the
lounger, the beggar, the boys, the dogs, are
unrealized at once, or, at least, wholly de-
tached from all relation to the observer, and
seen as apparent, not substantial beings.
What new thoughts are suggested by seeing a
face of country quite familiar, in the rapid
movement of the railroad car! Nay, the
most wonted objects (make a very slight
change in the point of vision) please us most.
In a camera obscura, the butcher's cart, and
the figure of one of our own family amuse us.
So a portrait of a w^ell-known face gratifies us.
Turn the eyes upside down, by looking at the
landscape through your legs, and how agree-
able is the picture, though you have seen it
any time these twenty years!
In these cases, by mechanical means, is
suggested the difference between the ob-
server and the spectacle, — between man
and nature. Hence arises a pleasure mixed
with awe; I may say, a low degree of the
sublime is felt, from the fact, probably, that
man is hereby apprised that whilst the world
is a spectacle, something in himself is stable.
2. In a higher manner the poet communi-
cates the same pleasure. By a few strokes he
delineates, as on air, the sun, the moun-
tain, the camp, the city, the hero, the maiden,
not different from what we know them, but
only lifted from the ground and afloat before
the eye. He unfixes the land and the sea,
makes them revolve around the axis of his
primary thought, and disposes them anew.
Possessed himself by a heroic passion, he uses
matter as symbols of it. The sensual man
conforms thoughts to things; the poet con-
forms things to his thoughts. The one
esteems nature as rooted and fast; the other,
as fluid, and impresses his being thereon.
To him, the refractory world is ductile and
flexible; he invests dust and stones with
humanity, and makes them the words of the
Reason. The Imagination may be defined to
be the use which the Reason makes of the
material world. Shakespeare possesses the
power of subordinating nature for the pur-
poses of expression, beyond all poets. His
imperial muse tosses the creation like a
bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to
embody any caprice of thought that is upper-
most in his mind. The remotest spaces of
nature are visited, and the farthest sundered
things are brought together, by a subtile
spiritual connection. We are made aware
that magnitude of material things is relative,
and all objects shrink and expand to serve
the passion of the poet. Thus in his sonnets,
the lays of birds, the scents and dyes of
flowers he finds to be the shadow of his be-
loved; time, which keeps her from him, is his
chest; the suspicion she has awakened, is her
ornament:
The ornament of beauty is Suspect,
A crow which flies in heaven's sweetest air.
His passion is not the fruit of chance; it
swells, as he speaks, to a city, or a state:
No, it was buikled far from accident;
It suft'ers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the brow of thralling discontent;
It fears not policy, that heretic,
That works on leases of short numbered hours,
But all alone stands hugely politic.
In the strength of his constancy, the Pyra-
mids seem to him recent and transitory.
The freshness of youth and love dazzles him
with its resemblance to morning:
Take those lips away
Which so sweetly were forsworn;
And those eyes, — the break of day.
Lights that do mislead the morn.
The wild beauty of this hyperbole, I may say
in passing, it would not be easy to match in
literature.
This transfiguration which all material ob-
jects undergo through the passion of the
poet, — this power which he exerts to dwarf
the great, to magnify the small, — might be
illustrated by a thousand examples from his
3i6
RALPFl WALDO EMERSON
plays. I have before me the Tempest, and
wili cite only these few hnes:
Ariel. The strong based promontory
Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked
up
The pine and cedar.
Prospero calls for music to soothe the frantic
Alonzo, and his companions:
A solemn air, and the best comforter
To an unsettled fancy, cure thy hrains
Now useless, boiled within thy skull.
Again:
The charm dissolves apace.
And, as the morning steals upon the night,
Melting the darkness, so their rising senses
Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle
Their clearer reason.
Their understanding
Begins to swell: and the approaching tide
Will shortly fill the reasonable shores
That now lie foul and muddy.
The perception of real affinities betv^^een
events (that is to say, of ideal affinities, for
those only are real) enables the poet thus to
make free with the most imposing forms and
phenomena of the world, and to assert the
predominance of the soul.
3. Whilst thus the poet animates nature
with his own thoughts, he differs from the
philosopher only herein, that the one pro-
poses Beauty as his main end; the other
Truth. But the philosopher, not less than
the poet, postpones the apparent order and
relations of things to the empire of thought.
"The problem of philosophy," according to
Plato, *'is, for all that exists conditionally, to
find a ground unconditioned and absolute."
It proceeds on the faith that a law determines
all phenomena, which being known, the
phenomena can be predicted. That law,
when in the mind, is an idea. Its beauty is
infinite. The true philosopher and the true
poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth,
and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of
both. Is not the charm of one of Plato's or
Aristotle's definitions strictly like that of the
Antigone of Sophocles? It is, in both cases,
that a spiritual life has been imparted to
nature; that the solid seeming block of mat-
ter has been pervaded and dissolved by a
thought; that this feeble human being has
penetrated the vast masses of nature with an
informing soul, and recognized itself in their
harmony, that is, seized their law. In
physics, when this is attained, the memory
disburthens itself of its cumbrous catalogues
of particulars, and carries centuries of obser-
vation in a single formula.
Thus even in physics, the material is de-
graded before the spiritual. The astronomer,
the geometer, rely on their irrefragable anal-
ysis, and disdain the results of observation.
The sublime remark of Euler on his law of
arches, "This will be found contrary to all
experience, yet is true," had already trans-
ferred nature into the mind, and left matter
like an outcast corpse.
4. Intellectual science has been observed
to beget invariably a doubt of the existence
of matter. Turgot said, "He that has never
doubted the existence of matter, may be
assured he has no aptitude for metaphysical
inquiries." It fastens the attention upon
immortal necessary uncreated natures, that
is, upon Ideas; and in their presence we feel
that the outward circumstance is a dream
and a shade. Whilst we wait in this Olympus
of gods, we think of nature as an appendix to
the soul. We ascend into their region, and
know that these are the thoughts of the
Supreme Being. "These are they who were
set up from everlasting, from the beginning,
or ever the earth was. When he prepared
the heavens, they were there; when he estab-
lished the clouds above^ when he strength-
ened the fountains of the deep. Then they
were by him, as one brought up with him.
Of them took he counsel."
Their influence is proportionate. As ob-
jects of science they are accessible to few
men. Yet all men are capable of being
raised by piety or by passion into their
region. And no man touches these divine
natures, without becoming, in some degree,
himself divine. Like a new soul, they renew
the body. We become physically nimble and
lightsome; we tread on air; life is no longer
irksome, and we think it will never be so.
No man fears age or misfortune or death in
their serene company, for he is transported
out of the district of change. Whilst we
behold unveiled the nature of Justice and
Truth, we learn the difference between the
absolute and the conditional or relative. We
apprehend the absolute. As it were, for the
first time, we exist. We become immortal.
NATURE
317
for we learn that time and space are relations
of matter; that with a perception of truth or
a virtuous will they have no affinity.
5. Finally, religion and ethics, which may
be fitly called the practice of ideas, or the
introduction of ideas into life, have an anal-
ogous effect with all lower culture, in degrad-
ing nature and suggesting its dependence on
spirit. Ethics and religion differ herein: that
the one is the system of human duties com-
mencing from man; the other, from God.
Religion includes the personality of God;
Ethics does not. They are one to our present
design. They both put nature under foot.
The first and last lesson of religion is, "I'he
things that arc seen, are temporal; the things
that are unseen, are eternal." It puts an
affront upon nature. It does that for the
unschooled, which philosophy does for
Berkeley and Viasa. The uniform language
that may be heard in the churches of the
most ignorant sects is, — "Contemn the un-
substantial shows of the world; they are
vanities, dreams, shadows, unrealities; seek
the realities of religion." The devotee flouts
nature. Some theosophists have arrived at a
certain hostility and mdignation towards
matter, as the Manichean and Plotinus.
They distrusted in themselves any looking
back to these flesh-pots of Egypt. Plotinus
was ashamed of his body. In short, they
might all say of matter, what Michael Angelo
said of external beauty, "It is the frail and
weary weed, in which God dresses the soul
which he has called into time."
It appears that motion, poetry, physical
and intellectual science, and religion, all tend
to affect our convictions of the reality of the
external world. But I own there is some-
thing ungrateful in expanding too curiously
the particulars of the general proposition,
that all culture tends to imbue us with ideal-
ism. I have no hostility to nature, but a
child's love to it. I expand and live in the
warm day like corn and melons. Let us
speak her fair. I do not wish to fling stones
at my beautiful mother, nor soil my gentle
nest. I only wish to indicate the true posi-
tion of nature in regard to man, wherein to
establish man all right education tends; as
the ground which to attain is the object of
human life, that is, of man's connection with
nature. Culture inverts the vulgar views of
nature, and brings the mind to call that ap-
parent which it uses to call real, and that real
which it uses to call visionary. Children, it
is true, believe in the external world. The
belief that it appears only, is an afterthought,
but with culture this faith will as surely arise
on the mind as did the first.
I he advantage of the ideal theory over the
popular faith is this, that it presents the
world in precisely that view which is most
desirable to the mind. It is, in fact, the view
which Reason, both speculative and prac-
tical, that is, philosophy and virtue, take.
For seen in the light of thought, the world
always is phenomenal; and virtue subordi-
nates it to the mind. Idealism sees the world
in God. It beholds the whole circle of
persons and things, of actions and events, of
country and religion, not as painfully accu-
mulated, atom after atom, act after act, in an
aged creeping Past, but as one vast picture
which God paints on the instant eternity for
the contemplation of the soul. Therefore the
soul holds itself off from a too trivial and
microscopic study of the universal tablet.
It respects the end too much to immerse
itself in the means. It sees something more
important in Christianity than the scandals
of ecclesiastical history or the niceties of
criticism; and, very incurious concerning
persons or miracles, and not at all disturbed
by chasms of historical evidence, it accepts
from God the phenomenon, as it finds it, as
the pure and awful form of religion in the
world. It is not hot and passionate at the
appearance of what it calls its own good or
bad fortune, at the union or opposition of
other persons. No man is its enemy. It
accepts whatsoever befalls, as part of its
lesson. It is a watcher more than a doer, and
it is a doer, only that it may the better watch.
VII. SPIRIT
It is essential to a true theory of nature
and of man, that it should contain somewhat
progressive. Uses that are exhausted or that
may be, and facts that end in the statement,
cannot be all that is true of this brave lodging
wherein man is harbored, and wherein all his
faculties find appropriate and endless exer-
cise. And all the uses of nature admit of
being summed in one, which yields the
activity of man an infinite scope. Through
all its kingdoms, to the suburbs and outskirts
^>iS
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
of things, it is faithful to the cause whence it
had its oriuin. It always speaks of Spirit.
It suggests the ahsohite. It is a perpetual
effect. It is a great shadow pointing always
to the sun behind us.
The aspect of Nature is devout. Like the
figure of Jesus, she stands with bended head,
and hands folded upon the breast. The hap-
piest man is he who learns from nature the
lesson of worship.
Of that ineffable essence which we call
Spirit, he that thinks most, will say least.
We can foresee God in the coarse, and, as it
were, distant phenomena of matter; but
when we try to define and describe himself,
both language and thought desert us, and we
are as helpless as fools and savages. I hat
essence refuses to be recorded in propositions,
but when man has w^orshiped him intellectu-
ally, the noblest ministry of nature is to
stand as the apparition of God. It is the
organ through which the universal spirit
speaks to the individual, and strives to lead
back the mdividual to it.
When we consider Spirit, we see that the
views alreadv presented do not include the
whole circumference of man. We must add
some related thoughts.
Three problems are put by nature to the
mind: What is matter.'' Whence is it.^ and
Whereto.'' The first of these questions only,
the ideal theory answers. Idealism saith:
matter is a phenomenon, not a substance.
Idealism acquaints us with the total dis-
parity between the evidence of our own being
and the evidence of the world's being. The
one is perfect; the other, incapable of any
assurance; the mind is a part of the nature of
things; the world is a divine dream, from
which we may presently awake to the glories
and certainties of day. Idealism is a hy-
pothesis to account for nature by other prin-
ciples than those of carpentry and chemistry.
Yet, if It only deny the existence of matter, it
does not satisfy the demands of the spirit.
It leaves God out of me. It leaves me in the
splendid labyrinth of my perceptions, to
wander without end. Then the heart resists
it, because ic balks the affections in deny-
ing substantive being to men and women.
Nature is so pervaded with human life that
there is something of humanity in all and in
every particular. Rut this theory makes
nature foreign to me, and does not account
for that consanguinity which we acknowl-
edge to It.
Let it stand then, in the present state of
our knowledge, merely as a useful introduc-
tory hypothesis, serving to apprise us of the
eternal distinction between the soul and the
world.
Hut when, following the invisible steps of
thought, we come to inquire. Whence is
matter.^ and Whereto.'' many truths arise to
us out of the recesses of consciousness. We
learn that the highest is present to the soul of
man; that the dread universal essence, which
is not wisdom, or love, or beauty, or power,
but all in one, and each entirely, is that for
which all things exist, and that by which they
are; that spirit creates; that behind nature,
throughout nature, spirit is present; one and
not compound, it does not act upon us from
without, that is, in space and time, but
spiritually, or through ourselves: therefore,
that spirit, that is, the Supreme Being, does
not build up nature around us but puts it
forth through us, as the life of the tree puts
forth new branches and leaves through the
pores of the old. As a plant upon the earth,
so a man rests upon the bosom of God; he is
nourished by unfailing fountains, and draws
at his need inexhaustible power. Who can
set bounds to the possibilities of man. ^ Once
inhale the upper air, being admitted to be-
hold the absolute natures of justice and
truth, and we learn that man has access to
the entire mind of the Creator, is himself the
creator in the finite. This view, which ad-
monishes me where the sources of wisdom
and power lie, and points to virtue as to
The golden key
Which opes the palace of eternity,
carries upon its face the highest certificate of
truth, because it animates me to create my
own world through the purification of my
soul.
The world proceeds from the same spirit as
the body of man. It is a remoter and inferior
incarnation of God, a projection of God in
the unconscious. But it differs from the
body in one important respect. It is not,
like that, now subjected to the human will.
Its serene order is inviolable by us. It is,
therefore, to us, the present expositor of the
divine mind. It is a fixed point whereby we
may measure our departure. As we de-
NATURE
319
generate, the contrast between us and our
house is more evident. We are as much
strangers in nature as we are aliens from God.
We do not understand the notes of birds.
The fox and the deer run away from us; the
bear and tiger rend us. We do not know the
uses of more than a few plants, as corn and
the apple, the potato and the vine. Is not
the landscape, every glimpse of which hath a
grandeur, a face of him.'' Yet this may show
us what discord is between man and nature,
for you cannot freely admire a noble land-
scape if laborers are digging in the field hard
by. The poet finds something ridiculous in
his delight until he is out of the sight of men.
VIII. PROSPECTS
In inquiries respecting the laws of the
world and the frame of things, the highest
reason is always the truest. That which
seems faintly possible, it is so refined, is often
faint and dim because it is deepest seated in
the mind among the eternal verities. Em-
pirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and
by the very knowledge of functions and pro-
cesses to bereave the student of the manly
contemplation of the whole. The savant be-
comes unpoetic. But the best read naturalist
who lends an entire and devout attention to
truth, will see that there remains much to
learn of his relation to the world, and that it
is not to be learned by any addition or sub-
traction or other comparison of known quan-
tities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies of
the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and
by entire humility. He will perceive that
there are far more excellent qualities in the
student than preciseness and infallibility;
that a guess is often more fruitful than an
indisputable affirmation, and that a dream
may let us deeper into the secret of nature
than a hundred concerted experiments.
For the problems to be solved are precisely
those which the physiologist and the natu-
ralist omit to state. It is not so pertinent to
man to know all the individuals of the animal
kingdom, as it is to know whence and whereto
is this tyrannizing unity in his constitution,
which evermore separates and classifies
things, endeavoring to reduce the most di-
verse to one form. When I behold a rich
landscape, it is less to my purpose to recite
correctly the order and superposition of the
strata, than to know why all thought of
multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity.
I cannot greatly honor minuteness in details,
so long as there is no hint to explain the rela-
tion between things and thoughts; no ray
upon the metaphysics of conchology, of bot-
any, of the arts, to show the relation of the
forms of flowers, shells, animals, architecture,
to the mind, and build science upon ideas.
In a cabinet of natural history, we become
sensible of a certain occult recognition and
sympathy in regard to the most unwieldy
and eccentric forms of beast, fish, and insect.
The American who has been confined, in his
own country, to the sight of buildings de-
signed after foreign models, is surprised on
entering York Minster or St. Peter's at
Rome, by the feeling that these structures are
imitations also, — faint copies of an invisible
archetype. Nor has science sufficient hu-
manity, so long as the naturalist overlooks
that wonderful congruity which subsists be-
tween man and the world; of which he is lord,
not because he is the most subtile inhabitant,
but because he is its head and heart, and finds
something of himself in every great and small
thing, in every mountain stratum, in every
new law of color, fact of astronomy, or at-
mospheric influence which observation or
analysis lays open. A perception of this
mystery inspires the muse of George Herbert,
the beautiful psalmist of the seventeenth cen-
tury. The following lines are part of his
little poem on Man.
Man is ail symmetry,
Full of proportions, one limb to another.
And to all the world besides.
Each part may call the farthest, brother;
For head with foot hath private amity,
And both with moons and tides.
Nothing hath got so far
But man hath caught and kept it as his prey;
His eyes dismount the highest star;
He is in little all the sphere.
Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they
Find their acquaintance there.
For us the winds do blow,
The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains
flow.
Nothing we see but means our good,
As our delight, or as our treasure;
The whole Is either our cupboard of food,
Or cabinet of pleasure.
^20
RALPH WALDO EMERSOX
The stars have iis to hcil :
Night draws the curtain, which the sun with-
draws;
Music and li>;ht attend our head.
All things unto our flesh are kind
In their descent and being; to our mind
In their ascent and cause.
More servants wait on man
Than he'll take notice of; in every path
He treads down that which doth befriend him
When sickness makes him pale and wan.
Oh mighty love! Man is one world, and hath
Another to attend him.
The perception of this class of truths
makes the attraction which draws men to
science, but the end is lost sight of in atten-
tion to the means. In view of this half-sight
of science, we accept the sentence of Plato,
that "poetry comes nearer to vital truth
than history." Every surmise and vaticina-
tion of the mind is entitled to a certain re-
spect, and we learn to prefer imperfect
theories, and sentences which contain
glimpses of truth, to digested systems
which have no one valuable suggestion. A
wise writer will feel that the ends of study
and composition are best answered by
announcing undiscovered regions of thought,
and so communicating, through hope, new
activity to the torpid spirit.
I shall therefore conclude this essay with
some traditions of man and nature, which a
certain poet sang to me; and which, as they
have always been in the world, and perhaps
reappear to every bard, may be both history
and prophecy.
*' The foundations of man are not in matter,
but in spirit. But the element of spirit is
eternity. To it, therefore, the longest series
of events, the oldest chronologies are young
and recent. In the cycle of the universal
man, from whom the known individuals pro-
ceed, centuries are points, and all history is
but the epoch of one degradation.
"We distrust and deny inwardly our sym-
pathy with nature. We own and disown our
relation to it, by turns. We are like Nebu-
chadnezzar, dethroned, bereft of reason,
and eating grass like an ox. But who can set
limits to the remedial forc3 of spirit''
"A man is a god in ruins. When men are
innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass
into the immortal as gently as we awake
from dreams. Now, the world would be
insane and rabid, if these disorganizations
should last for hundreds of years. It is kept
in check by death and infancy. Infancy is
the perpetual Messiah, which comes into the
arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to
return to paradise.
"Man is the dwarf of himself. Once he
was permeated and dissolved by spirit. He
filled nature with his overflowing currents.
Out from him sprang the sun and moon; from
man the sun, from woman the moon. The
laws of his mind, the periods of his actions
externized themselves into day and night,
into the year and the seasons. But, having
made for himself this huge shell, his waters
retired; he no longer fills the veins and vein-
lets; he is shrunk to a drop. He sees that the
structure still fits him, but fits him colossally.
Say, rather, once it fitted him, now it corre-
sponds to him from far and on high. He
adores timidly his own work. Now is man
the follower of the sun, and woman the fol-
lower of the moon. Yet sometimes he starts
in his slumber, and wonders at himself and
his house, and muses strangely at the re-
semblance betwixt him and it. He perceives
that if his law is still paramount, if still he
have elemental power, if his word is sterling
yet in nature, it is not conscious power, it is
not inferior but superior to his will. It is in-
stinct." Thus my Orphic poet sang.
At present, man applies to nature but half
his force. He works on the world with his
understanding alone. He lives in it and
masters it by a penny-wisdom; and he that
works most in it is but a half-man, and
whilst his arms are strong and his digestion
good, his mind is imbruted, and he is a selfish
savage. His relation to nature, his power
over it, is through the understanding, as by
manure; the economic use of fire, wind,
water, and the mariner's needle; steam, coal,
chemical agriculture; the repairs of the
human body by the dentist and the surgeon.
This is such a resumption of power as if a
banished king should buy his territories inch
by inch, instead of vaulting at once into his
throne. Meantime, in the thick darkness,
there are not wanting gleams of a better light,
— occasional examples of the action of man
upon nature with his entire force, — with
reason as well as understanding. Such ex-
amples are: the traditions of miracles in the
earliest antiquity of all nations; the history of
I
NATURE
321
Jesus Christ; the achievements of a principle,
as in reUgious and political revolutions, and
in the abolition of the slave-trade; the mir-
acles of enthusiasm, as those reported of
Swedenborg, Hohenlohe, and the Shakers;
many obscure and yet contested facts, now
arranged under the name of Animal Magne-
tism; prayer; eloquence; self-healing; and the
wisdom of children. These are examples of
Reason's momentary grasp of the scepter;
the exertions of a power which exists not
in time or space, but an instantaneous in-
streaming causing power. The difference
between the actual and the ideal force of man
is happily figured by the schoolmen, in say-
ing that the knowledge of man is an evening
knowledge, vespertina cognitioy but that of
God is a morning knowledge, matutina
cognitio.
The problem of restoring to the world
original and eternal beauty is solved by the
redemption of the soul. The ruin or the
blank that we see when we look at nature, is
in our own eye. The axis of vision is not
coincident with the axis of things, and so they
appear not transparent but opaque. The
reason why the world lacks unity, and lies
broken and in heaps, is because man is dis-
united with himself. He cannot be a natu-
ralist until he satisfies all the demands of the
spirit. Love is as much its demand as per-
ception. Indeed, neither can be perfect with-
out the other. In the uttermost meaning of
the words, thought is devout, and devotion is
thought. Deep calls unto deep. But in
actual life, the marriage is not celebrated.
There are innocent men who worship God
after the tradition of their fathers, but their
sense of duty has not yet extended to the use
of all their faculties. And there are patient
naturalists, but they freeze their subject
under the wintry light of the understanding.
Is not prayer also a study of truth, — a sally
of the soul into the unfound infinite.'' No
man ever prayed heartily without learning
something. But when a faithful thinker,
resolute to detach every object from personal
relations and see it in the light of thought,
shall, at the same time, kindle science with
the fire of the holiest affections, then will God
go forth anew into the creation.
It will not need, when the mind is prepared
for study, to search for objects. The invari-
able mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous
in the common. What is a day? What is a
year? What is summer? What is woman?
What is a child? What is sleep? To our
blindness, these things seem unaffecting. We
make fables to hide the baldness of the fact
and conform it, as we say, to the higher law
of the mind. But when the fact is seen under
the light of an idea, the gaudy fable fades and
shrivels. We behold the real higher law. To
the wise, therefore, a fact is true poetry, and
the most beautiful of fables. These wonders
are brought to our own door. You also are a
man. Man and woman and their social life,
poverty, labor, sleep, fear, fortune, are known
to you. Learn that none of these thmgs is
superficial, but that each phenomenon has its
roots in the faculties and affections of the
mind. Whilst the abstract question occupies
your intellect, nature brings it in the concrete
to be solved by your hands. It were a wise
inquiry for the closet, to compare, point by
point, especially at remarkable crises in life,
our daily history with the rise and progress of
ideas in the mind.
So shall we come to look at the world with
new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry
of the intellect, — What is truth? and of the
affections, — What is good? by yielding itself
passive to the educated Will. Then shall
come to pass what my poet said: "Nature is
not fixed but fluid. Spirit alters, molds,
makes it. The immobility or bruteness of
nature is the absence of spirit; to pure spirit
it is fluid, it is volatile, it is obedient. Every
spirit builds itself a house and beyond its
house a world and beyond its world a heaven.
Know then that the world exists for you.
For you is the phenomenon perfect. What
we are, that only can we see. All that Adam
had, all that Caesar could, you have and can
do. Adam called his house, heaven and
earth; Caesar called his house, Rome; you
perhaps call yours, a cobbler's trade; a hun-
dred acres of ploughed land; or a scholar's
garret. Yet line for line and point for point
your dominion is as great as theirs, though
without fine names. Build therefore your
own world. As fast as you conform your life
to the pure idea in your mind, that will un-
fold its great proportions. A correspondent
revolutipn in things will attend the influx of
the spirit. So fast will disagreeable appear-
ances, swine, spiders, snakes, pests, mad-
houses, prisons, enemies, vanish; they are
322
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
temporary and shall be no more seen. I he
sordor and tilths of nature, the sun shall dry
up and the wind exhale. As when the sum-
mer comes from the south the snow-banks
melt and the face of the earth becomes green
before it, so shall the advancing spirit create
its ornaments along its path, and carry with
it the beauty it visits and the song which
enchants it; it shall draw beautiful faces,
warm hearts, wise discourse, and heroic acts,
around its way, until evil is no more seen.
The kingdom of man over nature, which
cometh not with observation, — a dominion
such as now is beyond his dream of God, —
he shall enter without more wonder than the
blind man feels who is gradually restored to
perfect sight."
THE AMERICAN SCHOLARi
Mr. President and Gentlemen, I greet
you on the recommencement of our literary
year. Our anniversary is one of hope, and,
perhaps, not enough of labor. We do not
meet for games of strength or skill, for the
recitation of histories, tragedies, and odes,
like the ancient Greeks; for parliaments of
love and poesy, like the Troubadours; nor for
the advancement of science, like our con-
temporaries in the British and European
capitals. Thus far, our holiday has been
simply a friendly sign of the survival of the
love of letters amongst a people too busy to
give to letters any more. As such it is
precious as the sign of an indestructible in-
stinct. Perhaps the time is already come
when it ought to be, and will be, something
else; w^hen the sluggard intellect of this con-
tinent will look from under its iron lids and
fill the postponed expectation of the world
with something better than the exertions of
mechanical skill. Our day of dependence,
our long apprenticeship to the learning of
other lands, draws to a close. The millions
that around us are rushing into life, cannot
always be fed on the sere remains of foreign
harvests. Events, actions arise, that must
be sung, that will sing themselves. Who can
doubt that poetry will revive and lead in a
new age, as the star in the constellation
Harp, which now flames in our zenith, as-
1 Phi Beta Kappa oration, Harvard College, 31
August, 1837. Published in Boston in the same year.
tronomers announce, shall one day be the
pole-star for a thousand years.''
In this hope I accept the topic which not
only usage but the nature of our association
seem to prescribe to this day, — the Ameri-
can Scholar. Year by year we come up
hither to read one more chapter of his biog-
raphy. Let us inquire what light new days
and events have thrown on his character and
his hopes.
It is one of those fables which out of an
unknown antiquity convey an unlooked-for
wisdom, that the gods, in the beginning,
divided Man into men, that he might be
more helpful to himself; just as the hand was
divided into fingers, the better to answer its
end.
The old fable covers a doctrine ever new
and sublime; that there is One Man, — pre-
sent to all particular men only partially, or
through one faculty; and that you must take
the whole society to find the whole man.
Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an
engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and
scholar, and statesman, and producer, and
soldier. In the divided or social state these
functions are parceled out to mdividuals,
each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint
work, whilst each other performs his. The
fable implies that the individual, to possess
himself, must sometimes return from his own
labor to embrace all the other laborers.
But, unfortunately, this original unit, this
fountain of power, has been so distributed to
multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided
and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops,
and cannot be gathered. The state of society
is one in which the members have suffered
amputation from the trunk, and strut about
so many walking monsters, — a good finger, a
neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.
Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing,
into many things. The planter, who is Man
sent out into the field to gather food, is
seldom cheered by any idea of the true
dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel
and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks
into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm.
The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal
worth to his work, but is ridden by the
routine of his craft, and the soul is subject to
dollars. The priest becomes a form; the
attorney a statute-book; the mechanic a
machine; the sailor a rope of the ship.
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR
323
In this distribution of functions the scholar
is the delegated intellect. In the right state
he is Man Thinking. In the degenerate
state, when the victim of society, he tends to
become a mere thinker, or still worse, the
parrot of other men's thinking.
In this view of him, as Man Thinking, the
theory of his office is contained. Him
Nature solicits with all her placid, all her
monitory pictures; him the past instructs;
him the future invites. Is not indeed every
man a student, and do not all things exist
for the student's behoof.'' And, finally, is
not the true scholar the only true master.''
But the old oracle said, "All things have two
handles; beware of the wrong one." In life,
too often, the scholar errs with mankind and
forfeits his privilege. Let us see him in his
school, and consider him in reference to the
main influences he receives.
L The first in time and the first in im-
portance of the influences upon the mind is
that of nature. Every day, the sun; and,
after sunset, Night and her stars. Ever the
winds blow; ever the grass grows. Every
day, men and women, conversing, beholding
and beholden. The scholar is he of all men
whom this spectacle most engages. He must
settle its value in his mind. What is nature
to him.^ There is never a beginning, there is
never an end, to the inexplicable continuity
of this web of God, but always circular power
returning into itself. Therein it resembles
his own spirit, whose beginning, whose end-
ing, he never can find, — so entire, so bound-
less. Far too as her splendors shine, system
on system shooting like rays, upward, down-
ward, without center, without circumference,
— in the mass and in the particle, Nature
hastens to render account of herself to the
mmd. Classification begins. To the young
mind every thing is individual, stands by
itself. By and by, it finds how to join two
things and see in them one nature; then
three, then three thousand; and so, tyran-
nized over by its own unifying instinct, it
goes on tying things together, diminishing
anomalies, discovering roots running under
ground whereby contrary and remote things
cohere and flower out from one stem. It
presently learns that since the dawn of
history there has been a constant accumula-
tion and classifying of facts. But what is
classification but the perceiving that these
objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign,
but have a law which is also a law of the
human mind.^ Ihe astronomer discovers
that geometry, a pure abstraction of the
human mind, is the measure of planetary
motion. The chemist finds proportions and
mtelligible method throughout matter; and
science is nothing but the finding of analogy,
identity, in the most remote parts. The
ambitious soul sits down before each refrac-
tory fact; one after another reduces all
strange constitutions, all new powers, to
their class and their law, and goes on forever
to animate the last fiber of organization, the
outskirts of nature, by insight.
Thus to him, to this school-boy under the
bending dome of day, is suggested that he
and it proceed from one root; one is leaf and
one is flower; relation, sympathy, stirring in
every vein. And what is that root.'' Is not
that the soul of his soul? A thought too
bold; a dream too wild. Yet when this
spiritual light shall have revealed the law of
more earthly natures, — when he has learned
to worship the soul, and to see that the
natural philosophy that now is, is only the
first gropings of its gigantic hand, he shall
look forward to an ever expanding knowledge
as to a becoming creator. He shall see that
nature is the opposite of the soul, answering
to it part for part. One is seal and one is
print. Its beauty is the beauty of his own
mind. Its laws are the laws of his own mind.
Nature then becomes to him the measure of
his attainments. So much of nature as he is
ignorant of, so much of his own mind does he
not yet possess. And, in fine, the ancient
precept, " Know thyself," and the modern
precept, "Study nature," become at last one
maxim.
II. The next great influence into the spirit
of the scholar is the mind of the Past, —
in whatever form, whether of literature, of
art, of institutions, that mind is inscribed.
Books are the best type of the influence of the
past, and perhaps we shall get at the truth,
— learn the amount of this influence more
conveniently, — by considering their value
alone.
The theory of books is noble. The scholar
of the first age received into him the world
around; brooded thereon; gave it the new
324
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
arrannement of his own iiuikI, and uttered it
a^ain. It came into him hfe; it went out
from him truth. It came to him sliort-hved
actions; it went out from him immortal
thoughts. It came to him business; it went
from him poetry. It was dead fact; now, it
is quick thought. It can stand, and it can
go. It now endures, it now flies, it now
inspires. Precisely in proportion to the
depth of mind from which it issued, so high
does it soar, so long does it sing.
Or, I might say, it depends on how far the
process had gone, of transmuting life into
truth. In proportion to the completeness of
the distillation, so will the purity and im-
perishablencss of the product be. But none
is quite perfect. As no air-pump can by any
means make a perfect vacuum, so neither can
any artist entirely exclude the conventional,
the local, the perishable from his book, or
write a book of pure thought, that shall be as
efficient, in all respects, to a remote posterity,
as to contemporaries, or rather to the second
age. Each age, it is found, must write its
own books; or rather, each generation for the
next succeeding. The books of an older
period will not fit this.
Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The
sacredness which attaches to the act of crea-
tion, the act of thought, is transferred to the
record. The poet chanting w^as felt to be a
divine man: henceforth the chant is divine
also. The writer was a just and wise spirit:
henceforward it is settled the book is perfect;
as love of the hero corrupts into worship of
his statue. Instantly the book becomes
noxious: the guide is a tyrant. The sluggish
and perverted mind of the multitude, slow to
open to the incursions of Reason, having once
so opened, having once received this book,
stands upon it, and makes an outcry if it is
disparaged. Colleges are built on it. Books
are written on it by thinkers, not by Man
Ihinking; by men of talent, that is, who
start wrong, who set out from accepted
dogmas, not from their own sight of prin-
ciples. Meek young men grow up in
libraries, believing it their duty to accept
the views which Cicero, which Locke, which
Bacon, have given; forgetful that Cicero,
Locke, and Bacon were only young men in
libraries when they wrote these books.
Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have
the bookworm. Hence the book-learned
class, who value books, as such; not as related
to nature and the human constitution, but as
making a sort of Third Estate with the
world and the soul. Hence the restorers of
readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs
of all degrees.
Books are the best of things, well used;
abused, among the worst. What is the right
use? What is the one end which all means go
to effect.'' They are for nothing but to in-
spire. I had better never see a book than to
be warped by its attraction clean out of my
own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a
system. The one thing in the world, of
value, is the active soul. This every man is
entitled to; this every man contains within
him, although in almost all men obstructed,
and as yet unborn. The soul active sees
absolute truth and utters truth, or creates.
In this action it is genius; not the privilege of
here and there a favorite, but the sound
estate of every man. In its essence it is pro-
gressive. The book, the college, the school
of art, the institution of any kind, stop with
some past utterance of genius. This is good,
say they, — let us hold by this. They pin
me down. They look backward and not
forward. But genius looks forw^ard: the eyes
of man are set in his forehead, not in his hind-
head: man hopes: genius creates. Whatever
talents may be, if the man create not, the
pure efflux of the Deity is not his; — cinders
and smoke there may be, but not yet flame.
There are creative manners, there are crea-
tive actions, and creative words; manners,
actions, words, that is, indicative of no
custom or authority, but springing spontane-
ous from the mind's own sense of good and
fair.
On the other part, instead of being its own
seer, let it receive from another mind its
truth, though it were in torrents of light,
w^ithout periods of solitude, inquest, and self-
recovery, and a fatal disservice is done.
Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of
genius by over-influence. The literature of
every nation bears me witness. The English
dramatic poets have Shakespearized now for
two hundred years.
Undoubtedly there is a right way of read-
ing, so it be sternly subordinated. Man
Thinking must not be subdued by his instru-
ments. Books are for the scholar's idle
times. When he can read God directly, the
I
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR
325
hour is too precious to be wasted in other
men's transcripts of their readings. jiut
when the intervals of darkness come, as come
they must, — when the sun is hid and the
stars withdraw their shining, — we repair to
the lamps which were kindled by their ray, to
guide our steps to the East again, where the
dawn is. We hear, that we may speak. The
Arabian proverb says, "A fig tree, looking on
a fig tree, becometh fruitful."
It is remarkable, the character of the
pleasure we derive from the best books.
They impress us with the conviction that one
nature wrote and the same reads. We read
the verses of one of the great English poets,
of Chaucer, of Marvell, of Dryden, with the
most modern joy, — with a pleasure, I mean,
which is in great part caused by the abstrac-
tion of all time from their verses. There is
some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise,
when this poet, who lived in some past world,
two or three hundred years ago, says that
which lies close to my own soul, that which I
also had well-nigh thought and said. But
for the evidence thence afforded to the philo-
sophical doctrine of the identity of all minds,
we should suppose some preestablished har-
mony, some foresight of souls that were to be,
and some preparation of stores for their
future wants, like the fact observed in in-
sects, who lay up food before death for the
young grub they shall never see.
I would not be hurried by any love of
system, by any exaggeration of instincts, to
underrate the Book. We all know, that as
the human body can be nourished on any
food, though it were boiled grass and the
broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed
by any knowledge. And great and heroic
men have existed who had almost no other
information than by the printed page. I
only would say that it needs a strong head to
bear that diet. One must be an inventor to
read well. As the proverb says, "He that
would bring home the wealth of the Indies,
must carry out the wealth of the Indies."
There is then creative reading as well as
creative writing. When the mind is braced
by labor and invention, the page of whatever
book we read becomes luminous with mani-
fold allusion. Every sentence is doubly sig-
nificant, and the sense of our author is as
broad as the world. We then see, what is
always true, that as the seer's hour of vision
is short and rare among heavy days and
months, so is its record, perchance, the least
part of his volume. ihe discerning will
read, in his Plato or Shakespeare, only that
least part, — only the authentic utterances
of the oracle; — all the rest he rejects, were
It never so many times Plato's and Shake-
speare's.
Of course there is a portion of reading quite
indispensable to a wise man. History and
exact science he must learn by laborious
reading. Colleges, in like manner, have
their indispensable office, — to teach ele-
ments. But they can only highly serve us
when they aim not to drill, but to create;
when they gather from far every ray of
various genius to their hospitable halls, and
by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of
their youth on flame. Thought and knowl-
edge are natures in which apparatus and
pretension avail nothing. Gowns and pe-
cuniary foundations, though of towns of gold,
can never countervail the least sentence or
syllable of wit. Forget this, and our Ameri-
can colleges will recede in their public im-
portance, whilst they grow richer every year.
HI. There goes in the world a notion that
the scholar should be a recluse, a valetudi-
narian,— as unfit for any handiwork or
public labor as a pen-knife for an ax. The
so-called "practical men" sneer at specula-
tive men, as if, because they speculate or see,
they could do nothing. I have heard it said
that the clergy, — who are always, more uni-
versally than any other class, the scholars of
their day, — are addressed as women; that
the rough, spontaneous conversation of men
they do not hear, but only a mincing and
diluted speech. They are often virtually dis-
franchised; and indeed there are advocates
for their celibacy. As far as this is true of
the studious classes, it is not just and wise.
Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it
is essential. Without it he is not yet man.
Without it thought can never ripen into
truth. Whilst the world hangs before the
eye as a cloud of beauty, we cannot even see
its beauty. Inaction is cowardice, but there
can be no scholar without the heroic mind.
The preamble of thought, the transition
through which it passes from the unconscious
to the conscious, is action. Only so much do
I know, as I have lived. Instantly we know
326
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
whose words are loaded with Hfc, and whose
not.
The world, — this shadow of the soul, or
other mr, — lies wide aroiiiui. its attractions
are the keys which unlock my thoughts and
make me ac(|uainted witii myself. I run
eagerly into this resoundmg tumult. 1 grasp
the hands of those next me, and take my
place in the ring to suffer and to work, taught
by an instinct that so shall the dumb abyss
be vocal with speech. I pierce its order; I
dissipate its fear; I dispoi^e of it within the
circuit of my expanding life. So much only
of life as I know by experience, so much
of the wilderness have I vanquished and
planted, or so far have I extended my being,
my dominion. I do not see how any man
can afford, for the sake of his nerves and his
nap, to spare any action in which he can par-
take. It is pearls and rubies to his discourse.
Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are
instructors in eloquence and wisdom. The
true scholar grudges every opportunity of
action passed by, as a loss of power.
It is the raw material out of which the intel-
lect molds her splendid products. A strange
process too, this by which experience is con-
verted into thought, as a mulberry leaf is
converted into satin. The manufacture goes
forward at all hours.
The actions and events of our childhood
and youth are now matters of calmest ob-
servation. They lie like fair pictures in the
air. Not so with our recent actions, — with
the business which we now have in hand.
On this we are quite unable to speculate.
Our affections as yet circulate through it.
We no more feel or know it than we feel the
feet, or the hand, or the brain of our body.
The new deed is yet a part of life, — remains
for a time immersed in our unconscious life.
In some contemplative hour it detaches itself
from the life like a ripe fruit, to become a
thought of the min:l. Instantly it is raised,
transfigured; the corruptible has put on in-
corruption. Henceforth it is an object of
beauty, however base its origin and neighbor-
hood. Observe too the impossibility of ante-
dating this act. In its grub state, it cannot
fly, it cannot shine, it is a dull grub. But
suddenly, without observation, the selfsame
thing unfurls beautiful wings, and is an angel
of wisdom. So is there no fact, no event, in
our private history, which shall not, sooner or
later, lose its adhesive, inert form, and aston-
ish us by soaring from our body into the
empyrean. Cradle and infancy, school and
playground, the fear of boys, and dogs, and
ferules, the love of little maids and berries,
and many another fact that once filled the
whole sky, are gone already; friend and rela-
tive, profession and party, town and country,
nation and world, must also soar and sing.
Of course, he who has put forth his total
strength in fit actions has the richest return
of wisdom. I will not shut myself out of this
globe of action, and transplant an oak into a
fiower-pot, there to hunger and pine; nor
trust the revenue of some single faculty, and
exhaust one vein of thought, much like those
Savoyards, who, getting their livelihood by
carving shepherds, shepherdesses, and smok-
ing Dutchmen, for all Europe, went out one
day to the mountain to find stock, and dis-
covered that they had whittled up the last of
their pine trees. Authors we have, in num-
bers, who have written out their vein, and
who, moved by a commendable prudence,
sail for Greece or Palestine, follow the
trapper into the prairie, or ramble round
Algiers, to replenish their merchantable
stock.
If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar
would be covetous of action. Life is our
dictionary. Years are well spent in country
labors; in town; in the insight into trades
and manufactures; in frank intercourse with
many men and women; in science; in art; to
the one end of mastering in all their facts a
language by which to illustrate and embody
our perceptions. I learn immediately from
any speaker how much he has already lived,
through the poverty or the splendor of his
speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry
from whence we get tiles and copestones for
the masonry of to-day. This is the way to
learn grammar. Colleges and books only
copy the language which the field and the
work-yard made.
But the final value of action, like that of
books, and better than books, is that it is a
resource. That great principle of Undula-
tion in nature, that shows itself in the inspir-
ing and expiring of the breath; in desire and
satiety; in the ebb and flow of the sea; in day
and night; in heat and cold; and, as yet more
deeply ingrained in every atom and every
fluid, is known to us under the name of
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR
327
Polarity, — these " fits of easy transmission
and reflection," as Newton called them, are
the law of nature because they are che law
of spirit.
1 he mmd now thinks, now acts, and each
fit reproduces the other. When the artist
has exhausted his materials, when the fancy
no longer paints, when thoughts are no longer
apprehended and books are a weariness, —
he has always the resource to live. Character
is higher than intellect. Thinking is the
function. Living is the functionary. The
stream retreats to its source. A great soul
will be strong to live, as well as strong to
think. Does he lack organ or medium to
impart his truth? He can still fall back on
this elemental force of living them. This is a
total act. Thinking is a partial act. Let the
grandeur of justice shine in his affairs. Let
the beauty of affection cheer his lowly roof.
Those "far from fame," who dwell and act
with him, will feel the force of his constitu-
tion in the doings and passages of the day
better than it can be measured by any public
and designed display. Time shall teach him
that the scholar loses no hour which the man
lives. Herein he unfolds the sacred germ of
his instinct, screened from influence. What
is lost in seemliness is gained in strength.
Not out of those on whom systems of educa-
tion have exhausted their culture, comes the
helpful giant to destroy the old or to build
the new, but out of unhandseled savage
nature; out of terrible Druids and Berserkers
come at last Alfred and Shakespeare.
I hear therefore with joy whatever is be-
ginning to be said of the dignity and necessity
of labor to every citizen. There is virtue yet
in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well
as for unlearned hands. And labor is every-
where welcome; always we are invited to
work; only be this limitation observed, that a
man shall not for the sake of wider activity
sacrifice any opinion to the popular judg-
ments and modes of action.
I have now spoken of the education of the
scholar by nature, by books, and by action.
It remains to say somewhat of his duties.
They are such as become Man Thinking.
They may all be comprised in self-trust.
The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise,
and to guide men by showing them facts
amidst appearances. He plies the slow, un-
honored, and unpaid task of observation.
Flamsteed' and llerschel, in their glazed ob-
servatories, may catalogue the stars with the
praise of all men, and the results being splen-
did and useful, iionor is sure. Hut he, in his
private observatory, cataloguing obscure and
nebulous stars of the human mind, which as
yet no man has thought of as such, — watch-
ing days and months sometimes for a few
facts; correcting still his old records; — must
relincjuish display and immediate fame. In
the long period of his preparation he must
betray often an ignorance and shiftlessness in
popular arts, incurring the disdain of the able
who shoulder him aside. Long he must
stammer in his speech; often forgo the living
for the dead. Worse yet, he must accept —
how often! — poverty and solitude. For the
ease and pleasure of treading the old road,
accepting the fashions, the education, the
religion of society, he takes the cross of
making his own, and, of course, the self-
accusation, the faint heart, the frequent un-
certainty and loss of time, which are the
nettles and tangling vines in the way of the
self-relying and self-directed; and the state of
virtual hostility in which he seems to stand to
society, and especially to educated society.
For all this loss and scorn, what oflfset.'* He
is to find consolation in exercising the highest
functions of human nature. He is one who
raises himself from private considerations
and breathes and lives on public and illustri-
ous thoughts. He is the world's eye. He is
the world's heart. He is to resist the vulgar
prosperity that retrogrades ever to barbar-
ism, by preserving and communicating heroic
sentiments, noble biographies, melodious
verse, and the conclusions of history. What-
soever oracles the human heart, in all emer-
gencies, in all solemn hours, has uttered as its
commentary on the world of actions, — these
he shall receive and impart. And whatso-
ever new verdict Reason from her inviolable
seat pronounces on the passing men and
events of to-day, — this he shall hear and
promulgate.
These being his functions, it becomes him
to feel all confidence in himself, and to defer
never to the popular cry. He and he only
knows the world. The world of any moment
is the merest appearance. Some great
English astronomer (1646-1719).
328
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
decorum, some fetish of a government, some
ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is cried up
by lialf mankind and cried down by the other
half, as if all depended on this particular up
or down. The odds are that the whole ques-
tion is not worth the poorest thought which
the scholar has lost in listening to the con-
troversy. Let him not quit his belief that a
popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and
honorable of the earth affirm it to be the
crack of doom. In silence, in steadiness, in
severe abstraction, let him hold by himself;
add observation to observation, patient of
neglect, patient of reproach, and bide his
own time, — happy enough if he can satisfy
himself alone that this day he has seen some-
thing truly. Success treads on every right
step. For the instinct is sure, that prompts
him to tell his brother what he thinks. He
then learns that in going down into the
secrets of his own mind he has descended into
the secrets of all minds. He learns that he
who has mastered any law in his private
thoughts, is master to that extent of all men
whose language he speaks, and of all into
whose language his own can be translated.
The poet, in utter solitude remembering his
spontaneous thoughts and recording them, is
found to have recorded that which men in
crowded cities find true for them also. The
orator distrusts at first the fitness of his frank
confessions, his want of knowledge of the
persons he addresses, until he finds that he is
the complement of his hearers; — that they
drink his words because he fulfills for them
their own nature; the deeper he dives into
his privatest, secretest presentiment, to his
wonder he finds this is the most accept-
able, most public, and universally true.
The people delight in it; the better part of
every man feels, This is my music; this
myself.
In self-trust all the virtues are compre-
hended. Free should the scholar be, — free
and brave. Free even to the definition of
freedom, "without any hindrance that does
not arise out of his own constitution."
Brave; for fear is a thing which a scholar by
his very function puts behind him. Fear
always springs from ignorance. It is a shame
to him if his tranquillity, amid dangerous
times, arise from the presumption that like
children and women his is a protected class;
or if he seek a temporary peace by the diver-
sion of his thoughts from politics or vexed
questions, hiding his head like an ostrich in
the flowering bushes, peeping into micro-
scopes, and turning rhymes, as a boy whistles
to keep his courage up. So is the danger a
danger still; so is the fear worse. Manlike
let him turn and face it. Let him look into
its eye and search its nature, inspect its
origin, — see the whelping of this lion,—
which lies no great way back; he will then
find in himself a perfect comprehension of its
nature and extent; he will have made his
hands meet on the other side, and can hence-
forth defy it and pass on superior. The
world is his who can see through its preten-
sion. What deafness, what stone-blind cus-
tom, what overgrown error you behold is
there only by sufferance, — by your suffer-
ance. See it to be a lie, and you have already
dealt it its mortal blow.
Yes, we are the cowed, — we the trustless.
It is a mischievous notion that we are come
late into nature; that the world was finished
a long time ago. As the world was plastic
and fluid in the hands of God, so it is ever to
so much of his attributes as we bring to it.
To ignorance and sin, it is flint. They adapt
themselves to it as they may; but in propor-
tion as a man has any thing in him divine, the
firmament flows before him and takes his
signet and form. Not he is great who can
alter matter, but he who can alter my state
of mind. They are the kings of the world
who give the color of their present thought to
all nature and all art, and persuade men by
the cheerful serenity of their carrying the
matter, that this thing which they do is the
apple which the ages have desired to pluck,
now at last ripe, and inviting nations to the
harvest. The great man makes the great
thing. Wherever Macdonald sits, there is
the head of the table. Linnaeus makes bot-
any the most alluring of studies, and wins it
from the farmer and the herb-w^oman; Davy,
chemistry; and Cuvier, fossils. The day is
always his who works in it with serenity and
great aims. The unstable estimates of men
crowd to him whose mind is filled with a
truth, as the heaped waves of the Atlantic
follow the moon.
For this self-trust, the reason is deeper
than can be fathomed, — darker than can be
enlightened. I might not carry with me the
feeling of my audience in stating my own
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR
329
belief. But I have already shown the ground
of my hope, in adverting to the doctrine that
man is one. I believe man has been wronged;
he has wronged himself. He has almost lost
the light that can lead him back to his pre-
rogatives. Men are become of no account.
Men in history, men in the world of to-day,
are bugs, are spawn, and are called "the
mass" and "the herd." In a century, in a
millennium, one or two men; that is to say,
one or two approximations to the right state
of every man. All the rest behold in the hero
or the poet their own green and crude being,
— ripened; yes, and are content to be less, so
that may attain to its full stature. What a
testimony, full of grandeur, full of pity, is
borne to the demands of his own nature, by
the poor clansman, the poor partisan, who
rejoices in the glory of his chief. The poor
and the low find some amends to their im-
mense moral capacity, for their acquiescence
in a political and social inferiority. They are
content to be brushed like flies from the path
of a great person, so that justice shall be done
by him to that common nature which it is the
dearest desire of all to see enlarged and
glorified. They sun themselves in the great
man's light, and feel it to be their own ele-
ment. They cast the dignity of man from
their downtrod selves upon the shoulders of a
hero, and will perish to add one drop of blood
to make that great heart beat, those giant
sinews combat and conquer. He lives for us,
and we live in him.
Men such as they are, very naturally seek
money or power; and power, because it is as
good as money, — the "spoils," so called, "of
ofl[ice. " And why not.'' for they aspire to the
highest, and this, in their sleep-walking, they
dream is highest. Wake them and they
shall quit the false good and leap to the true,
and leave governments to clerks and desks.
This revolution is to be wrought by the
gradual domestication of the idea of Culture.
The main enterprise of the world for splen-
dor, for extent, is the upbuilding of a man.
Here are the materials strewn along the
ground. The private life of one man shall
be a more illustrious monarchy, more for-
midable to its enemy, more sweet and serene
in its influence to its friend, than any king-
dom in history. For a man, rightly viewed,
comprehendeth the particular natures of all
men. Each philosopher, each bard, each
actor has only done for me, as by a delegate,
what one day 1 can do for myself. Fhe
books which once we valued more than the
apple of the eye, we have quite exhausted.
What is that but saying that we have come
up with the point of view which the universal
mind took through the eyes of one scribe; we
have been that man, and have passed on.
First, one, then another, we drain all cisterns,
and waxing greater by all these supplies, we
crav^e a better and more abundant food.
The man has never lived that can feed us
ever. The human mind cannot be enshrined
in a person who shall set a barrier on any one
side to this unbounded, unboundable empire.
It is one central fire, which flaming now out
of the lips of Etna, lightens the capes of
Sicily, and now out of the throat of Vesuvius,
illuminates the towers and vineyards of
Naples. It is one light which beams out of a
thousand stars. It is one soul which ani-
mates all men.
But I have dwelt perhaps tediously upon
this abstraction of the Scholar. I ought not
to delay longer to add what I have to say of
nearer reference to the time and to this
country.
Historically, there is thought to be a differ-
ence in the ideas which predominate over
successive epochs, and there are data for
marking the genius of the Classic, of the
Romantic, and now of the Reflective or
Philosophical age. With the views I have
intimated of the oneness or the identity of the
mind through all individuals, I do not much
dwell on these differences. In fact, I believe
each individual passes through all three.
7 he boy is a Greek; the youth, romantic; the
adult, reflective. I deny not, however, that a
revolution in the leading idea may be dis-
tinctly enough traced.
Our age is bewailed as the age of Introver-
sion. Must that needs be evil.'* We, it
seems, are critical; we are embarrassed with
second thoughts; we cannot enjoy anything
for hankering to know whereof the pleasure
consists; we are lined with eyes; we see with
our feet; the time is infected with Hamlet's
unhappiness, —
Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.
It is so bad then? Sight is the last thing to
be pitied. Would we be blind? Do we fear
330
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
lest we should outsee nature and God, and
drink truth dry? I look upon the discontent
of the literary class as a mere announcement
of the fact that they find themselves not
in the state of mind of their fathers, and
ret^ret the cominp; state as untried; as a boy
dreads the water before he has learned that he
can swim. If there is any period one would
desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolu-
tion; when the old and the new stand side by
side and admit of being compared; when the
energies of all men are searched by fear and
by hope; when the historic glories of the old
can be compensated by the rich possibilities
of the new era? This time, like all times, is a
very good one, if we but know what to do
with it.
I read with some joy of the auspicious
signs of the coming days, as they glimmer
already through poetry and art, through
philosophy and science, through church and
state.
One of these signs is the fact that the same
movement which effected the elevation of
what was called the lowest class in the state,
assumed in literature a very marked and as
benign an aspect. Instead of the sublime
and beautiful, the near, the low, the common,
was explored and poetized. That which had
been negligently trodden under foot by those
who were harnessing and provisioning them-
selves for long journeys into far countries, is
suddenly found to be richer than all foreign
parts. The literature of the poor, the feel-
ings of the child, the philosophy of the street,
the meaning of household life, are the topics
of the time. It is a great stride. It is a sign
— is it not? — of new vigor when the extrem-
ities are made active, when currents of warm
life run into the hands and the feet. I ask
not for the great, the remote, the romantic;
what is doing in Italy or Arabia; what is
Greek art, or Proven9al minstrelsy; I em-
brace the common, I explore and sit at the
feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight
into to-day, and you may have the antique
and future worlds. What would we really
know the meaning of? The meal in the
firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the
street; the news of the boat; the glance of
the eye; the form and the gait of the body; —
show me the ultimate reason of these mat-
ters; show me the sublime presence of the
highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it
does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities of
nature; let me see every trifle bristling with
the polarity that ranges it instantly on an
eternal law; and the shop, the plough, and
the ledger referred to the like cause by which
light undulates and poets sing; — and the
world lies no longer a dull miscellany and
lumber-room, but has form and order; there
is no trifle, there is no puzzle, but one design
unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and
the lowest trench.
This idea has inspired the genius of Gold-
smith, Burns, Cowper, and, in a newer time,
of Goethe, Wordsworth, and Carlyle. This
idea they have differently followed and with
various success. In contrast with their writ-
ing, the style of Pope, of Johnson, of Gib-
bon, looks cold and pedantic. This writing
is blood-warm. Man is surprised to find
that things near are not less beautiful and
wondrous than things remote. The near ex-
plains the far. The drop is a small ocean.
A man is related to all nature. This percep-
tion of the worth of the vulgar is fruit-
ful in discoveries. Goethe, in this very
thing the most modern of the moderns, has
shown us, as none ever did, the genius of the
ancients.
There is one man of genius who has done
much for this philosophy of life, whose liter-
ary value has never yet been rightly esti-
mated;— I mean Emanuel Swedenborg.
The most imaginative of men, yet writing
with the precision of a mathematician, he
endeavored to engraft a purely philosophical
Ethics on the popular Christianity of his
time. Such an attempt of course must have
difficulty which no genius could surmount.
But he saw and showed the connection be-
tween nature and the affections of the soul.
He pierced the emblematic or spiritual char-
acter of the visible, audible, tangible world.
Especially did his shade-loving muse hover
over and interpret the lower parts of nature;
he showed the mysterious bond that allies
moral evil to the foul material forms, and has
given in epical parables a theory of insanity,
of beasts, of unclean and fearful things.
Another sign of our times, also marked by
an analogous political movement, is the new
importance given to the single person.
Every thing that tends to insulate the indi-
vidual,— to surround him with barriers of
natural respect, so that each man shall feel
SELF-RELIANCE
331
the world is his, and man shall treat with
man as a sovereign state with a sovereign
state, — tends to true union as well as great-
ness. "I learned," said the melancholy
Pestalozzi, *'that no man in God's wide earth
is either willing or able to help any other
man." Help must come from the bosom
alone. The scholar is that man who must
take up into himself all the ability of the
time, all the contributions of the past, all the
hopes of the future. He must be an univer-
sity of knowledges. If there be one lesson
more than another which should pierce his
ear, it is, The world is nothing, the man is all;
in yourself is the law of all nature, and you
know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in
yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is
for you to know all; it is for you to dare all.
Mr. President and Gentlemen, this confi-
dence in the unsearched might of man be-
longs, by all motives, by all prophecy, by all
preparation, to the American Scholar. We
have listened too long to the courtly muses of
Europe. The spirit of the American freeman
is already suspected to be timid, imitative,
tame. Public and private avarice make the
air we breathe thick and fat. The scholar is
decent, indolent, complaisant. See already
the tragic consequence. The mind of this
country, taught to aim at low objects, eats
upon itself. There is no work for any but the
decorous and the complaisant. Young men
of the fairest promise, who begin life upon our
shores, inflated by the mountain winds,
shined upon by all the stars of God, find the
earth below not in unison with these, but are
hindered from action by the disgust which
the principles on which business is managed
inspire, and turn drudges, or die of disgust,
some of them suicides. What is the remedy?
They did not yet see, and thousands of young
men as hopeful now crowding to the barriers
for the career do not yet see, that if the single
man plant himself indomitably on his in-
stincts, and there abide, the huge world will
come round to him. Patience, — patience;
with the shades of all the good and great for
company; and for solace the perspective of
your own infinite life; and for work the study
and the communication of principles, the
making those instincts prevalent, the conver-
sion of the world. Is it not the chief disgrace
in the world, not to be an unit; — not to be
reckoned one character; — not to yield that
peculiar fruit which each man was created to
bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the
hundred, or tiie thousand, of the party, the
section, to which we belong; and our opinion
predicted geographically, as the north, or the
south .'' Not so, brothers and friends, —
please God, ours shall not be so. We will
walk on our own feet; we will work with our
own hands; we will speak our own minds.
1 he study of letters shall be no longer a name
for pity, for doubt, and for sensual indul-
gence. The dread of man and the love of
man shall be a wall of defense and a wreath of
joy around all. A nation of men will for the
first time exist, because each believes himself
inspired by the Divine Soul which also in-
spires all men.
ESSAYS 1
11. SELF-RELIANCE
Ne te qucBsiveris extra?
Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill.
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
— Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's
Honest Mans Fortune.
Cast the bantling on the rocks,
Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat,
Wintered with the hawk and fox,
Power and speed be hands and feet.
I READ the other day some verses written
by an eminent painter which were original
and not conventional. The soul always hears
an admonition in such lines, let the subject be
what it may. The sentiment they instill is of
more value than any thought they may con-
tain. To believe your own thought, to be-
lieve that what is true for you in your private
heart is true for all men, — that is genius.
Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be
the universal sense; for the inmost in due
time becomes the outmost, and our first
thought is rendered back to us by the
1 This volume, later called Essays, First Se/ies, was
published in 1841. It contains twelve essays: History y
Self-ReliancCy Compensation, Spiritual Laws, LovCy
Friendship, Prudence, Heroism, The Over-Soul, Circles^
Intellect, Art.
2 Seek not beyond yourself.
332
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
trumpets of the Last JiKlp;ment. Eamiliar as
the voice of the mind is to each, the highest
merit we ascribe to Moses, IMato, and Milton
is that they set at naught books and tradi-
tions, and spoke not what men, but what
the\ thought. A man should learn to detect
and watch that gleam of light which flashes
across his mind from within, more than the
luster of the firmament of bards and sages.
'^ et he dismisses without notice his thought,
because it is his. In every work of genius we
recognize our own rejected thoughts; they
come back to us with a certain alienated
majesty. Great works of art have no more
affecting lesson for us than this. They teach
us to abide by our spontaneous impression
with good-humored inflexibility then most
when the whole cry of voices is on the other
side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say
with masterly good sense precisely what we
have thought and felt all the time, and we
shall be forced to take with shame our own
opinion from another.
There is a time in every man's education
when he arrives at the conviction that envy
is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he
must take himself for better for w^orse as his
portion; that though the wide universe is full
of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can
come to him but through his toil bestowed on
that plot of ground which is given to him to
till. The power which resides in him is new
in nature', and none but he knows w^hat that
is which he can do, nor does he know until he
has tried. Not for nothing one face, one
character, one fact, makes much impression
on him and another none. This sculpture in
the memory is not without preestablished
harmony. The eye w^as placed where one
ray should fall, that it might testify of that
particular ray. We but half express our-
selves, and are ashamed of that divine idea
which each of us represents. It may be
safely trusted as proportionate and of good
issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God
w^ill not have his work made manifest by
cowards. A man is relieved and gay when
he has put his heart into his work and done
his best; but what he has said or done other-
wise shall give him no peace. It is a deliver-
ance which does not deliver. In the attempt
his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no
invention, no hope.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that
iron string. Accept the place the divine
providence has found for you, the society
of your contemporaries, the connection of
events. Great men have always done so, and
confided themselves childlike to the genius of
their age, betraying their perception that the
absolutely trustworthy was seated at their
heart, working through their hands, pre-
dominating in all their being. And we are
now men, and must accept in the highest
mind the same transcendent destiny; and not
minors and invalids in a protected corner, not
cowards fleeing before a revolution, but
guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying
the Almighty eflfort and advancing on Chaos
and the Dark.
What pretty oracles nature yields us on
this text in the face and behavior of children,
babes, and even brutes! That divided and
rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment be-
cause our arithmetic has computed the
strength and means opposed to our purpose,
these have not. Their mind being whole,
their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we
look in their faces w^e are disconcerted. In-
fancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it;
so that one babe commonly makes four or
five out of the adults who prattle and play to
it. So God has armed youth and puberty
and manhood no less with its own piquancy
and charm, and made it enviable and gra-
cious and its claims not to be put by, if it will
stand by itself. Do not think the youth has
no force, because he cannot speak to you and
me. Hark! in the next room his voice is suffi-
ciently clear and emphatic. It seems he
knows how to speak to his contemporaries.
Bashful or bold then, he will know how to
make us seniors very unnecessary.
The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a
dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord
to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the
healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is
in the parlor what the pit is in the playhouse;
independent, irresponsible, looking out from
his corner on such people and facts as pass by,
he tries and sentences them on their merits, in
the swift, summary ways of boys, as good,
bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome.
He cumbers himself never about conse-
quences, about interests; he gives an inde-
pendent, genuine verdict. You must court
him; he does not court you. But the man is
as it were clapped into jail by his conscious-
SELF-RELIANCE
333
ness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken
with eclat he is a committed person, watched
by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds,
whose affections must now enter into his ac-
count. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that
he could pass again into his neutrality! Who
can thus avoid all pledges and, having ob-
served, observe again from the same unaf-
fected, unbiased, unbribable, unafFrighted in-
nocence,— must always be formidable. He
would utter opinions on all passing affairs,
which being seen to be not private but neces-
sary, would sink like darts into the ear of men
and put them in fear.
These are the voices which we hear in soli-
tude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we
enter into the world. Society everywhere is
in conspiracy against the manhood of every
one of its members. Society is a joint-stock
company, in which the members agree, for
the better securing of his bread to each
shareholder, to surrender the liberty and cul-
ture of the eater. The virtue in most request
is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion.
It loves not realities and creators, but names
and customs.
Whoso would be a man, must be a noncon-
formist. He who would gather immortal
palms must not be hindered by the name of
goodness, but must explore if it be goodness.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of
your own mind. Absolve you to yourself,
and you shall have the suffrage of the world.
I remember an answer which when quite
young I was prompted to make to a valued
adviser who was wont to importune me with
the dear old doctrines of the church. On
my saying, "What have I to do with the
sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly
from within.'"' my friend suggested, — "But
these impulses may be from below, not from
above." I replied, "They do not seem to me
to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I
will live then from the Devil." No law can
be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good
and bad are but names very readily transfer-
able to that or this; the only right is what is
aftemnyiCDastitution; the only wrong what is
against it. A man is to carry himself in the
presence of all opposition as if every thing
were titular and ephemeral but he. I am
ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to
badges and names, to large societies and dead
nstitutions. Every decent and well-spoken
individual affects and sways me more than is
right. 1 ought to go upright and vital, and
speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice
and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy,
shall that pass."^ If an angry bigot assumes
this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes
to me with his last news from Barbadoes,
why should I not say to him, "Go love thy
infant; love thy wood-chopper; be good-
natured and modest; have that grace; and
never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambi-
tion with this incredible tenderness for black
folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is
spite at home." Rough and graceless would
be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than
the affectation of love. Your goodness must
have some edge to it, — else it is none. The
doctrine of hatred must be preached, as the
counteraction of the doctrine of love, when
that pules and whines. I shun father and
mother and wife and brother when my genius
calls me. I would write on the lintels of the
door-post. Whim. I hope it is somewhat
better than whim at last, but we cannot
spend the day in explanation. Expect me
not to show cause why I seek or why I ex-
clude company. Then again, do not tell me,
as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to
put all poor men in good situations. Are
they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish phi-
lanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the
dime, the cent I give to such men as do not
belong to me and to whom I do not belong.
There is a class of persons to whom by all
spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for
them I will go to prison if need be; but your
miscellaneous popular charities; the educa-
tion at college of fools; the building of meet-
ing-houses to the vain end to which many
now stand; alms to sots, and the thousand-
fold Relief Societies; — though I confess
with shame I sometimes succumb and give
the dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which by and
by I shall have the manhood to withhold.
Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather
the exception than the rule. There is the
man and his virtues. Men do what is called
a good action, as some piece of courage or
charity, much as they would pay a fine in
expiation of daily non-appearance on parade.
Their works are done as an apology or exten-
uation of their living in the world, — as in-
valids and the insane pay a high board.
Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to
3.U
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
expiate, hut to live. My life is for itself and
not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it
should he of a lower strain, so it he genuine
and equal, tiian that it should be flittering
and unsteady. 1 wish it to he sound and
sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I
ask primary evidence that you are a man,
and refuse this appeal from the man to his
actions. I know that for myself it makes no
difference whether I do or forbear those
actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot
consent to pay for a privilege where I have
intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts
may be, I actually am, and do not need for
my own assurance or the assurance of my fel-
lows any secondary testimony.
* What I must do is all that concerns me,
not what the people think. This rule, equally
arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may
serve for the whole distinction between
greatness and meanness. It is the harder be-
cause you will always find those who think
they know what is your duty better than you
know it. It is easy in the world to live after
the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude Jn
Uve after our own; but the great man is he
who in the ntiidst of the crowd keeps_vvith
perfect sweetness the independence of soli-
tude.
The objection to conforming to usages that
have become dead to you is that it scatters
your force. It loses your time and blurs the
impression of your character. If you main-
tain a dead church, contribute to a dead
Bible-society, vote with a great party either
for the government or against it, spread your
table like base housekeepers, — under all
these screens I have difficulty to detect the
precise man you are: and of course so much
force is withdrawn from your proper life.
But do your work, and I shall know you. Do
your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.
A man must consider what a blindman's-buff
is this game of conformity. If I know your
sect I anticipate your argument. I hear a
preacher announce for his text and topic the
expediency of one of the institutions of his
church. Do I not know beforehand that not
possibly can he say a new and spontaneous
word.^ Do I not know that with all this os-
tentation of examining the grounds of the in-
stitution he will do no such thing? Do I not
know that he is pledged to himself not to look
but at one side, the permitted side, not as a
man, but as a parish minister.^ He is a re-
tained attorney, and these airs of the bench
are the emptiest affectation. Well, most
men have bound their eyes with one or an-
other handkerchief, and attached themselves
to some one of thgse communities of opinion.
This conformity makes them not false in a
few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false
in all particulars. Their every truth is not
quite true. Their two is not the real two,
their four not the real four; so that every
word they say chagrins us and we know not
where to begin to set them right. Meantime
nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-
uniform of the party to which we adhere. We
come to wear one cut of face and figure, and
acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expres-
sion. There is a mortifying experience in
particular, which does not fail to wreak itself
also in the general history; I mean "the fool-
ish face of praise, " the forced smile which we
put on in company where we do not feel at
ease, in answer to conversation which does
not interest us. The muscles, not spontane-
ously moved but moved by a low usurping
willfulness,growtight about the outline of the
face, with the most disagreeable sensation.
For nonconformity the world w^iips you
with its displeasure. And therefore a man
must know how to estimate a sour face. The
by-standers look askance on him in the public
street or in the friend's parlor. If this aversa-
tion had its origin in contempt and resistance
like his own he might well go home with a sad
countenance; but the sour faces of the multi-
tude, like their sw^eet faces, have no deep
cause, but are put on and off as the wind
blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the
discontent of the multitude more formidable
than that of the senate and the college. It is
easy enough for a firm man who knows the
world to brook the rage of the cultivated
classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent,
for they are timid, as being very vulnerable
themselves. But when to their feminine
rage the indignation of the people is added,
when the ignorant and the poor are aroused,
when the unintelligent brute force that lies
at the bottom of society is made to growl
and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity
and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle
of no concernment.
The other terror that scares us from self-
trust is our consistency; a reverence for our
SELF-RELIANCE
335
past act or word because the eyes of others
have no other data for computing our orbit
than our past acts, and we are loth to disap-
point them.
But why should you keep your head over
your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse
of your memory, lest you contradict some-
what you have stated in this or that public
place? Suppose you should contradict your-
self; what then ? It seems to be a rule of wis-
dom never to rely on your memory alone,
scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to
bring the past for judgment into the thou-
sand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day.
In your metaphysics you have denied per-
sonality to the Deity, yet when the devout
motions of the soul come, yield to them
heart and life, though they should clothe God
with shape and color. Leave your theory,
as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot,
and flee.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of
little minds, adored by little statesmen and
philosophers and divines. With consistency
a great soul has simply nothing to do. He
may as well concern himself with his shadow
on the wall. Speak what you think now in
hard words and to-morrow speak what to-
morrow thinks in hard words again, though
it contradict everything you said to-day. —
"Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunder-
stood."— Is it so bad then to be misunder-
stood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and
Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Coper-
nicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every
pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To
be great is to be misunderstood.
I suppose no man can violate his nature.
All the sallies of his will are rounded in by
the law of his being, as the inequalities of
Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the
curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how
you gauge and try him. A character is like
an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; — read it
forward, backward, or across, it still spells
the same thing.i In this pleasing contrite
wood-life which God allows me, let me record
day by day my honest thought without pros-
pect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it
will be found symmetrical, though I mean it
not and see it not. My book should smell of
pines and resound with the hum of insects.
^ This is a palindrome (for example, "Madam, I'm
Adam").
The swallow over my window should mter-
weave that thread or straw he carries in his
bill into my web also. We pass for what we
are. Character teaches above our wills.
Men imagine that they communicate their
virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do
not see that virtue or vice emit a breath
every moment.
There will be an agreement in whatever
variety of actions, so they be each honest and
natural in their hour. For of one will, the
actions will be harmonious, however unlike
they seem. These varieties are lost sight of
at a little distance, at a little height of
thought. One tendency unites them all.
The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of
a hundred tacks. See the line from a suffi-
cient distance, and it straightens itself to the
average tendency. Your genuine action will
explain itself and will explain your other
genuine actions. Your conformity explains
nothing. Act singly, and what you have
already done singly will justify you now.
Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be
firm enough to-day to do right and scorn
eyes, I must have done so much right before
as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do
right now. Always scorn appearances and
you always may. The force of character is
cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue
work their health into this. What makes
the majesty of the heroes of the senate and
the field, which so fills the imagination? The
consciousness of a train of great days and vic-
tories behind. They shed an united light on
the advancing actor. He is attended as by a
visible escort of angels. That is it which
throws thunder into Chatham's voice, and
dignity into Washington's port, and America
into Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us
because it is no ephemera. It is always an-
cient virtue. We worship it to-day because
it is not of to-day. We love it and pay it hom-
age because it is not a trap for our love and
homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived,
and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree,
even if shown in a young person.
I hope in these days we have heard the
last of conformity and consistency. Let the
words be gazetted and ridiculous hencefor-
ward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us
hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us
never bow and apologize more. A great man
is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish
336
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
to please him; 1 wish that he should wish to
please me. 1 will stand here for humanity,
and thou,c;h I would make it kind, 1 would
make it true. Let us affront and reprimand
the smooth mediocrity and squalid content-
ment of the times, and hurl in the face of
custom and trade and office, the fact which
is the upshot of all history, that there is a
preat responsible Ihinker and Actor working
wherever a man works; that a true man
belongs to no other time or place, but is the
center of things. Where he is, there is nature.
He measures you and all men and all events.
Ordinarily, everybody in society reminds us
of somewhat else, or of some other person.
Character, reality, reminds you of nothing
else; it takes place of the whole creation.
The man must be so much that he must
make all circumstances indifferent. Every
true man is a cause, a country, and an age;
requires infinite spaces and numbers and
time fully to accomplish his design; — and
posterity seem to follow his steps as a train
of clients. A man Caesar is born, and for
ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ
is born, and millions of minds so grow and
cleave to his genius that he is confounded
with virtue and the possible of man. An in-
stitution is the lengthened shadow of one
man; as, Monachism, of the Hermit Antony;
the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of
Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of
Clarkson.i Scipio, Milton called "the height
of Rome"; and all history resolves itself very
easily into the biography of a few stout and
earnest persons.
Let a man then know his worth, and keep
things under his feet. Let him not peep or
steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a
charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper in the
world which exists for him. But the man in
the street, finding no worth in himself which
corresponds to the force which built a tower
or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when
he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue,
or a costly book have an alien and forbidding
air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to
.say like that, "Who are you. Sir?" Yet
they all are his, suitors for his notice, peti-
tioners to his faculties that they will come
out and take possession. The picture waits
for my verdict; it is not to command me, but
1 English agitator and writer against slavery (1760-
1846).
I am to settle its claims to praise. 1 hat
popular fable of the sot who was picked up
dead-drunk in the street, earned to the
duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in
the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated
with all obsequious ceremony like the duke,
and assured that he had been insane, owes its
popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so
well the state of man, who is in the world a
sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exer-
cises his reason, and finds himself a true
prince.
Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic.
In history our imagination plays us false.
Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are
a gaudier vocabulary than private John and
Edward in a small house and common day's
work; but the things of life are the same to
both ; the sum total of both is the same. Why
all this deference to Alfred and Scanderbeg^
and Gustavus.'' Suppose they were virtuous;
did they wear out virtue.'' As great a stake
depends on your private act to-day as fol-
lowed their public and renowned steps.
When private men shall act with original
views, the luster w^ill be transferred from the
actions of kings to those of gentlemen.
The world has been instructed by its kings,
who have so magnetized the eyes of nations.
It has been taught by this colossal symbol
the mutual reverence that is due from man to
man. The joyful loyalty with which men
have everywhere suffered the king, the noble,
or the great proprietor to walk among them
by a law of his own, make his own scale of
men and things and reverse theirs, pay for
benefits not with money but with honor,
and represent the law in his person, was the
hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signi-
fied their consciousness of their own right and
comeliness, the right of every man.
The magnetism which all original action
exerts is explained when we inquire the
reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee.?
What is the aboriginal Self, on which a uni-
versal reliance may be grounded.? What is
the nature and power of that science-baffling
star, without parallax, without calculable
elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even
into trivial and impure actions, if the least
mark of independence appear.? The inquiry
^I.e., Iskander Bey (1403-1468), Albanian prince
who defended his country successfully from Turkish
attack.
SELF-RELIANCE
337
leads us to that source, at once the essence of
genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call
Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this
primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later
teachings are tuitions. In that deep force,
the last fact behind which analysis cannot go,
all things find their common origin. For the
sense of being which in calm hours rises, we
know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from
things, from space, from light, from time,
from man, but one with them and proceeds
obviously from the same source whence their
life and being also proceed. We first share
the life by which things exist and afterwards
see them as appearances in nature and forget
that we have shared their cause. Here is the
fountain of action and of thought. Here are
the lungs of that inspiration which giveth
man wisdom and which cannot be denied
without impiety and atheism. We lie in the
lap of immense intelligence, which makes us
receivers of its truth and organs of its activ-
ity. When we discern justice, when we dis-
cern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but
allow a passage to its beams. If we ask
whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the
soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault.
Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm.
Every man discriminates between the vol-
untary acts of his mind and his involuntary
perceptions, and knows that to his involun-
tary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He
may err in the expression of them, but he
knows that these things are so, like day and
night, not to be disputed. My wilful actions
and acquisitions are but roving; — the idlest
reverie, the faintest native emotion, com-
mand my curiosity and respect. Thought-
less people contradict as readily the state-
ment of perceptions as of opinions, or rather
much more readily; for they do not distin-
guish between perception and notion. They
fancy that I choose to see this or that thing.
But perception is not whimsical, but fatal.
If I see a trait, my children will see it after
me, and in course of time all mankind, —
although it may chance that no one has seen
it before me. For my perception of it is as
much a fact as the sun.
The relations of the soul to the divine
spirit are so pure that it is profane to seek to
interpose helps. It must be that when God
speaketh he should communicate, not one
thing, but all things; should fill the world
with his voice; should scatter forth light,
nature, time, souls, from the center of the
present thought; and new-date and new-
create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple
and receives a divine wisdom, old things
pass away, — means, teachers, texts, temples
fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future
into the present hour. All things are made
sacred by relation to it, — one as much as
another. All things are dissolved to their
center by their cause, and in the universal
miracle petty and particular miracles disap-
pear. If therefore a man claims to know and
speak of God and carries you backward to
the phraseology of some old moldered
nation in another country, in another world,
believe him not. Is the acorn better than
the oak which is its fullness and completion?
Is the parent better than the child into
whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence
then this worship of the past? The centu-
ries are conspirators against the sanity and
authority of the soul. Time and space are
but physiological colors which the eye makes,
but the soul is light: where it is, is day; where
it was, is night; and history is an imperti-
nence and an injury if it be anything more
than a cheerful apologue or parable of my
being and becoming.
Man is timid and apologetic; he is no
longer upright; he dares not say *'I think,"
"I am," but quotes some saint or sage. He
is ashamed before the blade of grass or the
blowing rose. These roses under my window
make no reference to former roses or to better
ones; they are for what they are; they exist
with God to-day. There is no time to them.
There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every
moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud
has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown
flower there is no more; in the leafless root
there is no less. Its nature is satisfied and it
satisfies nature in all moments alike. But
man postpones or remembers; he does not
live in the present, but with reverted eye
laments the past, or, heedless of the riches
that surround him, stands on tiptoe to fore-
see the future. He cannot be happy and
strong until he too lives with nature in the
present, above time.
This should be plain enough. Yet see
what strong intellects dare not yet hear God
himself unless he speaks the phraseology of I
know not what David, or Jeremiah, or PauL
338
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
We shall not always set so great a price on a
few texts, on a few lives. We are like ciiil-
dren who repeat by rote the sentences of
grandames and tutors, and, as they grow
older, of the men of talents and character
they chance to see, — painfully recollecting
the exact w'ords they spoke; afterwards,
when they come into the point of view which
those had who uttered these sayings, they
understand them and are willing to let the
words go; for at any time they can use words
as good when occasion comes. If we live
truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the
strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak
to be weak. When we have new perception,
we shall gladly disburden the memory of its
hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a
man lives w^th God, his voice shall be as
sweet as the murmur of the brook and the
rustle of the corn.
And now at last the highest truth on this
subject remains unsaid; probably cannot be
said; for all that w^e say is the far-off remem-
bering of the intuition. That thought by
what I can now nearest approach to say it, is
this. When good is near you, when you have
life in yourself, it is not by any known or ac-
customed way; you shall not discern the
footprints of any other; you shall not see the
face of man; you shall not hear any name; —
the way, the thought, the good, shall be
wholly strange and new. It shall exclude
example and experience. You take the way
from man, not to man. All persons that ever
existed are its forgotten ministers. Fear and
hope are alike beneath it. There is some-
what low even in hope. In the hour of vision
there is nothing that can be called gratitude,
nor properly joy. The soul raised over pas-
sion beholds identity and eternal causation,
perceives the self-existence of Truth and
Right, and calms itself with knowing that all
things go well. Vast spaces of nature, the
Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea; long intervals
of time, years, centuries, are of no account.
This which I think and feel underlay every
former state of life and circumstances, as it
does underlie my present, and what is called
life and what is called death.
; Life only avails, not the having lived.
Power ceases in the instant of repose; it re-
sides in the moment of transition from a past
to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in
the darting to an aim. This one fact the
world hates; that the soul becomes; for that
forever degrades the past, turns all riches to
poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds
the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and
Judas equally aside. Why then do we prate
of self-reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is
present there \\\\\ be power not confident but
agent. To talk of reliance is a poor external
way of speaking. Speak rather of that
which relies because it works and is. Who
has more obedience than I masters me,
though he should not raise his finger. Round
him I must revolve by the gravitation of
spirits. We fancy it rhetoric when we speak
of emment virtue. We do not yet see that
virtue is Height, and that a man or a com-
pany of men, plastic and permeable to
principles, by the law of nature must over-
power and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich
men, poets, who are not.
This is the ultimate fact which we so
quickly reach on this, as on every topic, the
resolution of all into the ever-blessed One.
Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme
Cause, and it constitutes the measure of good
by the degree in which it enters into all lower
forms. All things real are so by so much
virtue as they contain. Commerce, hus-
bandry, hunting, whaling, war, eloquence,
personal weight, are somewhat, and engage
my respect as examples of its presence and
impure action. I see the same law work-
ing in nature for conservation and growth.
Power is, in nature, the essential measure
of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain
in her kingdoms which cannot help itself.
The genesis and maturation of a planet, its
poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering
itself from the strong wind, the vital resources
of every animal and vegetable, are demon-
strations of the self-sufficing and therefore
self-relying soul.
Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let
us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun
and astonish the intruding rabble of men
and books and institutions by a simple dec-
laration of the divine fact. Bid the in-
vaders take the shoes from off their feet, for
God is here within. Let our simplicity judge
them, and our docility to our own law
demonstrate the poverty of nature and for-
tune beside our native riches.
But now we are a mob. Man does not
stand in awe of man, nor is his genius ad-
SELF-RELIANCE
339
monished to stay at home, to put itself in
communication with the internal ocean, but
it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the
urns of other men. We must go alone. I
like the silent church before the service be-
gins, better than any preaching. How far off,
how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt
each one with a precinct or sanctuary! So
let us always sit. Why should we assume the
faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or
child, because they sit around our hearth, or are
said to have the same blood.'' All men have
my blood and I have all men's. Not for that
will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to
the extent of being ashamed of it. But your
isolation must not be mechanical, but spirit-
ual, that is, must be elevation. At times the
whole world seems to be in conspiracy to im-
portune you with emphatic trifles. Friend,
client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity,
all knock at once at thy closet door and
SRVy — "Come out unto us." But keep thy
state; come not into their confusion. The
power men possess to annoy me I give them
by a weak curiosity. No man can come near
me but through my act. ''What we love
that we have, but by desire we bereave our-
selves of the love."
If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities
of obedience and faith, let us at least resist
our temptations; let us enter into the state of
war and wake Thor and Woden, courage and
constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to
be done in our smooth times by speaking the
truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying
affection. Live no longer to the expecta-
tion of these deceived and deceiving people
with whom we converse. Say to them,
**0 father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O
friend, I have lived with you after appear-
ances hitherto. Henceforward I am the
truth's. Be it known unto you that hence-
forward I obey no law less than the eternal
law. I will have no covenants but proxim-
ities. I shall endeavor to nourish my parents,
to support my family, to be the chaste hus-
band of one wife, — but these relations I
must fill after a new and unprecedented way.
I appeal from your customs. I must be my-
self. I cannot break myself any longer for
you, or you. If you can love me for what I
am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot,
I will still seek to deserve that you should. I
will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will
so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will
do strongly before the sun and moon what-
ever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints.
If you are noble, I will love you; if you are
not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypo-
critical attentions. If you are true, but not
in the same truth with me, cleave to your
companions; I will seek my own. I do this
not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is
alike your interest, and mine, and all men's,
however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in
truth. Does this sound harsh to-day.'' You
will soon love what is dictated by your nature
as well as mine, and if we follow the truth it
will bring us out safe at last." — But so may
you give these friends pain. Yes, but I can-
not sell my liberty and my power, to save
their sensibility. Besides, all persons have
their moments of reason, when they look out
into the region of absolute truth; then will
they justify me and do the same thing.
The populace think that your rejection of
popular standards is a rejection of all stand-
ard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold
sensualist will use the name of philosophy to
gild his crimes. But the law of conscious-
ness abides. There are two confessionals, in
one or the other of which we must be shriven.
You may fulfill your round of duties by clear-
ing yourself in the direct, or in the re/lex way.
Consider whether you have satisfied your re-
lations to father, mother, cousin, neighbor,
town, cat, and dog; whether any of these
can upbraid you. But I may also neglect
this reflex standard and absolve me to my-
self. I have my own stern claims and per-
fect circle. It denies the name of duty to
many offices that are called duties. But if I
can discharge its debts it enables me to dis-
pense with the popular code. If any one
imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its
commandment one day.
And truly it demands something godlike in
him who has cast off the common motives of
humanity and has ventured to trust himself
for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful
his will, clear his sight, that he may in good
earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself,
that a simple purpose may be to him as
strong as iron necessity is to others!
If any man consider the present aspects of
what is called by distinction societVy he will
see the need of these ethics. The sinew and
heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we
340
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
are become timorous, desponding whim-
perers. V\'e are afraid of truth, afraid of
fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each
other. Our age yields no great and perfect
persons. We want men and women who shall
renovate hfe and our social state, but we see
that most natures are insolvent, cannot
satisfy their own wants, have an ambition
out of all proportion to their practical force,
and do lean and beg day and night con-
tinually. Our housekeeping is mendicant,
our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our
religion we have not chosen, but society has
chosen for us. ^We are parlor soldiers. We
shun the rugged battle oTfate, where strength
is born.
If our young men miscarry in their first
enterprises they lose all heart. If the young
merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the
finest genius studies at one of our colleges and
is not mstalled in an office within one year
afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston
or New York, it seems to his friends and to
himself that he is right in being disheartened
and in complaining the rest of his life. A
sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont,
who in turn tries all the professions, who
teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school,
preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Con-
gress, buys a township, and so forth, in suc-
cessive years, and always like a cat falls on
his feet, is worth a hundred of these city
dolls. He walks abreast with his days and
feels no shame in not "studying a profes-
sion," for he does not postpone his life, but
lives already. He has not one chance, but a
hundred chances. Let a Stoic open the re-
sources of man and tell men they are not
leaning willows, but can and must detach
themselves; that with the exercise of self-
trust, new powers shall appear; that a man
is the word made flesh, born to shed healing
to the nations; that he should be ashamed of
our compassion, and that the moment he acts
from himself, tossing the laws, the books,
idolatries and customs out of the window^ we
pity him no more but thank and revere him;
— and that teacher shall restore the life of
man to splendor and make his name dear to
all history.
It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance
must work a revolution in all the offices and
relations of men; in their religion; in their
education; in their pursuits; their modes of
living; their association; in their property; in
their speculative views.
I. In what prayers do men allow them-
selves! That which they call a holy office is
not so much as brave and manly. Prayer
looks abroad and asks for some foreign addi-
tion to come through some foreign virtue,
and loses itself in endless mazes of natural
and supernatural, and mediatorial and
miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular
commodity, anything less than all good, is
vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the
facts of life from the highest point of view.
It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant
soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his
works good. But prayer as a means to effect
a private end is meanness and theft. It sup-
poses dualism and not unity in nature and
consciousness. As soon as the man is at one
with God, he will not beg. He will then see
prayer in all action. The prayer of the
farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the
prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke
of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout
nature, though for cheap ends. Caratach, in
Fletcher's Bonduca, when admonished to in-
quire the mind of the god Audate, replies, —
His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors;
Our valors are our best gods.
Another sort of false prayers are our re-
grets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance:
it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities if
you can thereby help the suff"erer; if not,
attend your own w^ork and already the evil
begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as
base. We come to them who weep foolishly
and sit down and cry for company, instead of
imparting to them truth and health in rough
electric shocks, putting them once more in
communication with their own reason. The
secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Wel-
come evermore to gods and men is the self-
helping man. For him all doors are flung
wide; him all tongues greet, all honors
crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love
goes out to him and embraces him because
he did not need it. We solicitously and
apologetically caress and celebrate him be-
cause he held on his way and scorned our
disapprobation. The gods love him because
men hated him. "To the persevering
mortal," said Zoroaster, "the blessed Im-
mortals are swift."
SELF-RELIANCE
341
As men's prayers are a disease of the will,
so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.
They say with those foolish Israelites, "Let
not God speak to us, lest we die. Speak
thou, speak any man with us, and we will
obey."^ Everywhere I am hindered of meet-
ing God in my brother, because he has shut
his own temple doors and recites fables
merely of his brother's, or his brother's
brother's God. Every new mind is a new
classification. If it prove a mind of uncom-
mon activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoi-
sier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, it im-
poses its classification on other men, and lo!
a new system. In proportion to the depth of
the thought, and so to the number of the
objects it touches and brings within reach of
the pupil, is his complacency. But chiefly is
this apparent in creeds and churches, which
are also classifications of some powerful mind
acting on the elemental thought of duty and
man's relation to the Highest. Such is Cal-
vinism, Quakerism, Swedenborgism. The
pupil takes the same delight in subordinating
everything to the new terminology as a girl
who has just learned botany in seeing a new
earth and new seasons thereby. It will hap-
pen for a time that the pupil will find his
intellectual power has grown by the study of
his master's mind. But in all unbalanced
minds the classification is idolized, passes for
the end and not for a speedily exhaustible
means, so that the walls of the system blend
to their eye in the remote horizon with the
walls of the universe; the luminaries of
heaven seem to them hung on the arch their
master built. They cannot imagine how you
aliens have any right to see, — how you can
see; "It must be somehow that you stole the
fight from us." They do not yet perceive
that light, unsystematic, indomitable, will
break into any cabin, even into theirs. Let
them chirp awhile and call it their own. If
they are honest and do well, presently their
neat new pinfold will be too strait and low,
will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and
the immortal light, all young and joyful,
million-orbed, million-colored, will beam
over the universe as on the first morning.
2. It is for want of self-culture that the
superstition of Traveling, whose idols are
Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination
1 Exodus, XX, 19; Deuteronomy, v, 15-27.
for all educated Americans. They who made
England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the
imagination, did so by sticking fast where
they were, like an axis of the earth. In
manly hours we feel that duty is our place.
1 he soul is no traveler; the wise man stays
at home, and when his necessities, his duties,
on any occasion call him from his house, or
into foreign lands, he is at home still and
shall make men sensible by the expression of
his countenance that he goes, the missionary
of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and
men like a sovereign and not like an inter-
loper or a valet.
I have no churlish objection to the circum-
navigation of the globe for the purposes of
art, of study, and benevolence, so that the
man is first domesticated, or does not go
abroad with the hope of finding somewhat
greater than he knows. He who travels to be
amused, or to get somewhat which he does
not carry, travels away from himself, and
grows old even in youth among old things.
In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind
have become old and dilapidated as they.
He carries ruins to ruins.
Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first
journeys discover to us the indifference of
places. At home I dream that at Naples, at
Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and
lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace
my friends, embark on the sea and at last
wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the
stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical,
that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the
palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with
sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxi-
cated. My giant goes with me wherever I
3. But the rage of traveling is a symptom
of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole
intellectual action. The intellect is vaga-
bond, and our system of education fosters
restlessness. Our minds travel when our
bodies are forced to stay at home. We imi-
tate; and what is imitation but the traveling
of the mind? Our houses are built with
foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with
foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes,
our faculties lean, and follow the Past and
the Distant. The soul created the arts
wherever they have flourished. It was in his
own mind that the artist sought his model.
It was an application of his own thought to
342
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
the thing to be done and the conditions to be
observed. And why need we copy the Doric
or the Gothic modeL'' Beauty, convenience,
grandeur of thought and quaint expression
are as near to us as to any, and if the Ameri-
can artist will study with hope and love the
precise thing to be done by him, considering
the climate, the soil, the length of the day,
the wants of the people, the habit and form
of the government, he will create a house in
which all these will hnd themselves fitted,
and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also.
Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your
own gift you can present every moment with
the cumulative force of a whole life's cultiva-
tion; but of the adopted talent of another you
have only an extemporaneous half posses-
sion. That which each can do best, none but
his Maker can teach him. No man yet
knows what it is, nor can, till that person has
exhibited it. Where is the master who could
have taught Shakespeare.? Where is the
master who could have instructed Frankhn,
or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton.''
Every great man is a unique. The Scipion-
ism of Scipio is precisely that part he could
not borrow. Shakespeare will never be
made by the study of Shakespeare. Do that
which is assigned you, and you cannot hope
too much or dare too much. There is at this
moment for you an utterance brave and
grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias,
or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of
Moses or Dante, but different from all these.
Not possibly will the soul, all rich, all elo-
quent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign
to repeat itself; but if you can hear what
these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to
them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear
and the tongue are tw^o organs of one nature.
Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy
life, obey thy heart, and thou shall reproduce
the Foreworld again.
4. As our Religion, our Education, our
Art look abroad, so does our spirit of society.
All men plume themselves on the improve-
ment of society, and no man improves.
Society never advances. It recedes as fast
on one side as it gains on the other. It under-
goes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is
civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is
scientific; but this change is not amelioration.
For everything that is given something is
taken. Society acquires new arts and loses
old instincts. What a contrast between the
well-clad, reading, writing, thinking Ameri-
can, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of ex-
change in his pocket, and the naked New
Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear,
a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed
to sleep under! But compare the health of
the two men and you shall see that the white
man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the
traveler tell us truly, strike the savage with
a broad-ax and in a day or two the flesh
shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow
into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send
the white to his grave.
The civilized man has built a coach, but
has lost the use of his feet. He is supported
on crutches, but lacks so much support of
muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but
he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun.
A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so
being sure of the information when he wants
it, the man in the street does not know a star
in the sky. The solstice he does not observe;
the equinox he knows as little; and the whole
bright calendar of the year is without a dial
in his mind. His note-books impair his
memory; his libraries overload his wit; the
insurance-ofiice increases the number of ac-
cidents; and it may be a question whether
machinery does not encumber; whether we
have not lost by refinement some energy, by
a Christianity, entrenched in establishments
and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For
every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom
where is the Christian?
There is no more deviation in the moral
standard than in the standard of height or
bulk. No greater men are now than ever j
were. A singular equality may be observed '
between the great men of the first and of the
last ages; nor can all the science, art, religion,
and philosophy of the nineteenth century j
avail to educate greater men than Plutarch's 1
heroes, three or four and twenty centuries
ago. Not in time is the race progressive.
Phocion,^ Socrates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes,
are great men, but they leave no class. He
who is really of their class will not be called
by their name, but will be his own man, and
in his turn the founder of a sect. The arts
and inventions of each period are only its
1 Athenian military commander and statesman^
leader of aristocratic party, put to death 317 B.C. by
political opponents.
SELF-RELIANCE
343
costume and do not invigorate men. The
harm of the improved machinery may com-
pensate its good. Hudson and Hehring ac-
comphshed so much in their Hshing-boats as
to astonisli Parry and FrankHn,i whose
equipment exhausted the resources of science
and art. Gahleo, with an opera-glass, dis-
covered a more splendid series of celestial
phenomena than any one since. Columbus
found the New WorLl in an undecked boat.
It is curious to see the periodical disuse and
perishing of means and machinery which were
introduced with loud laudation a few years or
centuries before. The great genius returns
to essential man. We reckoned the im-
provements of the art of war among the
triumphs of science, and yet Napoleon con-
quered Europe by the bivouac, which con-
sisted of falling back on naked valor and
disencumbering it of all aids. The Emperor
held it impossible to make a perfect army,
says Las Casas, "without abolishing our
arms, magazines, commissaries, and car-
riages, until, in imitation of the Roman
custom, the soldier should receive his supply
of corn, grind it in his hand-mill and bake his
bread himself."
Society is a wave. The wave moves on-
ward, but the water of which it is composed
does not. The same particle does not rise
from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only
phenomenal. The persons who make up a
nation to-day, next year die, and their
experience dies with them.
And so the reliance on Property, including
the reliance on governments which protect it,
is the want of self-reliance. Men have
looked away from themselves and at things
so long that they have come to esteem the
religious, learned, and civil institutions as
guards of property, and they deprecate as-
saults on these, because they feel them to be
assaults on property. They measure their
esteem of each other by what each has, and
not by what each is. But a cultivated man
becomes ashamed of his property, out of new
respect for his nature. Especially he hates
what he has if he see that it is accidental, —
came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime;
then he feels that it is not having; it does not
belong to him, has no root in him and merely
lies there because no revolution or no robber
1 l.e.y Sir John Franklin, English explorer
(1786-1847).
takes It away. Hut that which a man is, does
always by necessity acquire; and what the
man acquires, is living property, which does
not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revo-
lutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but
perpetually renews itself wherever the man
breathes. "Thy lot or portion of life," said
the Caliph Ali, "is seeking after thee; there-
fore be at rest from seeking after it." Our
dependence on these foreign goods leads us to
our slavish respect for numbers. 1 he polit-
ical parties meet in numerous conventions;
the greater the concourse and with each new
uproar of announcement, I he delegation
from Essex! The Democrats from New
Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine! the
young patriot feels himself stronger than be-
fore by a new thousand of eyes and arms. In
like manner the reformers summon conven-
tions and vote and resolve in multitude. Not
so, O friends! will the God deign to enter and
inhabit you, but by a method precisely the
reverse. It is only as a man puts off all
foreign support and stands alone that I see
him to be strong and to prevail. He is
weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is
not a man better than a town.'' Ask nothing
of men, and, in the endless mutation, thou
only firm column must presently appear the
upholder of all that surrounds thee. He who
knows that power is inborn, that he is weak
because he has looked for good out of him
and elsewhere, and, so perceiving, throws
himself unhesitatingly on his thought, in-
stantly rights himself, stands in the erect
position, commands his limbs, works mira-
cles; just as a man who stands on his feet is
stronger than a man who stands on his head.
So use all that is called Fortune. Most
men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose
all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as
unlawful these winnings, and deal with
Cause and Efl^ect, the chancellors of God. In
the Will work and acquire, and thou hast
chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt sit
hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A
political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery
of your sick or the return of your absent
friend, or some other favorable event raises
your spirits, and you think good days are pre-
paring for you. Do not believe it. Nothing
can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing
can bring you peace but the triumph of
principles.
:44
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
L\. THE OVER-SOUL
Riir souls that of his own k'^'^hI life partake
He loves as his own self; clear as his eye
They are to Him: He'll never them forsake:
When they shall die, then God himself shall die:
They live, they live in blest eternity.
— Henry More.
Space is ample, cast and west,
Rut two cannot go abreast,
Cannot travel in it two:
Yonder masterful cuckoo
Crowds every egg out of the nest,
Quick or dead, except its own;
A spell is laid on sod and stone,
Night and day 've been tampered with,
Every quality and pith
Surcharged and sultry with a power
That works its will on age and hour.
There is a clifFerence between one and an-
other hour of life in their authority and sub-
sequent effect. Our faith comes in moments;
our vice is habitual. Yet there is a depth in
those brief moments which constrains us to
ascribe more reality to them than to all other
experiences. For this reason the argument
which is always forthcoming to silence those
who conceive extraordinary hopes of man,
namely the appeal to experience, is forever
invalid and vain. We give up the past to the
objector, and yet we hope. He must explain
this hope. We grant that human life is
mean, but how did we find out that it was
mean .' What is the ground of this uneasiness
of ours; of this old discontent.' What is the
universal sense of want and ignorance, but
the fine innuendo by which the soul makes its
enormous claim.' Why do men feel that the
natural history of man has never been writ-
ten, but he is always leaving behind what you
have said of him, and it becomes old, and
books of metaphysics worthless.' The phi-
losophy of six thousand years has not searched
the chambers and magazines of the soul. In
its experiments there has always remained,
in the last analysis, a residuum it could not
resolve. Man is a stream whose source is
hidden. Our being is descending into us
from we know not whence. The most exact
calculator has no prescience that somewhat
incalculable may not balk the very next
moment. I am constrained every moment
to acknowledge a higher origin for events
than the will I call mine.
As with events, so is it with thoughts.
When I watch that flowing river, which, out
of regions I see not, pours for a season its
streams into me, 1 see that I am a pensioner;
not a cause but a surprised spectator of this
ethereal water; that I desire and look up and
put myself in the attitude of reception, but
from some alien energy the visions come.
The Supreme Critic on the errors of the
past and the present, and the only prophet of
that which must be, is that great nature in
which we rest as the earth lies in the soft
arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that
Over-Soul, within which every man's partic-
ular being is contained and made one with all
other; that common heart of which all sincere
conversation is the worship, to which all
right action is submission; that overpowering
reality which confutes our tricks and talents,
and constrains every one to pass for what he
is, and to speak from his character and not
from his tongue, and which evermore tends to
pass into our thought and hand and become
wisdom and virtue and power and beauty.
We live in succession, in division, in parts, in
particles. Meantime within man is the soul
of the whole; the wise silence; the universal
beauty, to which every part and particle is
equally related; the eternal One. And this
deep power in w^hich we exist and whose be-
atitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-
sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the
act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer ana
the spectacle, the subject and the object, are
one. We see the world piece by piece, as the
sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the
whole, of which these are the shining parts, is
the soul. Only by the vision of that Wisdom
can the horoscope of the ages be read, and by
falling back on our better thoughts, by yield-
ing to the spirit of prophecy which is innate
in every man, we can know what it saith.
Every man's words who speaks from that
life must sound vain to those who do not dwell
in the same thought on their own part. I
dare not speak for it. My words do not
carry its august sense; they fall short and
cold. Only itself can inspire whom it will,
and behold! their speech shall be lyrical, and
sweet, and universal as the rising of the wind.
Yet I desire, even by profane words, if I may
not use sacred, to indicate the heaven of this
deity and to report what hints I have col-
lected of the transcendent simplicity and
energy of the Highest Law.
THE OVER-SOUL
345
If we consider what happens in conversa-
tion, in reveries, in remorse, in times of pas-
sion, in surprises, in the instructions of
dreams, wherein often we see ourselves in
masquerade, — the droll disguises only mag-
nifying and enhancing a real element and
forcing it on our distant notice, — we shall
catch many hints that will broaden and
lighten into knowledge of the secret of nature.
All goes to show that the soul in man is not
an organ, but animates and exercises all the
organs; is not a function, like the power of
memory, of calculation, of comparison, but
uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty,
but a light; is not the intellect or the will, but
the master of the intellect and the will; is the
background of our being, in which they lie, —
an immensity not possessed and that cannot
be possessed. From within or from behind,
a light shines through us upon things and
makes us aware that we are nothing, but the
light is all. A man is the fa9ade of a temple
wherein all wisdom and all good abide. What
we commonly call man, the eating, drinking,
planting, counting man, does not, as we know
him, represent himself, but misrepresents
himself. Him we do not respect, but the
soul, whose organ he is, would he let it appear
through his action, would make our knees
bend. When it breathes through his intel-
lect, it is genius; when it breathes through
his will, it is virtue; when it flows through
his affection, it is love. And the blindness of
the intellect begins when it would be some-
thing of itself. The weakness of the will be-
gins when the individual would be something
of himself. All reform aims in some one par-
ticular to let the soul have its way through
us; in other words, to engage us to obey.
Of this pure nature every man is at some
time sensible. Language cannot paint it
with his colors. It is too subtile. It is un-
definable, unmeasurable; but we know that
it pervades and contains us. We know that
all spiritual being is in man. A wise old
proverb says, "God comes to see us without
bell"; that is, as there is no screen or ceiling
between our heads and the infinite heavens,
so is there no bar or wall in the soul, where
man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause,
begins. The walls are taken away. We lie
open on one side to the deeps of spiritual
nature, to the attributes of God. Justice we
see and know, Love, Freedom, Power. These
natures no man ever got above, but they
tower over us, and most in the moment when
our interests tempt us to wound them.
The sovereignty of this nature whereof we
speak is made known by its independency of
those limitations which circumscribe us on
every hand. The soul circumscribes all
things. As I have said, it contradicts all ex-
perience. In like manner it abolishes time
and space. The influence of the senses has in
most men overpowered the mind to that
degree that the walls of time and space have
come to look real and insurmountable; and
to speak with levity of these limits is, in the
world, the sign of insanity. Yet time and
space are but inverse measures of the force of
the soul. The spirit sports with time, —
Can crowd eternity Into an hour.
Or stretch an hour to eternity.
We are often made to feel that there is an-
other youth and age than that which is meas-
ured from the year of our natural birth.
Some thoughts always find us young, and
keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the
universal and eternal beauty. Every man
parts from that contemplation with the feel-
ing that it rather belongs to ages than to
mortal life. The least activity of the intel-
lectual powers redeems us in a degree from
the conditions of time. In sickness, in lan-
guor, give us a strain of poetry or a profound
sentence, and we are refreshed; or produce a
volume of Plato or Shakespeare, or remind us
of their names, and instantly we come into
a feeling of longevity. See how the deep
divine thought reduces centuries and millen-
niums, and makes itself present through all
ages. Is the teaching of Christ less effective
now than it was when first his mouth was
opened? The emphasis of facts and persons
in my thought has nothing to do with time.
And so always the soul's scale is one, the
scale of the senses and the understanding is
another. Before the revelations of the soul,
Time, Space, and Nature shrink away. In
common speech we refer all things to time,
as w^e habitually refer the immensely sun-
dered stars to one concave sphere. And so we
say that the Judgment is distant or near, that
the Millennium approaches, that a day of
certain political, moral, social reforms is at
hand, and the like, when we mean that in the
nature of things one of the facts we contem-
346
RALI'lI WALDO KMKRSON
plate is external and funitive, and the other is
permanent and connate with the soul. 1 he
things we now esteem fixed shall, one by one,
detach themselves like ripe fruit from our
experience, and fall. The wind shall blow
them none knows whither. The landscape,
the hgures, Boston, London, are facts as fugi-
tive as any institution past, or any whifF of
mist or smoke, and so is society, and so is the
world. The soul looketh steadily forwards,
creating a world before her, leaving worlds
behind her. She has no dates, nor rites, nor
persons, nor specialties, nor men. 1 he soul
knows only the soul; the web of events is the
flowing robe in which she is clothed.
After its own law and not by arithmetic is
the rate of its progress to be computed. The
soul's advances are not made by gradation,
such as can be represented by motion in a
straight line, but rather by ascension of state,
such as can be represented by metamorpho-
sis,— from the egg to the worm, from the
worm to the fly. 1 he growths of genius are
of a certain total character, that does not ad-
vance the elect individual first over John,
then Adam, then Richard, and give to each
the pain of discovered inferiority, — but by
every throe of growth the man expands there
where he works, passing, at each pulsation,
classes, populations, of men. With each
divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds
of the visible and finite, and comes out into
eternity, and inspires and expires its air. It
converses with truths that have always been
spoken in the world, and becomes conscious
of a closer sympathy with Zeno and Arrian
than with persons in the house.
This is the law of moral and of mental
gain. The simple rise as by specific levity
not into a particular virtue, but into the
region of all the virtues. They are in the
spirit which contains them all. The soul re-
quires purity, but purity is not it; requires
justice, but justice is not that; requires benefi-
cence, but is somewhat better; so that there
is a kind of descent and accommodation felt
when we leave speaking of moral nature to
urge a virtue which it enjoins. To the well-
born child all the virtues are natural, and not
painfully acquired. Speak to his heart, and
the man becomes suddenly virtuous.
Within the same sentiment is the germ of
intellectual growth, which obeys the same
law. Those who are capable of humility,
of justice, of love, of aspiration, stand already
on a platform that commands the sciences
and arts, speech and poetry, action and grace.
For whoso dwells in this moral beatitude al-
ready anticipates those special powers which
men prize so highly. 1 he lo^•er has no talent,
no skill, which passes for quite nothing with
his enamored maiden, however little she may
possess of related faculty; and the heart
which abandons itself to the Supreme Mind
finds itself related to all its works, and will
travel a royal road to particular knowledges
and powers. In ascending to this primary
and aboriginal sentiment we have come from
our remote station on the circumference in-
stantaneously to the center of the world,
where, as in the closet of God, we see causes,
and anticipate the universe, which is but a
slow efl^ect.
One mode of the divine teaching is the in-
carnation of the spirit in a form, — in forms,
like my own. I live in society; with persons
who answ^er to thoughts in my own mind, or
express a certain obedience to the great in-
stincts to which I live. I see its presence to
them. I am certified of a common nature;
and these other souls, these separated selves,
draw me as nothing else can. They stir in
me the new emotions we call passion; of love
hatred, fear, admiration, pity; thence come
conversation, competition, persuasion, cities,
and war. Persons are supplementary to the
primary teaching of the soul. In youth we
are mad for persons. Childhood and youth
see all the w^orld in them. But the larger
experience of man discovers the identical
nature appearing through them all. Persons
themselves acquaint us with the impersonal.
In all conversation between two persons
tacit reference is made, as to a third party,
to a common nature. That third party or
common nature Is not social; it is impersonal;
is God. And so in groups where debate is
earnest, and especially on high questions,
the company become aware that the thought
rises to an equal level in all bosoms, that all
have a spiritual property in what was said,
as well as the sayer. They all become wiser
than they were. It arches over them like a
temple, this unity of thought in which every
heart beats with nobler sense of power and
duty, and thinks and acts with unusual
solemnity. All are conscious of attaining to
higher self-possession. It shines for aU.
THE OVER-SOUL
347
There is a certain wisdom of humanity which
is common to the greatest men with the
lowest, and which our ordinary education
often labors to silence and obstruct. I'he
mind is one, and the best minds, who love
truth for its own sake, think much less of
property in truth. They accept it thank-
fully everywhere, and do not label or stamp
it with any man's name, for it is theirs lonj^
beforehand, and from eternity. The learned
and the studious of thought have no monop-
oly of wisdom. Their violence of direction
in some degree disqualifies them to think
truly. We owe many valuable observations
to people who are not very acute or profound,
and who say the thmg without effort which
we want and have long been hunting in vain.
The action of the soul is oftener in that which
is felt and left unsaid than in that which is
said in any conversation. It broods over
every society, and they unconsciously seek
for it in each other. We know better than
we do. We do not yet possess ourselves, and
we know at the same time that we are much
more. I feel the same truth how often in my
trivial conversation with my neighbors, that
somewhat higher in each of us overlooks this
by-play, and Jove nods to Jove from behind
each of us.
Men descend to meet. In their habitual
and mean service to the world, for which they
forsake their native nobleness, they resemble
those Arabian sheiks who dwell in mean
houses and affect an external poverty, to es-
cape the rapacity of the Pacha, and reserve
all their display of wealth for their interior
and guarded retirements.
As it is present in all persons, so it is in
every period of life. It is adult already in
the infant man. In my dealing with my
child, my Latin and Greek, my accomplish-
ments and my money stead me nothing; but
as much soul as I have avails. If I am willful,
he sets his will against mine, one for one, and
leaves me, if I please, the degradation of
beating him by my superiority of strength.
But if I renounce my will and act for the soul,
setting that up as umpire between us two,
out of his young eyes looks the same soul; he
reveres and loves with me.
The soul is the perceiver and revealer of
truth. We know truth when we see it, let
sceptic and scoffer say what they choose.
Foolish people ask you, when you have
spoken what they do not wish to hear, *TIow
do you know it is truth, and not an error of
your own?" We know truth when we see it,
from opinion, as we know when we are awake
that we are awake. It was a grand sentence
of Emanuel Swedenborg, which would alone
indicate the greatness of that man's percep-
tion,— "It is no proof of a man's under-
standing to be able to affirm whatever he
pleases; but to be able to discern that what
is true is true, and that what is false is false,
— this is the mark and character of intelli-
gence." In the book I read, the good
thought returns to me, as every truth will,
the image of the whole soul. To the bad
thought which I find in it, the same soul
becomes a discerning, separating sword, and
lops it away. We are wiser than we know.
If we will not interfere with our thought, but
will act entirely, or see how the thing stands
in God, we know the particular thing, and
every thing, and every man. For the Maker
of all things and all persons stands behind us
and casts his dread omniscience through us
over things.
But beyond this recognition of its own in
particular passages of the individual's experi-
ence, it also reveals truth. And here we
should seek to reinforce ourselves by its very
presence, and to speak with a worthier, loftier
strain of that advent. For the soul's com-
munication of truth is the highest event in
nature, since it then does not give somewhat
from itself, but it gives itself, or passes into
and becomes that man whom it enlightens;
or, in proportion to that truth he receives, it
takes him to itself.
We distinguish the announcements of the
soul, its manifestations of its own nature, by
the term Revelation. These are always at-
tended by the emotion of the sublime. For
this communication is an influx of the Divine
mind into our mind. It is an ebb of the in-
dividual rivulet before the flowing surges of
the sea of life. Every distinct apprehension
of this central commandment agitates men
with awe and delight. A thrill passes
through all men at the reception of new
truth, or at the performance of a great ac-
tion, which comes out of the heart of nature.
In these communications the power to see is
not separated from the will to do, but the in-
sight proceeds from obedience, and the obedi-
ence proceeds from a joyful perception.
348
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Every moment when the individual feels
himself invaded by it is memorable. By the
necessity of our constitution a certain en-
thusiasm attends the individual's conscious-
ness of tiiat divine presence. The character
and duration of this enthusiasm vary with
the state of the individual, from an ecstasy
and trance and prophetic inspiration, —
which is its rarer appearance, — to the faint-
est glow of virtuous emotion, in which- form
it warms, like our household fires, all the
families and associations of men, and makes
society possible. A certain tendency to in-
sanity has always attended the opening of the
religious sense in men, as if they had been
"blasted with excess of light." The trances
of Socrates, the ** union" of Plotinus, the
vision of Porphyry, the conversion of Paul,
the aurora of Behmen, the convulsions of
George Fox and his Quakers, the illumination
of Swedenborg, are of this kind. What was
in the case of these remarkable persons a
ravishment, has, in innumerable instances in
common life, been exhibited in less striking
manner. Everywhere the history of religion
betrays a tendency to enthusiasm. The
rapture of the Moravian and Quietist; the
opening of the eternal sense of the Word, in
the language of the New Jerusalem Church;
the revival of the Calvinistic churches; the
experiences of the Methodists, are varying
forms of that shudder of awe and delight
with which the individual soul always
mingles with the universal soul.
The nature of these revelations is the
same; they are perceptions of the absolute
law. They are solutions of the soul's own
questions. They do not answer the ques-
tions which the understanding asks. The
soul answers never by words, but by the
thing itself that is inquired after.
Revelation is the disclosure of the soul.
The popular notion of a revelation is that it is
a telling of fortunes. In past oracles of the
soul the understanding seeks to find answers
to sensual questions, and undertakes to tell
from God how long men shall exist, what
their hands shall do and who shall be their
company, adding names and dates and places.
But we must pick no locks. We must check
this low curiosity. An answer in words is
delusive; it is really no answer to the ques-
tions you ask. Do not require a description
of the countries towards which you sail. The
description does not describe them to you,
and to-morrow you arrive there and know
them by inhabiting them. Men ask con-
cerning the immortality of the soul, the em-
ployments of heaven, the state of the sinner,
and so forth. They even dream that Jesus
has left replies to precisely these interroga-
tories. Never a moment did that sublime
spirit speak in their patois. To truth, jus-
tice, love, the attributes of the soul, the idea
of immutableness is essentially associated.
Jesus, living in these moral sentiments,
heedless of sensual fortunes, heeding only
the manifestations of these, never made the
separation of the idea of duration from the
essence of these attributes, nor uttered a
syllable concerning the duration of the soul.
It was left to his disciples to sever duration
from the moral elements, and to teach the
immortality of the soul as a doctrine, and
maintain it by evidences. The moment the
doctrine of the immortality is separately
taught, man is already fallen. In the flow-
ing of love, in the adoration of humility,
there is no question of continuance. No
inspired man ever asks this question or con-
descends to these evidences. For the soul is
true to itself, and the man in whom it is shed
abroad cannot wander from the present,
which is infinite, to a future which would be
finite.
These questions which we lust to ask about
the future are a confession of sin. God has
no answer for them. No answer in words can
reply to a question of things. It is not in an
arbitrary "decree of God," but in the nature
of man, that a veil shuts down on the facts of
to-morrow; for the soul will not have us read
any other cipher than that of cause and effect.
By this veil which curtains events it instructs
the children of men to five in to-day. The
only mode of obtaining an answer to these
questions of the senses is to forgo all low
curiosity, and, accepting the tide of being
which floats us into the secret of nature,
work and live, work and live, and all una-
wares the advancing soul has built and forged
for itself a new condition, and the question
and the answer are one.
By the same fire, vital, consecrating, ce-
lestial, which burns until it shall dissolve all
things into the waves and surges of an ocean
of light, we see and know each other, and
what spirit each is of. Who can tell the
rilE OVER-SOUL
349
grounds of his knowledge of the character of
the several individuals in his circle of friends?
No man. Yet their acts and words do not
disappoint him. In that man, though he
knew no ill of him, he put no trust. In that
other, though they had seldom met, authen-
tic signs had yet passed, to signify that he
might be trusted as one who had an inter-
est in his own character. We know each
other very well, — which of us has been just
to himself and whether that which we teach
or behold is only an aspiration or is our honest
effort also.
We are all discerners of spirits. That diag-
nosis lies aloft in our life or unconscious
power. The intercourse of society, its trade,
its religion, its friendships, its quarrels, is one
wide judicial investigation of character. In
full court, or in small committee, or con-
fronted face to face, accuser and accused,
men offer themselves to be judged. Against
their w\\\ they exhibit those decisive trifles
by which character is read. But who
judges? and what? Not our understanding.
We do not read them by learning or craft.
No; the wisdom of the wise man consists
herein, that he does not judge them; he lets
them judge themselves, and merely reads and
records their own verdict.
By virtue of this inevitable nature, private
will is overpowered, and, maugre our efforts
or our imperfections, your genius will speak
from you, and mine from me. That which
we are, we shall teach, not voluntarily but
involuntarily. Thoughts come into our
minds by avenues which we never left open,
and thoughts go out of our minds through
avenues which we never voluntarily opened.
Character teaches over our head. The in-
fallible index of true progress is found in the
tone the man takes. Neither his age, nor his
breeding, nor company, nor books, nor ac-
tions, nor talents, nor all together can hinder
him from being deferential to a higher spirit
than his own. If he have not found his home
in God, his manners, his forms of speech, the
turn of his sentences, the build, shall I say, of
all his opinions will involuntarily confess it,
let him brave it out how he will. If he have
found his center, the Deity will shine through
him, through all the disguises of ignorance,
of ungenial temperament, of unfavorable cir-
cumstance. The tone of seeking is one, and
the tone of having is another.
1 he great distinction between teachers
sacred or literary, — between poets like
Herbert, and poets like Pope, — between
philosophers like Spinoza, Kant, and Cole-
ridge, and philosophers like Locke, Paley,
Mackintosh, and Stewart, — between men of
the world who are reckoned accomplished
talkers, and here and there a fervent mystic,
prophesying half insane under the infinitude
of his thought, — is that one class speak from
within^ or from experience, as parties and pos-
sessors of the fact; and the other class from
without, as spectators merely, or perhaps as
acquainted with the fact on the evidence of
third persons. It is of no use to preach to me
from without. I can do that too easily my-
self. Jesus speaks always from within, and
in a degree that transcends all others. In
that is the miracle. I believe beforehand
that it ought so to be. All men stand con-
tinually in the expectation of the appearance
of such a teacher. But if a man do not speak
from within the veil, where the word is one
with that it tells of, let him lowly confess it.
1 he same Omniscience flows into the in-
tellect and makes what we call genius. Much
of the wisdom of the world is not wisdom, and
the most illuminated class of men are no
doubt superior to literary fame, and are not
writers. Among the multitude of scholars
and authors we feel no hallowing presence;
we are sensible of a knack and skill rather
than of inspiration; they have a light and
know not whence it comes and call it their
own; their talent is some exaggerated fac-
ulty, some overgrown member, so that their
strength is a disease. In these instances the
intellectual gifts do not make the impression
of virtue, but almost of vice; and we feel that
a man's talents stand in the way of his ad-
vancement in truth. But genius is religious.
It is a larger imbibing of the common heart.
It is not anomalous, but more like and not less
like other men. There is in all great poets a
wisdom of humanity which is superior to any
talents they exercise. The author, the wit,
the partisan, the fine gentleman, does not
take place of the man. Humanity shines in
Homer, in Chaucer, in Spenser, in Shake-
speare, in Milton. They are content with
truth. They use the positive degree. They
seem frigid and phlegmatic to those who have
been spiced with the frantic passion and vio-
lent coloring of inferior but popular writers.
3 50
KAIJMl WALIX) EMERSON
For they are poets by the free course which
they allow to the inforniin^ soul, which
throu«^h their eyes beholds aji^ain and blesses
the things whicii it hath made. The soul is
superior to its knowledge, wiser than any of
its works. The great poet makes us feel our
own wealth, and then we think less of his
compositions. His best communication to
our mind is to teach us to despise all he has
done. Shakespeare carries us to such a lofty
strain of intelligent activity as to suggest a
wealth which beggars his own; and we then
feel that the splendid works which he has
created, and which in other hours we extol as
a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger
hold of real nature than the shadow of a pass-
ing traveler on the rock. The inspiration
which uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear
could utter things as good from day to day
forever. Why then should I make account
of Hamlet and Lear, as if we had not the soul
from which they fell as syllables from the
tongue.^
This energy does not descend into individ-
ual life on any other condition than entire
possession. It comes to the lowly and simple;
it comes to whomsoever will put off what is
foreign and proud; it comes as insight; it
comes as serenity and grandeur. When we
see those whom it inhabits, we are apprised
of new degrees of greatness. From that in-
spiration the man comes back with a changed
tone. He does not talk with men with an
eye to their opinion. He tries them. It re-
quires of us to be plain and true. The vain
traveler attempts to embellish his life by
quoting my lord and the prince and the
countess, who thus said or did to him. The
ambitious vulgar show you their spoons and
brooches and rings, and preserve their cards
and compliments. The more cultivated, in
their account of their own experience, cull
out the pleasing, poetic circumstance, — the
visit to Rome, the man of genius they saw,
the brilliant friend they know; still further on
perhaps the gorgeous landscape, the moun-
tam lights, the mountain thoughts they en-
joyed yesterday, — and so seek to throw a
romantic color over their life. But the soul
that ascends to worship the great God is
plain and true; has no rose-color, no fine
friends, no chivalry, no adventures; does not
want admiration; dwells in the hour that now
is, in the earnest experience of the common
day, — by reason of the present moment and
the mere trifle having become porous to
thought and bibulous of the sea of light.
Converse with a mind that is grandly
simple, and literature looks like word-catch-
ing. The simplest utterances are worthiest
to be written, yet are they so cheap and so
things of course, that in the infinite riches of
the soul it is like gathering a few pebbles off
the ground, or bottling a little air in a phial,
when the whole earth and the whole atmo-
sphere are ours. Nothing can pass there, or
make you one of the circle, but the casting
aside your trappings and dealing man to man
in naked truth, plain confession and omni-
scient affirmation.
Souls such as these treat you as gods
would, walk as gods in the earth, accepting
without any admiration your wit, your
bounty, your virtue even, — say rather your
act of duty, for your virtue they own as their
proper blood, royal as themselves, and over-
royal, and the father of the gods. But what
rebuke their plain fraternal bearing casts
on the mutual flattery with which authors
solace each other and wound themselves!
These flatter not. I do not wonder that these
men go to see Cromwell and Christina and
Charles II and James I and the Grand Turk.
For they are, in their own elevation, the
fellows of kings, and must feel the servile
tone of conversation in the world. They
must always be a godsend to princes, for they
confront them, -a king to a king, without
ducking or concession, and give a high nature
the refreshment and satisfaction of resistance,
of plain humanity, of even companionship,
and of new ideas. They leave them wiser
and superior men. Souls like these make
us feel that sincerity is more excellent than
flattery. Deal so plainly with man and
woman as to constrain the utmost sincerity
and destroy all hope of triflmg with you. It
is the highest compliment you can pay.
Their "highest praising," said Milton, "is not
flattery, and their plainest advice is a kind of
praising."
Ineffable is the union of man and God in
every act of the soul. The simplest person
who in his mtegrity worships God, becomes
God; yet forever and ever the influx of this
better and universal self is new and unsearch-
able. It inspires awe and astonishment.
How dear, how soothing to man, arises the
THE OVER-SOUL
351
idea of God, peopling the lonely place, effac-
ing the scars of our mistakes and disappoint-
ments! When we have broken our god of
tradition and ceased from our god of rhetoric,
then may God fire the heart with his presence.
It is the doubling of the heart itself, nay, the
infinite enlargement of the heart with a
power of growth to a new infinity on every
side. It inspires in man an infallible trust.
He has not the conviction, but the sight, that
the best is the true, and may in that thought
easily dismiss all particular uncertainties and
fears, and adjourn to the sure revelation of
time the solution of his private riddles. He
is sure that his welfare is dear to the heart of
being. In the presence of law to his mind
he is overflowed with a reliance so universal
that it sweeps away all cherished hopes and
the most stable projects of mortal condition
in its flood. He believes that he cannot
escape from his good. The things that are
really for thee gravitate to thee. You are
running to seek your friend. Let your feet
run, but your mind need not. If you do not
find him, will you not acquiesce that it is best
you should not find him.'' for there is a power,
which, as it is in you, is in him also, and could
therefore very well bring you together, if it
were for the best. You are preparing with
eagerness to go and render a service to which
your talent and your taste invite you, the
love of men and the hope of fame. Has it
not occurred to you that you have no right
to go, unless you are equally willing to be
prevented from going .f* O, believe, as thou
livest, that every sound that is spoken over
the round world, which thou oughtest to
hear, will vibrate on thine ear! Every prov-
erb, every book, every byword that belongs
to thee for aid or comfort, shall surely come
home through open or winding passages.
Every friend whom not thy fantastic will but
the great and tender heart in thee craveth,
shall lock thee in his embrace. And this be-
cause the heart in thee is the heart of all;
not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection
is there anywhere in nature, but one blood
rolls uninterruptedly an endless circulation
through all men, as the water of the globe is
all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one.
Let man then learn the revelation of all
nature and all thought to his heart; this,
namely, that the Highest dwells with him;
that the sources of nature are in his own
mind, if the sentiment of duty is there. But
if he would know what the great God
speaketh, he must "go into his closet and
shut the door," as Jesus said, (jod will not
make himself manifest to cowards. He must
greatly listen to himself, withdrawing him-
self from all the accents of other men's devo-
tion. Even their prayers are hurtful to him,
until he have made his own. Our religion
vulgarly stands on numbers of believers.
Whenever the appeal is made, — no matter
how indirectly, — to numbers, proclamation
is then and there made that religion is not.
He that finds God a sweet enveloping thought
to him never counts his company. When I
sit in that presence, who shall dare to come
in? When I rest in perfect humility, when I
burn with pure love, what can Calvin or
Swedenborg say.''
It makes no diff^erence whether the appeal
is to numbers or to one. The faith that
stands on authority is not faith. The reli-
ance on authority measures the decline of
religion, the withdrawal of the soul. The
position men have given to Jesus, now for
many centuries of history, is a position of
authority. It characterizes themselves. It
cannot alter the eternal facts. Great is the
soul, and plain. It is no flatterer, it is no
follower; it never appeals from itself. It be-
lieves in itself. Before the immense possi-
bilities of man all mere experience, all past
biography, however spotless and sainted,
shrinks away. Before that heaven which
our presentiments foreshow us, we cannot
easily praise any form of life we have seen or
read of. We not only aflirm that we have
few great men, but, absolutely speaking, that
we have none; that we have no history, no
record of any character or mode of living that
entirely contents us. The saints and demi-
gods whom history worships we are con-
strained to accept with a grain of allowance.
Though in our lonely hours we draw a nev^
strength out of their memory, yet, pressed on
our attention, as they are by the thoughtless
and customary, they fatigue and invade.
The soul gives itself, alone, original, and
pure, to the Lonely, Original, and Pure, who,
on that condition, gladly inhabits, leads, and
speaks through it. Then is it glad, young,
and nimble. It is not wise, but it sees
through all things. It is not called religious,
but it is innocent. It calls the light its own.
35-
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
and feels that the j^rass grows and the stone
falls by a law inferior to, and dependent on,
its nature. Behold, it saith, I am born into
the great, the universal mind. I, the im-
perfect, adore my own Perfect. I am some-
how receptive of the great soul, and thereby
I do overlook the sun and the stars and feel
them to be the fair accidents and effects
which change and pass. More and more the
surges of everlasting nature enter into me,
and I become public and human in my re-
gards and actions. So come I to live in
thoughts and act with energies which are im-
mortal. Thus revering the soul, and learn-
ing, as the ancient said, that "its beauty is
immense," man will come to see that the
world is the perennial miracle which the soul
worketh, and be less astonished at particular
wonders; he will learn that there is no profane
history; that all history is sacred; that the
universe is represented in an atom, in a mo-
ment of time. He will weave no longer a
spotted life of shreds and patches, but he will
live with a divine unity. He will cease from
what is base and frivolous in his life and be
content with all places and with any service
he can render. He will calmly front the
morrow in the negligency of that trust which
carries God with it and so hath already the
whole future in the bottom of the heart.
ESSAYS, SECOND SERIESV
VH. POLITICS
Gold and iron are good
To buy iron and gold;
All earth's fleece and food
For their like are sold.
Boded Merlin wise,
Proved Napoleon great, —
Nor kind nor coinage buys
Aught above its rate.
Fear, Craft, and Avarice
Cannot rear a State.
Out of dust to build
What is more than dust, —
Walls Amphion piled
Phoebus stablish must.
When the Muses nine
With the Virtues meet,
Find to their design
^ This volume, published in 1844, contains eight
essays: The Poet, Experience, Character, Manners,
Gifts, Nature, Politics, Nominalist and Realist; and
also a lecture. New England Reformers.
An Atlantic seat,
By green orchard boughs
Fended from the heat.
Where the statesman ploughs
Furrow for the wheat;
When the Church is social worth,
When the state-house is the hearth.
Then the perfect State is come,
The republican at home.
In dealing with the State, we ought to
remember that its institutions are not ab-
original, though they existed before we were
born; that they are not superior to the citi-
zen; that every one of them was once the act
of a single man; every law and usage was a
man's expedient to meet a particular case;
that they all are imitable, all alterable; we
may make as good, we may make better.
Society is an illusion to the young citizen.
It lies before him in rigid repose, with certain
names, men, and institutions, rooted like oak-
trees to the center, round which all arrange
themselves the best they can. But the old
statesman knows that society is fluid; there
are no such roots and centers, but any par-
ticle may suddenly become the center of the
movement and compel the system to gyrate
round it; as every man of strong will, like
Pisistratus or Cromwell, does for a time,
and every man of truth, like Plato or Paul,
does forever. But politics rest on necessary
foundations, and cannot be treated with
levity. Republics abound in young civilians
who believe that the laws make the city, that
grave modifications of the policy and modes
of living and employments of the popula-
tion, that commerce, education, and religion,
may be voted in or out; and that any meas-
ure, though it were absurd, may be imposed
on a people if only you can get sufficient
voices to make it a law. But the wise know
that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which
perishes in the twisting; that the State must
follow and not lead the character and prog-
ress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is
quickly got rid of; and they only who build on
Ideas, build for eternity; and that the form
of government which prevails is the expres-
sion of what cultivation exists in the popu-
lation which permits it. The law is only a
memorandum. We are superstitious, and
esteem the statute somewhat: so much life
as it has in the character of living men is its
force. The statute stands there to say.
i
POLITICS
353
Yesterday we ap;reed so and so, but how feel
ye this article to-day? Our statute is a cur-
rency which we stamp with our own portrait:
it soon becomes unrecognizable, and in pro-
cess of time will return to the mint. Nature
is not democratic, nor limited-monarchical,
but despotic, and will not be fooled or abated
of any jot of her authority by the pertest of
her sons; and as fast as the public mind is
opened to more intelligence, the code is seen
to be brute and stammering. It speaks not
articulately, and must be made to. Mean-
time the education of the general mind never
stops. The reveries of the true and simple
are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth
dreams, and prays, and paints to-day, but
shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall pres-
ently be the resolutions of public bodies;
then shall be carried as grievance and bill of
rights through conflict and war, and then
shall be triumphant law and establishment
for a hundred years, until it gives place in
turn to new prayers and pictures. The his-
tory of the State sketches in coarse outline
the progress of thought, and follows at a dis-
tance the delicacy of culture and of aspira-
tion.
The theory of politics which has possessed
the mind of men, and which they have ex-
pressed the best they could in their laws and
in their revolutions, considers persons and
property as the two objects for whose pro-
tection government exists. Of persons, all
have equal rights, in virtue of being identical
in nature. This interest, of course, with its
whole power demands a democracy. Whilst
the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue
of their access to reason, their rights in
property are very unequal. One man owns
his clothes, and another owns a county. This
accident, depending primarily on the skill
and virtue of the parties, of which there is
every degree, and secondarily on patrimony,
falls unequally, and its rights, of course, are
unequal. Personal rights, universally the
same, demand a government framed on the
ratio of the census; property demands a
government framed on the ratio of owners
and of owning. Laban, who has flocks and
herds, wishes them looked after by an ofl'icer
on the frontiers, lest the Midianites shall
drive them off; and pays a tax to that end.
Jacob has no flocks or herds and no fear of
the Midianites, and pays no tax to the officer.
It seemed fit that Laban and Jacob should
have equal rights to elect the officer who is
to defend their persons, but that Laban and
not Jacob should elect the officer who is to
guard the sheep and cattle. And, if question
arise whether additional officers or watch-
towers should be provided, must not Laban
and Isaac, and those who must sell part of
their herds to buy protection for the rest,
judge better of this, and with more right,
than Jacob, who, because he is a youth and a
traveler, eats their bread and not his own.?
In the earliest society the proprietors
made their own wealth, and so long as it
comes to the owners in the direct way, no
other opinion would arise in any equitable
community than that property should make
the law for property, and persons the law for
persons.
But property passes through donation or
inheritance to those who do not create it.
Gift, in one case, makes it as really the new
owner's, as labor made it the first owner's;
in the other case, of patrimony, the law
makes an ownership which will be valid in
each man's view according to the estimate
which he sets on the public tranquillity.
It was not, however, found easy to em-
body the readily-admitted principle that
property should make law for property, and
persons for persons; since persons and prop-
erty mixed themselves in every transaction.
At last it seemed settled that the rightful dis-
tinction was that the proprietors should have
more elective franchise than non-proprietors,
on the Spartan principle of "calling that
which is just, equal; not that which is equal,
just.
That principle no longer looks so self-
evident as it appeared in former times, partly
because doubts have arisen whether too much
weight had not been allowed in the laws to
property, and such a structure given to our
usages as allowed the rich to encroach on the
poor, and to keep them poor; but mainly
because there is an instinctive sense, how-
ever obscure and yet inarticulate, that the
whole constitution of property, on its present
tenures, is injurious, and its influence on per-
sons deteriorating and degrading; that truly
the only interest for the consideration of the
State is persons; that property will always
follow persons; that the highest end of gov-
ernment is the culture of men; and that if
S4
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
men can he educated, the institutions will
share their iinprovement and the moral
sentiment will write the law of the land.
If it be not easy to settle the equity of this
question, the peril is less when we take note
of our natural defenses. We are kept by
better guards than the vigilance of such
magistrates as we commonly elect. Society
always consists in greatest part of young and
foolish persons. The old, who have seen
through the hypocrisy of courts and states-
men, die and leave no wisdom to their sons.
They believe their own newspaper, as their
fathers did at their age. With such an igno-
rant and deceivable majority, States would
soon run to ruin, but that there are limita-
tions beyond which the folly and ambition
of governors cannot go. Things have their
laws, as well as men; and things refuse to be
trifled with. Property will be protected.
Corn will not grow unless it is planted and
manured; but the farmer will not plant or
hoe it unless the chances are a hundred to
one that he will cut and harvest it. Under
any forms, persons and property must and
will have their just sway. They exert their
power, as steadily as matter its attraction.
Cover up a pound of earth never so cun-
ningly, divide and subdivide it; melt it to
liquid, convert it to gas; it will always weigh
a pound; it will always attract and resist
other matter by the full virtue of one pound
weight: — and the attributes of a person, his
wit and his moral energy, will exercise, under
any law or extinguishing tyranny, their
proper force, — if not overtly, then covertly;
if not for the law, then against it; if not
wholesomely, then poisonously; with right,
or by might.
The boundaries of personal influence it is
impossible to fix, as persons are organs of
moral or supernatural force. Under the do-
minion of an idea which possesses the minds
of multitudes, as civil freedom, or the reli-
gious sentiment, the powers of persons are
no longer subjects of calculation. A nation of
men unanimously bent on freedom or con-
quest can easily confound the arithmetic
of statists, and achieve extravagant actions,
out of all proportion to their means; as the
Greeks, the Saracens, the Swiss, the Ameri-
cans, and the French have done.
In like manner, to every particle of
property belongs its own attraction. A cent
is the representative of a certain quantity of
corn or other commodity. Its value is in the
necessities of the animal man. It is so much
warmth, so much bread, so much water, so
much land. Ihe law may do what it will
with the owner of property; its just power
will still attach to the cent. The law may
in a mad freak say that all shall have power
except the owners of property; they shall
have no vote. Nevertheless, by a higher law,
the property will, year after year, write every
statute that respects property. The non-
proprietor will be the scribe of the proprietor.
What the owners wish to do, the whole power
of property will do, either through the law or
else in defiance of it. Of course I speak of all
the property, not merely of the great estates.
When the rich are outvoted, as frequently
happens, it is the joint treasury of the poor
which exceeds their accumulations. Every
man owns something, if it is only a cow, or a
wheelbarrow, or his arms, and so has that
property to dispose of.
The same necessity which secures the
rights of person and property against the
malignity or folly of the magistrate, deter-
mines the form and methods of governing,
which are proper to each nation and to its
habit of thought, and nowise transferable
to other states of society. In this country
we are very vain of our political institutions,
which are singular in this, that they sprung,
withm the memory of living men, from the
character and condition of the people, which
they still express with sufficient fidelity, —
and we ostentatiously prefer them to any
other in history. They are not better, but
only fitter for us. We may be wise in assert-
ing the advantage in modern times of the
democratic form, but to other states of
society, in which religion consecrated the
monarchical, that and not this was expedi-
ent. Democracy is better for us, because the
religious sentiment of the present time
accords better with it. Born democrats, we
are nowise qualified to judge of monarchy,
which, to our fathers living in the monarchi-
cal idea, was also relatively right. But
our institutions, though in coincidence with
the spirit of the age, have not any exemption
from the practical defects which have dis-
credited other forms. Every actual State
is corrupt. Good men must not obey the
laws too well. What satire on government
POLITICS
355
can equal the severity of censure conveyed in
the word politic, which now for ages has
signified cunnings intimating that the State
is a trick?
The same benign necessity and the same
practical abuse appear in the parties, into
which each State divides itself, of opponents
and defenders of the administration of tlie
government. Parties are also founded on in-
stincts, and have better guides to their own
humble aims than the sagacity of their
leaders. They have nothing perverse in their
origin, but rudely mark some real and lasting
relation. We might as wisely reprove the
east wind or the frost, as a political party,
whose members, for the most part, could
give no account of their position, but stand
for the defense of those interests in which
they find themselves. Our quarrel with
them begins when they quit this deep natural
ground at the bidding of some leader and,
obeying personal considerations, throw them-
selves into the maintenance and defense of
pomts nowise belonging to their system. A
party is perpetually corrupted by per-
sonahty. Whilst we absolve the association
from dishonesty, we cannot extend the same
charity to their leaders. They reap the re-
wards of the docility and zeal of the masses
which they direct. Ordinarily our parties
are parties of circumstance, and not of prin-
ciple; as the planting interest in conflict with
the commercial; the party of capitalists and
that of operatives: parties which are identical
in their moral character, and which can
easily change ground with each other in the
support of many of their measures. Parties
of principle, as, religious sects, or the party
of free-trade, of universal suffrage, of
abolition of slavery, of abolition of capital
punishment, degenerate into personalities, or
would inspire enthusiasm. The vice of our
leading parties in this country (which may
be cited as a fair specimen of these societies
of opinion) is that they do not plant them-
selves on the deep and necessary grounds to
which they are respectively entitled, but lash
themselves to fury in the carrying of some
local and momentary measure, nowise useful
to the commonwealth. Of the two great
parties which at this hour almost share the
nation between them, I should say that one
has the best cause, and the other contains
the best men. The philosopher, the poet, or
the religious man, will of course wish to cast
his vote with the democrat, for free-trade,
for wide suffrage, for the abolition of legal
cruelties in the penal code, and for facilitating
in every manner the access of tiie young and
the poor to the sources of wealth and power.
But he can rarely accept the persons whom
the so-called popular party propose to him
as representatives of these liberalities. They
have not at heart the ends which give to the
name of democracy what hope and virtue
are in it. The spirit of our American radi-
calism is destructive and aimless: it is not
loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends,
but is destructive only out of hatred and
selfishness. On the other side, the conserv-
ative party, composed of the most moderate,
able, and cultivated part of the population,
is timid, and merely defensive of property.
It vindicates no right, it aspires to no real
good, it brands no crime, it proposes no
generous policy; it does not build, nor write,
nor cherish the arts, nor foster religion, nor
establish schools, nor encourage science, nor
emancipate the slave, nor befriend the poor,
or the Indian, or the immigrant. From
neither party, when in power, has the world
any benefit to expect in science, art, or hu-
manity, at all commensurate with the
resources of the nation.
I do not for these defects despair of our
republic. We are not at the mercy of any
waves of chance. In the strife of ferocious
parties, human nature always finds itself
cherished, as the children of the convicts at
Botany Bay are found to have as healthy a
moral sentiment as other children. Citizens
of feudal states are alarmed at our demo-
cratic institutions lapsing into anarchy, and
the older and more cautious among ourselves
are learning from Europeans to look with
some terror at our turbulent freedom. It is
said that in our license of construing the
Constitution, and in the despotism of public
opinion, we have no anchor; and one foreign
observer thinks he has fbund the safeguard
in the sanctity of Marriage among us;
and another thinks he has found it in our
Calvinism. Fisher Ames expressed the popu-
lar security more wisely, when he compared
a monarchy and a republic, saying that a
monarchy is a merchantman, which sails
well, but will sometimes strike on a rock and
go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft,
356
RALIMI WALDO EMKRSON
which would never sink, but then your feet
are always in water. No forms can have any
danucTOus importance whilst we are be-
friended by the hiws of things. It makes no
difference how many tons weij»;ht of atmo-
sphere presses on our heads, so long as the
same pressure resists it within the lungs.
Augment the mass a thousandfold, it cannot
begin to crush us, as long as reaction is equal
to action. The fact of two poles, of two
forces, centripetal and centrifugal, is uni-
versal, and each force by its own activity
develops the other. Wild liberty develops
iron conscience. Want of liberty, by
strengthening law and decorum, stupefies
conscience. "Lynch-law" prevails only where
there is greater hardihood and self-subsis-
tency in the leaders. A mob cannot be a
permanency; everybody's interest requires
that it should not exist, and only justice
satisfies all.
We must trust infinitely to the beneficent
necessity which shines through all laws.
Human nature expresses itself in them as
characteristically as in statues, or songs,
or railroads; and an abstract of the codes of
nations would be a transcript of the common
conscience. Governments have their origin
in the moral identity of men. Reason for
one is seen to be reason for another, and for
every other. There is a middle measure
which satisfies all parties, be they never so
many or so resolute for their own. Every
man finds a sanction for his simplest claims
and deeds in decisions of his own mind,
which he calls Truth and Holiness. In these
decisions all the citizens find a perfect agree-
ment, and only in these; not in what is good
to eat, good to wear, good use of time, or
what amount of land or of public aid each is
entitled to claim. This truth and justice
men presently endeavor to make application
of to the measuring of land, the apportion-
ment of service, the protection of life and
property. Their first endeavors, no doubt,
are very awkward. Yet absolute right is the
first governor; or, every government is an
impure theocracy. The idea after which
each community is aiming to make and mend
its law, is the will of the wise man. The wise
man it cannot find in nature, and it makes
awkward but earnest efforts to secure his
government by contrivance; as by causing
the entire people to give their voices on every
measure; or by a double choice to get the
representation of the whole; or by a selection
of the best citizens; or to secure the advan-
tages of efficiency and internal peace by
confiding the government to one, who may
himself select his agents. All forms of
government symbolize an immortal govern-
ment, common to all dynasties and inde-
pendent of numbers, perfect where two men
exist, perfect where there is only one man.
Every man's nature is a sufficient adver-
tisement to him of the character of his
fellows. My right and my wrong is their
right and their wrong. Whilst I do what is
fit for me, and abstain from what is unfit,
my neighbor and I shall often agree in our
means, and work together for a time to one
end. But whenever I find my dominion
over myself not sufficient for me, and under-
take the direction of him also, I overstep the
truth, and come into false relations to him.
I may have so much more skill or strength
than he that he cannot express adequately
his sense of wrong, but it is a lie, and hurts
like a lie both him and me. Love and nature
cannot maintain the assumption; it must be
executed by a practical lie, namely, by force.
This undertaking for another is the blunder
which stands in colossal ugliness in the
governments of the world. It is the same
thing in numbers, as in a pair, only not quite
so intelligible. I can see well enough a great
difference between my setting myself down
to a self-control, and my going to make
somebody else act after my views; but when
a quarter of the human race assume to tell
me what I must do, I may be too much
disturbed by the circumstances to see so
clearly the absurdity of their command.
Therefore all public ends look vague and
quixotic beside private ones. For any laws
but those which men make for themselves,
are laughable. If I put myself in the place
of my child, and we stand in one thought and
see that things are thus or thus, that per-
ception is law for him and me. We are both
there, both act. But if, without carrying
him into the thought, I look over into his
plot, and, guessing how it is with him, ordain
this or that, he will never obey me. This is
the history of governments, — one man does
something which is to bind another. A man
who cannot be acquainted with me, taxes me;
looking from afar at me, ordains that a part
POLITICS
357
of my labor shall go to this or that whimsical
end, — not as I, but as he happens to fancy.
Behold the consequence. Of all debts men
are least willing to pay the taxes. What a
satire is this on government! Everywhere
they think they get their money's worth,
except for these.
Hence the less government we have the
better, — the fewer laws, and the less confided
power. The antidote to this abuse of formal
Government is the mfluence of private charac-
ter, the growth of the Individual; the ap-
pearance of the principal to supersede the
proxy; the appearance of the wise man;
of whom the existing government is, it must
be owned, but a shabby imitation. That
which all things tend to educe; which free-
dom, cultivation, intercourse, revolutions,
go to form and deliver, is character; that is
the end of Nature, to reach unto this corona-
tion of her king. To educate the wise man
the State exists, and with the appearance of
the wise man the State expires. The ap-
pearance of character makes the State un-
necessary. The wise man is the State. He
needs no army, fort, or navy, — he loves men
too well; no bribe, or feast, or palace, to
draw friends to him; no vantage ground,
no favorable circumstance. He needs no
library, for he has not done thinking; no
church, for he is a prophet; no statute book,
for he has the lawgiver; no money, for he is
value; no road, for he is at home where he is;
no experience, for the life of the creator
shoots through hmi, and looks from his eyes.
He has no personal friends, for he who has
the spell to draw the prayer and piety of all
men unto him needs not husband and edu-
cate a few to share with him a select and
poetic life. His relation to men is angelic;
his memory is myrrh to them; his presence,
frankincense and flowers.
We think our civilization near its meridian,
but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and
the morning star. In our barbarous society
the influence of character is in its infancy.
As a political power, as the rightful lord who
is to tumble all rulers from their chairs, its
presence is hardly yet suspected. Malthus
and Ricardo quite omit it; the Annual
Register is silent; in the Conversations'
Lexicon it is not set down; the President's
Message, the Queen's Speech, have not
mentioned it; and yet it is never nothing.
Every thought which genius and piety throw
into the world, alters the world. Ihe gladi-
ators in the lists of power feel, through all
their frocks of force and simulacion, the pres-
ence of worth. I think the very strife of
trade and ambition is confession of this
divmity; and successes in those fields are
the poor amends, the fig-leaf with which the
shamed soul attempts to hide its nakedness.
I find the like unwilling homage in all quar-
ters. It is because we know how much is due
from us that we are impatient to show some
petty talent as a substitute for worth. We
are haunted by a conscience of this right to
grandeur of character, and are false to it.
But each of us has some talent, can do some-
what useful, or graceful, or formidable, or
amusing, or lucrative. That we do, as an
apology to others and to ourselves for not
reaching the mark of a good and equal life.
But it does not satisfy ns, whilst we thrust it
on the notice of our companions. It may
throw dust in their eyes, but does not smooth
our own brow, or give us the tranquillity
of the strong when we walk abroad. We do
penance as we go. Our talent is a sort of
expiation, and we are constrained to reflect
on our splendid moment with a certain
humiliation, as somewhat too fine, and not
as one act of many acts, a fair expression of
our permanent energy. Most persons of
ability meet in society w^ith a kind of tacit
appeal. Each seems to say, "I am not all
here." Senators and presidents have climbed
so high with pain enough, not because they
think the place specially agreeable, but as
an apology for real worth, and to vindicate
their manhood in our eyes. This conspicu-
ous chair is their compensation to themselves
for being of a poor, cold, hard nature. They
must do what they can. Like one class of
forest animals, they have nothing but a pre-
hensile tail; climb they must, or crawl. If a
man found himself so rich-natured that he
could enter into strict relations with the best
persons and make life serene around him by
the dignity and sweetness of his behavior,
could he afl^ord to circumvent the favor of the
caucus and the press, and covet relations so
hollow and pompous as those of a politician?
Surely nobody would be a charlatan who
could afford to be sincere.
The tendencies of the times favor the idea
of self-government, and leave the individual.
3S8
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
(or all code, to the rewards and penalties of
his own constitution; which work with more
eneruy than we believe whilst we depend on
artificial restraints. I he movement in this
direction has been very marked in modern
history. Much has been blind and dis-
creditable, but the nature of the revolution
is not affected by the vices of the revolters;
for this is a purely moral force. It was never
adopted by any party in history, neither can
be. It separates the individual from all
party, and unites him at the same time to the
race. It promises a recognition of higher
rights than those of personal freedom, or the
security of property. A man has a right to
be employed, to be trusted, to be loved, to
be revered. The power of love, as the basis
of a State, has never been tried. We must not
imagine that all things are lapsing into con-
fusion if every tender protestant be not
compelled to bear his part in certain social
conventions; nor doubt that roads can be
built, letters carried, and the fruit of labor
secured, when the government of force is at
an end. Are our methods now so excellent
that all competition is hopeless.'' could not a
nation of friends even devise better ways.^
On the other hand, let not the most con-
servative and timid fear anything from a
premature surrender of the bayonet and the
system of force. For, according to the order
of nature, which is quite superior to our will,
it stands thus: there will always be a govern-
ment of force where men are selfish; and
when they are pure enough to abjure the
code of force they will be wise enough to see
how these public ends of the post-office, of
the highway, of commerce and the exchange
of property, of museums and libraries, of
institutions of art and science can be
answered.
We live in a very low state of the world,
and pay unwilling tribute to governments
founded on force. There is not, among the
most religious and instructed men of the
most religious and civil nations, a reliance on
the moral sentiment and a sufficient belief in
the unity of things to persuade them that
society can be maintained without artificial
restraints, as well as the solar system; or
that the private citizen might be reasonable
and a good neighbor, without the hint of a
jail or a confiscation. What is strange too,
there never was in any man sufficient faith
in the power of rectitude to inspire him wieh
the broad design of renovating the State on
the principle of right and love. All those who
have pretended this design have been partial
reformers, and have admitted in some man-
ner the supremacy of the bad State. I do
not call to mind a single human being who
has steadily denied the authority of the laws,
on the simple ground of his own moral
nature. Such designs, full of genius and full
of faith as they are, are not entertained
except avowedly as air-pictures. If the
individual who exhibits them dare to think
them practicable, he disgusts scholars and
churchmen; and men of talent and women
of superior sentiments cannot hide their
contempt. Not the less does nature continue
to fill the heart of youth with suggestions of
this enthusiasm, and there are now men, —
if indeed I can speak in the plural number, —
more exactly, I will say, I have just been
conversing with one man, to w^hom no
weight of adverse experience will make it for
a moment appear impossible that thousands
of human beings might exercise towards each
other the grandest and simplest sentiments,
as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers.
REPRESENTATIVE MENi
VI. NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF
THE WORLD
Among the eminent pe'-sons of the nine-
teenth century, Bonaparte is far the best
known and the most pow^^^ful; and owes his
predominance to the fidel ty with which he
expresses the tone of thought and belief, the
aims of the masses of active and cultivated
men. It is Swedenborg's theory that every
organ is made up of homogeneous particles;
or as it is sometimes expressed, every whole is
made of similars; that is, the lungs are com-
posed of infinitely small lungs; the liver, of
infinitely small livers; the kidney, of little
kidneys, etc. Following this analogy, if I
any man is found to carry wMth him the power
and affections of vast numbers, if Napoleon
is France, if Napoleon is Europe, it is be-
1 This volume was published in 1850. It contains
seven lectures: Uses of Great Men; Plato, or. The
Philosopher; Swedenborg, or. The Mystic; Montaigne,
or. The Skeptic; Shakespeare, or. The Poet; Napoleon,
or. The Man of the World; and Goethe, or. The Writer.
NAPOLEON
359
cause the people whom he sways are httle
Napoleons.
In our society there Is a standin;^ nnta^-
onisni between the conservative and the
democratic classes; between those who have
made their fortunes, and the younj^ and tlie
poor who have fortunes to make; between
tlie interests of dead labor, — that is, the
labor of hands long ago still in the grave,
which labor is now entombed in money stocks,
or in land and buildings owned by idle
capitalists, — and the interests of living labor,
which seeks to possess itself of land and
buildings and money stocks. The first class
is timid, selfish, illiberal, hating innovation,
and continually losing numbers by death.
The second class is selfish also, encroaching,
bold, self-relying, always outnumbering the
other and recruiting its numbers every hour
by births. It desires to keep open every
avenue to the competition of all, and to mul-
tiply avenues: the class of business men in
America, in England, in France and through-
out Europe; the class of industry and skill.
Napoleon is its representative. The in-
stinct of active, brave, able men, through-
out the middle class everywhere, has pointed
out Napoleon as the incarnate Democrat.
He had their virtues and their vices; above
all, he had their spirit or aim. That tend-
ency is material, pointing at a sensual suc-
cess and employing the richest and most
various means to that end; conversant
with mechanical powers, highly intellectual,
widely and accurately learned and skillful,
but subordinating all intellectual and spiritual
forces into means to a material success. To
be the rich man is the end. "God has
granted," says the Koran, "to every people
a prophet in its own tongue." Paris and
London and New York, the spirit of com-
merce, of money and material power, were
also to have their prophet; and Bonaparte
was qualified and sent.
Every one of the million readers of anec-
dotes or memoirs or lives of Napoleon
delights in the page, because he studies in it
his own history. Napoleon is thoroughly
modern, and, at the highest point of his for-
tunes, has the very spirit of the newspapers.
He is no saint, — to use his own word, "no
capuchin," and he is no hero, in the high
sense. The man in the street finds in him
the qualities and powers of other men in
the street. He finds iiim, like himself, by
birth a citizen, who, by very intelligible
merits, arrived at sucli a commanding posi-
tion that he could indulge all those tastes
whicii the common man possesses but is
obliged to conceal and deny: good society,
good books, fast traveling, dress, dinneis,
servants without number, personal weight,
the execution of his ideas, the standing in
the attitude of a benefactor to all persons
about him, the refined enjoyments of pic-
tures, statues, music, palaces, and conven-
tional honors, — precisely what is agreeable
to the heart of every man in the nineteenth
century, this powerful man possessed.
It is true that a man of Napoleon's truth
of adaptation to the mind of the masses
around him, becomes not merely representa-
tive but actually a monopolizer and usurper
of other minds. Thus Mirabeau plagiarized
every good thought, every good word that
was spoken in France. Dumont relates
that he sat in the gallery of the Convention
and heard Mirabeau make a speech. It
struck Dumont that he could fit it with a
peroration, which he wrote in pencil im-
mediately, and showed it to Lord Elgin, who
sat by him. Lord Elgin approved it, and
Dumont, in the evening, showed it to Mira-
beau. Mirabeau read it, pronounced it
admirable, and declared he would incor-
porate it into his harangue to-morrow, to
the Assembly. "It is impossible," said
Dumont, "as, unfortunately, I have shown
it to Lord Elgin." "If you have shown it
to Lord Elgin, and to fifty persons beside, I
shall still speak it to-morrow": and he did
speak it, with much effect, at the next day's
session. For Mirabeau, with his overpower-
ing personality, felt that these things which
his presence inspired were as much his own
as if he had said them, and that his adoption
of them gave them their weight. Much
more absolute and centralizing was the suc-
cessor to Mirabeau's popularity and to much
more than his predominance in France.
Indeed, a man of Napoleon's stamp almost
ceases to have a private speech and opinion.
He is so largely receptive, and is so placed,
that he comes to be a bureau for all the in-
telligence, wit, and power of the age and
country. He gains the battle; he makes the
code; he makes the system of weights
and measures; he levels the Alps; he builds
36o
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
the road. All distinguished engineers, sav-
ans, statists, report to him: so Hkewise do
all good heads in every kind: he adopts the
best measures, sets his stamp on them, and
not these alone, but on every happy and
memorable expression. Every sentence
spoken by Napoleon and every line of his
writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense
of Erance.
Bonaparte was the idol of common men
because he had in transcendent degree the
qualities and powers of common men. There
is a certain satisfaction in coming down to
the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid
of cant and hypocrisy. Bonaparte wrought,
in common with that great class he repre-
sented, for power and wealth, — but Bona-
parte, specially, without any scruple as to
the means. All the sentiments which em-
barrass men's pursuit of these objects, he set
aside. The sentiments were for women and
children. Eontanes, in 1804, expressed
Napoleon's own sense, when in behalf of the
Senate he addressed him, — "Sire, the desire
of perfection is the worst disease that ever
afflicted the human mind." The advocates
of liberty and of progress are "ideologists";
— a word of contempt often in his mouth; —
"Necker is an ideologist": "Lafayette is an
ideologist."
An Italian proverb, too well known,
declares that "if you would succeed, you
must not be too good." It is an advantage,
within certain limits, to have renounced the
dominion of the sentiments of piety, grat-
itude, and generosity; since what was an
impassable bar to us, and still is to others,
becomes a convenient weapon for our pur-
poses; just as the river which was a formid-
able barrier, winter transforms mto the
smoothest of roads.
Napoleon renounced, once for all, senti-
ments and affections, and would help him-
self with his hands and his head. With him
is no miracle and no magic. He is a worker
in brass, in iron, in wood, in earth, in roads,
in buildings, in money and in troops, and a
very consistent and wise master-workman.
He is never weak and literary, but acts with
the solidity and the precision of natural
agents. He has not lost his native sense
and sympathy with things. Men give way
before such a man, as before natural events.
To be sure there are men enough who are
immersed in things, as farmers, smiths,
sailors, and mechanics generally; and we
know how real and solid such men appear
in the presence of scholars and grammarians:
but these men ordmarily lack the power of
arrangement, and are like hands without a
head. But Bonaparte superadded to this
mineral and anunal force, insight and gen-
eralization, so that men saw in him combined
the natural and the intellectual power, as if
the sea and land had taken flesh and begun
to cipher. Therefore the land and sea seem
to presuppose him. He came unto his own
and they received him. This ciphering
operative knows what he is working with
and what is the product. He knew the prop-
erties of gold and iron, of wheels and ships,
of troops and diplomatists, and required
that each should do after its kind.
The art of war was the game in which he
exerted his arithmetic. It consisted, ac-
cording to him, in having always more
forces than the enemy, on the point where
the enemy is attacked, or where he attacks:
and his whole talent is strained by endless
maneuver and evolution, to march always
on the enemy at an angle, and destroy his
forces in detail. It is obvious that a very
small force, skillfully and rapidly maneuver-
ing, so as always to bring two men against
one at the point of engagement, will be an
overmatch for a much larger body of men.
The times, his constitution, and his early
circumstances combined to develop this pat-
tern democrat. He had the virtues of his
class and the conditions for their activity.
That common-sense which no sooner respects
any end than it finds the means to effect it;
the delight in the use of means; in the choice, s
simplification, and combining of means; the \
directness and thoroughness of his work;
the prudence with which all was seen and
the energy with which all was done, make
him the natural organ and head of what I
may almost call, from its extent, the modern
party.
Nature must have far the greatest share
in every success, and so in his. Such a man
was wanted, and such a man was born; a
man of stone and iron, capable of sitting on
horseback sixteen or seventeen hours, of
going many days together without rest or
food except by snatches, and with the speed
and spring of a tiger in action; a man not
NAPOLEON
361
embarrassed by any scruples; compact,
instant, selfish, prudent, and of a perception
which did not suffer itself to be balked or
misled by any pretenses of others, or any
superstition, or any heat or haste of his own.
*'My hand of iron," he said, "was not at the
extremity of my arm, it was immediately
connected with my head." He respected
the power of nature and fortune, and ascribed
to it his superiority, instead of valuing him-
self, like inferior men, on his opinionative-
ness, and waging war with nature. His
favorite rhetoric lay in allusion to his star;
and he pleased himself, as well as the people,
when he styled himself the "Child of Des-
tiny." "They charge me," he said, "with
the commission of great crimes: men of my
stamp do not commit crimes. Nothing has
been more simple than my elevation, 'tis in
vain to ascribe it to intrigue or crime; it
was owing to the peculiarity of the times
and to my reputation of having fought
well against the enemies of my country.
I have always marched with the opinion of
great masses and with events. Of what use
then would crimes be to meV Again he
said, speaking of his son, "My son cannot
replace me; I could not replace myself. I
am the creature of circumstances."
He had a directness of action never before
combined with so much comprehension.
He is a realist, terrific to all talkers and con-
fused truth-obscuring persons. He sees
where the matter hinges, throws himself on
the precise point of resistance, and slights all
other considerations. He is strong in the
right manner, namely, by insight. He never
blundered into victory, but won his battles
in his head before he won them on the field.
His principal means are in himself. He asks
counsel of no other. In 1796 he writes to the
Directory: "I have conducted the cam-
paign without consulting any one. I should
have done no good if I had been under the
necessity of conforming to the notions of
another person. I have gained some advan-
tages over superior forces and when totally
destitute of every thing, because, in the per-
suasion that your confidence was reposed in
me, my actions were as prompt as my
thoughts."
History is full, down to this day, of the
imbecility of kings and governors. They are
a class of persons much to be pitied, for they
know not what they should do. The weavers
strike for bread, and the king and his minis-
ters, not knowing what to do, meet them with
bayonets. But Napoleon understood his
business. Here was a man who in each
moment and emergency knew what to do
next. It is an immense comfort and refresh-
ment to the spirits, not only of kings, but of
citizens. Few men have any next; they live
from hand to mouth, without plan, and are
ever at the end of their line, and after each
action wait for an impulse from abroad.
Napoleon had been the first man of the world,
if his ends had been purely public. As he is,
he inspires confidence and vigor by the ex-
traordinary unity of his action. He is firm,
sure, self-denymg, self-postponing, sacrificing
every thing, — money, troops, generals, and
his own safety also, to his aim; not misled,
like common adventurers, by the splendor
of his own means. "Incidents ought not to
govern policy," he said, "but policy, inci-
dents." "To be hurried away by every
event is to have no political system at all."
His victories were only so many |doors, and
he never for a moment lost sight of his way
onward, in the dazzle and uproar of the
present circumstance. He knew what to do,
and he flew to his mark. He would shorten a
straight line to come at his object. Horrible
anecdotes may no doubt be collected from
his history, of the price at which he bought
his successes; but he must not therefore be
set down as cruel, but only as one who knew
no impediment to his will; not bloodthirsty,
not cruel, — but woe to what thing or person
stood in his way! Not bloodthirsty, but not
sparing of blood, — and pitiless. He saw only
the object: the obstacle must give way.
"Sire, General Clarke cannot combine with
General Junot, for the dreadful fire of the
Austrian battery." — "Let him carry the
battery." — "Sire, every regiment that ap-
proaches the heavy artillery is sacrificed:
Sire, what orders.?" — "Forward, forward!"
Seruzier, a colonel of artillery, gives in his
Military Memoirs the following sketch of a
scene after the battle of Austerlitz: — "At the
moment in which the Russian army was
making its retreat, painfully, but in good
order, on the ice of the lake, the Emperor
Napoleon came riding at full speed toward
the artillery. 'You are losing time,' he
cried; 'fire upon those masses; they must be
^62
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
enj^uIfecL fire upon the ice!" The order
remained unexecuted for ten minutes. In
vain several oHiccrs and myself were placed
on the slope of a hill to produce the effect:
their balls and mine rolled upon the ice with-
out hreakinc; it up. Seeino; that, I tried a
simple method of elevating; lif!;ht howitzers.
The almost perpendicular fall of the heavy
projectiles produced the desired effect. My
method was immediately followed by the
adjoininji; batteries, and in less than no time
we buried" some^ "thousands of Russians
and Austrians under the waters of the lake."
In the plenitude of his resources, every
obstacle seemed to vanish. "There shall
be no Alps," he said; and he built his perfect
roads, climbino; by graded galleries their
steepest precipices, until Italy was as open
to Paris as any town in France. He laid his
bones to, and wrought for his crown. Hav-
ing decided what was to be done, he did that
with might and main. He put out all his
strength. He risked every thing and spared
nothing, neither ammunition, nor money,
nor troops, nor generals, nor himself.
We like to see every thing do its office after
its kind, whether it be a milch-cow or a
rattle-snake; and if fighting be the best mode
of adjusting national differences (as large
majorities of men seem to agree), certainly
Bonaparte was right in making it thorough.
The grand principle of war, he said, was that
an army ought always to be ready, by day
and by night and at all hours, to make all the
resistance it is capable of making. He never
economized his ammunition, but, on a hostile
position, rained a torrent of iron, — shells,
balls, grape-shot, — to annihilate all defense.
On any point of resistance he concentrated
squadron on squadron in overwhelming num-
bers until it was swept out of existence. To
a regiment of horse-chasseurs at Lobenstein,
two days before the battle of Jena, Napoleon
said, "My lads, you must not fear death;
when soldiers brave death, they drive him
into the enemy's ranks." In the fury of
assault, he no more spared himself. He went
to the edge of his possibility. It is plain that
in Italy he did what he could, and all that he
could. He came, several times, within an
inch of ruin; and his own person was all but
1 As I quote at second hand, and cannot procure
Seruzier, I dare not adopt the high figure I find.
(Emerson's note.^
lost. He was flung into the marsh at Areola.
The Austrians were between him and his
troops, in the m<^lee, and he was brought ofl^
with desperate efforts. At Lonato, and at
other places, he was on the point of being
taken prisoner. He fought sixty battles. He
had never enough. Each victory was a new
weapon. "My power would fall, were I not
to support it by new achievements. Con-
quest has made me what I am, and conquest
must maintain me." He felt, with every wise
man, that as much life is needed for conserva-
tion as for creation. We are always in peril,
always in a bad plight, just on the edge of
destruction and only to be saved by invention j
and courage.
This vigor was guarded and tempered by
the coldest prudence and punctuality. A
thunderbolt in the attack, he was found in-
vulnerable in his entrenchments. His very
attack was never the inspiration of courage,
but the result of calculation. His idea of the
best defense consists in being still the attack-
ing party. "My ambition," he says, "was
great, but was of a cold nature." In one of
his conversations with Las Casas, he re-
marked, "As to moral courage, I have rarely
met with the two-o'clock-in-the-morning
kind: I mean unprepared courage; that
which is necessary on an unexpected occa-
sion, and which, in spite of the most unfore-
seen events, leaves full freedom of judgment
and decision": and he did not hesitate to
declare that he was himself eminently en-
dowed with this two-o'clock-in-the-morn-
ing courage, and that he had met with few
persons equal to himself in this respect.
Every thing depended on the nicety of his
combinations, and the stars were not more
punctual than his arithmetic. His personal
attention descended to the smallest particu-
lars. "At Montebello, I ordered Kellermann
to attack with eight hundred horse, and with
these he separated the six thousand Hun-
garian grenadiers, before the very eyes of the M
Austrian cavalry. This cavalry was half a
league off, and required a quarter of an hour
to arrive on the field of action, and I have
observed that it is always these quarters of
an hour that decide the fate of a battle."
" Before he fought a battle, Bonaparte
thought little about what he should do in
case of success, but a great deal about what
he should do in case of a reverse of fortune."
NAPOLEON
363
The same prudence and good sense mark all
his behavior. His instructions to his secre-
tary at tiie luileries are worth remembering.
*' During the nigiit, enter my chamber as
seldom as possible. Do not awake me when
you have any good news to communicate;
with that there is no hurry. But when you
bring bad news, rouse me instantly, for then
there is not a moment to be lost." It was
a whimsical economy of the same kind which
dictated his practice, when general in Italy,
in regard to his burdensome correspondence.
He directed Bourrienne to leave all letters
unopened for three weeks, and then observed
with satisfaction how large a part of the
correspondence had thus disposed of itself
and no longer required an answer. His
achievement of business was immense, and
enlarges the known powers of man. There
have been many working kings, from Ulysses
to William of Orange, but none who accom-
plished a tithe of this man's performance.
To these gifts of nature. Napoleon added
the advantage of having been born to a
private and humble fortune. In his later
days he had the weakness of wishing to add
to his crowns and badges the prescription of
aristocracy; but he knew his debt to his
austere education, and made no secret of his
contempt for the born kings, and for "the
hereditary asses," as he coarsely styled the
Bourbons. He said that "in their exile they
had learned nothing, and forgot nothing."
Bonaparte had passed through all the degrees
of military service, but also was citizen
before he was emperor, and so has the key to
citizenship. His remarks and estimates dis-
cover the information and justness of meas-
urement of the middle class. Those who had
to deal with him found that he was not to be
imposed upon, but could cipher as well as
another man. This appears in all parts
of his MemoirSy dictated at St. Helena.
When the expenses of the empress, of his
household, of his palaces, had accumulated
great debts. Napoleon examined the bills
of the creditors himself, detected overcharges
and errors, and reduced the claims by con-
siderable sums.
His grand weapon, namely the millions
whom he directed, he owed to the represent-
ative character which clothed him. He
interests us as he stands for France and for
Europe; and he exists as captain and king
only as far as the Revolution, or the interest
of the industrious masses, found an organ and
a leader in him. \n the social interests, he
knew the meaning and value of labor, and
threw himself naturally on that side. I
like an incident mentioned by one of his
biographers at St. Helena. "When walking
with Mrs. Balcombe, some servants, carrying
heavy boxes, passed by on the road, and Mrs.
Balcombe desired them, in rather an angry
tone, to keep biK:k. Napoleon interfered,
saying, 'Respect the burden. Madam."*
In the time of the empire he directed atten-
tion to the improvement and embellishment
of the markets of the capital. "The market-
place," he said, "is theLouvreof the common
people." The principal works that have sur-
vived him are his magnificent roads. He
filled the troops with his spirit, and a sort of
freedom and companionship grew up between
him and them, which the forms of his court
never permitted between the officers and
himself. They performed, under his eye,
that which no others could do. The best
document of his relation to his troops is the
order of the day on the morning of the battle
of Austerlitz, in which Napoleon promises the
troops that he will keep his person out of
reach of fire. This declaration, which is the
reverse of that ordinarily made by generals
and sovereigns on the eve of a battle, suf-
ficiently explains the devotion of the army
to their leader.
But though there is in particulars this
identity between Napoleon and the mass
of the people, his real strength lay in their
conviction that he was their representative
in his genius and aims, not only when he
courted, but when he controlled, and even
when he decimated them bv his conscriptions.
He knew as well as any Jacobin in France,
how to philosophize on liberty and equality;
and when allusion was made to the precious
blood of centuries, which was spilled by the
killing of the Due d'Enghien, he suggested,
"Neither is my blood ditch-water." The
people felt that no longer the throne was
occupied and the land sucked of its nourish-
ment, by a small class of legitimates, secluded
from all community with the children of the
soil, and holding the ideas and superstitions
of a long-forgotten state of society. Instead
of that vampyre, a man of themselves held,
in the Tuileries, knowledge and ideas like
3^4
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
tlieir own, opening of course tothem and their
children all places of power and trust. The
day of sleei-)y, selfish policy, ever narrowing
the means and opportunities of young men,
was ended, and a day of expansion and de-
mand was come. A market for all the pow-
ers and productions of man was opened;
brilliant prizes glittered in the eyes of youth
and talent. The old, iron-bound, feudal
France was changed into a young Ohio or
New York; and those who smarted under the
immediate rigors of the new monarch, par-
doned them as the necessary severities of the
military system which had driven out the
oppressor. And even when the majority
of the people had begun to ask whether they
had really gained any thing under the ex-
hausting levies of men and money of the new
master, the whole talent of the country, in
every rank and kindred, took his part and
defended him as its natural patron. In 1814,
when advised to rely on the higher classes,
Napoleon said to those around him, *' Gen-
tlemen, in the situation in which I stand, my
only nobility is the rabble of the Faubourgs."
Napoleon met this natural expectation.
The necessity of his position required a hos-
pitality to every sort of talent, and its ap-
pointment to trusts; and his feeling v^ent
along with this policy. Like every superior
person, he undoubtedly felt a desire for men
and compeers, and a wish to measure his
power w'ith other masters, and an impatience
of fools and underlings. In Italy, he sought
for men and found none. "Good God!"
he said, "how rare men are! There are
eighteen millions m Italy, and I have with
difficulty found two, — Dandolo and Melzi. "
In later years, with larger experience, his
respect for mankind was not increased. In a
moment of bitterness he said to one of his
oldest friends, **Men deserve the contempt
with which they inspire me. I have only
to put some gold lace on the coat of my
virtuous republicans and they immediately
become just what I wish them." This im-
patience at levity was, however, an oblique
tribute of respect to those able persons who
commanded his regard not only when he
found them friends and coadjutors but also
when they resisted his will. He could not
confound Fox and Pitt, Carnot, Lafayette,
and Bernadotte, with the danglers of his
court; and in spite of the detraction which
his systematic egotism dictated tow^ards the
great captains who conquered with and for
him, ample acknowledgments are made by
him to Lannes, Duroc, Kleber, Dessaix, Mas-
sena, Murat, Ney, and Augereau. If he felt
himself their patron and the founder of their
fortunes, as when he said, "I made my gen-
erals out of mud," he could not hide his sat-
isfaction in receiving from them a seconding
and support commensurate with the grandeur j
of his enterprise. In the Russian campaign '
he was so much impressed by the courage and
resources of Marshal Ney, that he said, "I
have two hundred millions in my coffers, and
I would give them all for Ney." The char-
acters which he has drawn of several of his
marshals are discriminating, and though they
did not content the insatiable vanity of
French officers, are no doubt substantially
just. And in fact every species of merit was
sought and advanced under his government.
"I know," he said, "the depth and draught
of water of every one of my generals."
Natural power was sure to be well received at
his court. Seventeen men in his time were
raised from common soldiers to the rank of
king, marshal, duke, or general; and the
crosses of his Legion of Honor were given
to personal valor, and not to family con-
nection. "When soldiers have been baptized
in the fire of a battle-field, they have all one
rank in my eyes."
When a natural king becomes a titular
king, everybody is pleased and satisfied.
The Revolution entitled the strong populace
of the Faubourg St. Antoine, and every
horse-boy and powder-monkey in the army,
to look on Napoleon as flesh of his flesh and
the creature of his party: but there is some-
thing in the success of grand talent which
enlists an universal sympathy. For in the
prevalence of sense and spirit over stupidity
and malversation, all reasonable men have
an interest; and as intellectual beings we feel
the air purified by the electric shock, when
material force is overthrown by intellectual
energies. As soon as we are removed out of
the reach of local and accidental partialities,
Man feels that Napoleon fights for him; these
are honest victories; this strong steam-engine
does our work. Whatever appeals to the im-
agination by transcending the ordinary limits
of human ability, wonderfully encourages
and liberates us. This capacious head, re-
NAPOLEON
36s
volving and disposing sovereignly trains of
affairs, and animating such multitudes of
agents; this eye, which looked through Eu-
rope; this prompt invention; this inexhaust-
ible resource: — what events! what romantic
pictures! what strange situations! — when
spying the Alps, by a sunset in the Sicilian
sea; drawing up his army for battle in sight
of the Pyramids, and saying to his troops,
"From the tops of those pyramids, forty cen-
turies look down on you"; fording the Red
Sea; wadin^^ in the gulf of the Isthmus of
Suez. On the shore of Ptolemais, gigantic
projects agitated him. ''Had Acre fallen, I
should have changed the face of the world."
His army, on the night of the battle of Aus-
terlitz, which was the anniversary of his in-
auguration as Emperor, presented him with a
bouquet of forty standards taken in the fight.
Perhaps it is a little puerile, the pleasure he
took in making these contrasts glaring; as
when he pleased himself with making kings
wait in his antechambers, at Tilsit, at Paris,
and at Erfurt.
We cannot, in the universal imbecility,
indecision, and indolence of men, sufficiently
congratulate ourselves on this strong and
ready actor, who took occasion by the beard,
and showed us how much may be accom-
plished by the mere force of such virtues as all
men possess in less degrees; namely, by
punctuality, by personal attention, by cour-
age, and thoroughness. "The Austrians, "
he said, "do not know the value of time. " I
should cite him, in his earlier years, as a
model of prudence. His power does not con-
sist in any wild or extravagant force; in any
enthusiasm like Mahomet's, or singular
power of persuasion; but in the exercise of
common-sense on each emergency, instead of
abiding by rules and customs. The lesson he
teaches is that which vigor always teaches;
— that there is always room for it. To what
heaps of cowardly doubts is not that man's
life an answer! When he appeared it was the
belief of all military men that there could be
nothing new in war; as it is the belief of men
to-day that nothing new can be undertaken
in politics, or in church, or in letters, or in
trade, or in farming, or in our social manners
and customs; and as it is at all times the belief
of society that the world is used up. But
Bonaparte knew better than society; and,
moreover, knew that he knew better. I
think all men know better than they do;
know that the institutions we so volubly
commend are go-carts and baubles; but
they dare not trust their presentiments.
Bonaparte relied on his own sense, and did
not care a bean for other people's. The
world treated his novelties just as it treats
everybody's novelties, — made infinite ob-
jection, mustered all the impediments; but
he snapped his finger at their objections.
"What creates great difficulty," he remarks,
"in the profession of the land-commander, is
the necessity of feeding so many men and an-
imals. If he allows himself to be guided by
the commissaries he will never stir, and all
his expeditions will fail." An example of
his common-sense is what he says of the
passage of the Alps in winter, which all
writers, one repeating after the other, had
described as impracticable. " Ihe winter,"
says Napoleon, "is not the most unfav^orable
season for the passage of lofty mountains.
The snow is then firm, the weather settled,
and there is nothing to fear from avalanches,
the real and only danger to be apprehended
in the Alps. On those high mountains, there
are often very fine days in December, of a
dry cold, with extreme calmness in the air."
Read his account, too, of the way in which
battles are gained. "In all battles a moment
occurs when the bravest troops, after having
made the greatest efforts, feel inclined to run.
That terror proceeds from a want of con-
fidence in their own courage, and it only re-
quires a slight opportunity, a pretense, to
restore confidence to them. The art is, to
give rise to the opportunity and to invent
the pretense. At Areola, I won the battle
with twenty-five horsemen. I seized that
moment of lassitude, gave every man a trum-
pet, and gained the day with this hand-
ful. You see that two armies are two bodies
which meet and endeavor to frighten each
other; a moment of panic occurs, and that
moment must be turned to advantage. When
a man has been present in many actions, he
distinguishes that moment without difficulty:
it is as easy as casting up an addition."
This deputy of the nineteenth century
added to his gifts a capacity for speculation
on general topics. He delighted in running
through the range of practical, of literary, and
of abstract questions. His opinion is always
original and to the purpose. On the voyage
^66
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
to Ep;ypt He liked, after dinner, to fix on three
or four persons to support a proposition, and
as many to oppose it. He gave a subject,
and the discussions turned on questions of
rfli<;ion, the different kinds of government,
and the art of war. One day he asked whether
the planets were inhabited? On .another,
what was the age of the world ? Then he pro-
posed to consider the probability of the des-
truction of the globe, either by water or by
fire: at another time, the truth or fallacy
of pesentiments, and the interpretation of
dreams. He was very fond of talking of re-
ligion. In 1806 he conversed with Fournier,
bishop of Montpellier, on matters of theology.
There were two points on which they could not
agree, viz.y that of hell, and that of salvation
out of the pale of the church. The Emperor
told Josephine that he disputed like a devil
on these two points, on which the bishop
was inexorable, lo the philosophers he
readily yielded all that was proved against
religion as the work of men and time, but he
would not hear of materialism. One fine
night, on deck, amid a clatter of materialism,
Bonaparte pointed to the stars, and said,
"You may talk as long as you please, gen-
tlemen, but who made all that.''" He? de-
lighted in the conversation of men of science,
particularly of Monge and BerthoUet; but the
men of letters he slighted; they were ''man-
ufacturers of phrases." Of medicine too he
was fond of talking, and with those of its prac-
titioners whom he most esteemed, — with
Corvisart at Paris, and with Antonomarchi
at St. Helena. ** Believe me," he said to the
last, "we had better leave off all these
remedies: life is a fortress which neither you
nor I know anything about. Why throw
obstacles in the way of its defense.'' Its own
means are superior to all the apparatus of
your laboratories. Corvisart candidly agreed
with me that all your filthy mixtures are good
for nothing. Medicine is a collection of un-
certain prescriptions, the results of which,
taken collectively, are more fatal than useful
to mankind. Water, air, and cleanliness are
the chief articles in my pharmacopcria."
His memoirs, dictated to Count Montholon
and General Gourgaud at St. Helena, have
great value, after all the deduction that it
seems is to be made from them on account of
his known disingenuousness. He has the
good-nature of strength and conscious su-
periority. I admire his simple, clear narrative
of his battles; — good as C;t'sar's; his good-
natured and sufficiently respectful account
of Marshal Wurmser and his other antag-
onists; and his own equality as a writer to
his varying subject. The most agreeable
portion is the Campaign in Egypt.
He had hours of thought and wisdom. In
intervals of leisure, either in the camp or the
palace, Napoleon appears as a man of genius
directing on abstract questions the native
appetite for truth and the impatience of words
he was wont to show in war. He could enjoy
every play of invention, a romance, a bon
■mot, as well as a stratagem in a campaign.
He delighted to fascinate Josephine and her
ladies, in a dim-lighted apartment, by the
terrors of a fiction to which his voice and
dramatic power lent every addition.
I call Napoleon the agent or attorney of
the middle class of modern society; of the
throng who fill the markets, shops, counting-
houses, manufactories, ships, of the modern
world, aiming to be rich. He was the agitator,
the destroyer of prescription, the internal im-
prover, the liberal, the radical, the inventor
of means, the opener of doors and markets,
the subverter of monopoly and abuse. Of
course the rich and aristocratic did not like
him. England, the center of capital, and
Rome and Austria, centers of tradition and
genealogy, opposed him. The consternation
of the dull and conservative classes, the terror
of the foolish old men and old women of the
Roman conclave, who in their despair took
hold of any thing, and would cling to red-hot
iron, — the vain attempts of statists to amuse
and deceive him, of the emperor of Austria
to bribe him; and the instinct of the young,
ardent, and active men everywhere, which
pointed him out as the giant of the middle
class, make his history bright and command-
ing. He had the virtues of the masses of his
constituents: he had also their vices. I am
sorry that the brilliant picture has its reverse.
But that is the fatal quality which w^e dis-
cover in our pursuit of wealth, that it is treach-
erous, and is bought by the breaking or
weakening of the sentiments; and it is inev-
itable that we should find the same fact in the
history of this champion, who proposed to
himself simply a brilliant career, without
any stipulation or scruple concerning the
means.
NAPOLEON
367
Bonaparte was sinp;ularly destitute of pcn-
erous sentiments. The highest-placed in-
dividual in the most cultivated age and pop-
ulation of the world, — he has not the merit
of common truth and honesty. He is unjust
to his generals; egotistic and monopolizing;
meanly stealing the credit of their great
actions from Kellermann, from Bernadotte;
intriguing to involve his faithful Junot in
hopeless bankruptcy, in order to drive him
to a distance from Paris, because the famil-
iarity of his manners offends the new pride
of his throne. He is a boundless liar. The
official paper, his Moniteur^ and all his
bulletins, are proverbs for saying what he
wished to be believed; and worse, — he sat,
in his premature old age, in his lonely island,
coldly falsifying facts and dates and charac-
ters, and giving to history a theatrical eclat.
Like all Frenchmen he has a passion for stage
effect. Every action that breathes of gener-
osityis poisoned bythiscalculation. His star,
his love of glory, his doctrine of the immor-
tality of the soul, are all French. **I must
dazzle and astonish. If I were to give the
liberty of the press, my power could not last
three days." To make a great noise is his
favorite design. "A great reputation is a
great noise: the more there is made, the
farther off it is heard. Laws, institutions,
monuments, nations, all fall; but the noise
continues, and resounds in after ages." His
doctrme of immortality is simply fame. His
theory of influence is not flattering. "There
are two levers for moving men, — interest and
fear. Love is a silly infatuation, depend upon
it. Friendship is but a name. I love nobody.
I do not even love my brothers: perhaps
Joseph a little, from habit, and because he is
my elder; and Duroc, I love him too; but
why? — because his character pleases me: he
is stern and resolute, and I believe the fellow
never shed a tear. For my part I know very
well that I have no true friends. As long as
I continue to be what I am, I may have as
many pretended friends as I please. Leave
sensibility to women; but men should be firm
in heart and purpose, or they should have
nothing to do with war and government. " He
was thoroughly unscrupulous. He would
steal, slander, assassinate, drown, and poison,
as his interest dictated. He had no generos-
ity, but mere vulgar hatred; he was intensely
selfish; he was perfidious; he cheated at
cards; he was a prodigious gossip, and opened
letters, and delighted in his infamous police,
and rubbed his hands with joy when he had
intercepted some morsel of intelligence con-
cerning the men and women about him,
boasting that "he knew everything"; and
interfercjd with the cutting the dresses of the
women; and listened after the hurrahs and
the compliments of the street, incognito.
His manners were coarse. He treated women
with low familiarity. He had the habit of
pulling their ears and pinching their cheeks
when he was in good humor, and of pulling
the ears and whiskers of men, and of striking
and horse-play with them, to his last days.
It does not appear that he listened at key-
holes, or at least that he was caught at it.
In short, when you have penetrated through
all the circles of power and splendor, you
were not dealing with a gentleman, at last;
but with an impostor and a rogue; and he
fully deserves the epithet of Jupiter Scapin^
or a sort of Scamp Jupiter,
In describing the two parties into which
modern society divides itself, — the democrat
and the conservative, — I said, Bonaparte
represents the Democrat, or the party of
men of business, against the stationary or
conservative party. I omitted then to say,
what is material to the statement, namely,
that these two parties differ only as young and
old. The democrat is a young conservative;
the conservative is an old democrat. I he
aristocrat is the democrat ripe and gone
to seed; — because both parties stand on the
one ground of the supreme value of property,
which one endeavors to get, and the other to
keep. Bonaparte may be said to represent
the whole history of this party, its youth and
its age; yes, and with poetic justice its fate,
in his own. The counter-revolution, the
counter-party, still waits for its organ and
representative, in a lover and a man of truly
public and universal aims.
Here was an experiment, under the most
favorable conditions, of the powers of in-
tellect without conscience. Never was such
a leader so endowed and so wcaponed; never
leader found such aids and followers. And
what was the result of this vast talent and
power, of these immense armies, burned cities,
squandered treasures, immolated millions
of men, of this demoralized Europe.'' It
368
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
came to no result. All passed away like the
smoke of his arrilkry, and left no trace. He
left France smaller, poorer, feebler, than he
found it; and the whole contest for freedom
was to he beiiun a^ain. The attempt was in
principle suicidal. France served him with
life and limb and estate, as lona; as, it could
identify its interest with him; but when men
saw that after victory was another war; after
the destruction of armies, new conscriptions;
and they who had toiled so desperately were
never nearer to the reward, — they could not
spend what they had earned, nor repose on
their down-beds, nor strut in their chateaux,
— they deserted him. Men found that his
absorbing; egotism was deadly to all other
men. It resembled the torpedo, v\'hich in-
flicts a succession of shocks on any one who
takes hold of it, producing; spasms which con-
tract the muscles of the hand, so that the
man cannot open his fingers; and the animal
inflicts new and more violent shocks, until he
paralyzes and kills his victim. So this exor-
bitant egotist narrowed, impoverished, and
absorbed the power and existence of those
who served him; and the universal cry of
France and of Europe in 1814, was "Enough
of him"; Assez de Bonaparte.
It was not Bonaparte's fault. He did all
that in him lay to live and thrive without
moral principle. It was the nature of things,
the eternal law of man and of the world which
balked and ruined him; and the result, in a
million experiments, will be the same. Every
experiment, by multitudes or by individuals,
that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.
The pacific Fourier will be as inefficient as the
pernicious Napoleon. As long as our civil-
ization is essentially one of property, of fences,
of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by de-
lusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there
will be bitterness in our laughter, and our
wine will burn our mouth. Only that good
profits which we can taste with all doors
open and which serves all men.
THE CONDUCT OF LIFEi
VII. CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY
Hear what British Merlin sung.
Of keenest eye and truest ton;:^ue.
Say not, the chiefs who first arrive
Usurp the seats for which all strive;
1 Published i860. The volume contains nine essays:
The forefathers this land who found
Failed to plant the vantase-^rounci;
Ever from one who comes to-morrow
Men wait their good and truth to borrow.
But wilt thou measure all thy road,
See thou lift the liuhrcst load.
Who has little, to him who has less, can spare,
And thou, Cyndyllan's son! beware
Ponderous gold and stuffs to bear,
To falter ere thou thy task fulfill, —
Only the light-armed climb the hill.
The richest of all lords is Use,
And ruddy Health the loftiest Muse.
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea,
Drink the wild air's salubrity:
Where the star Canope shines in May,
Shepherds are thankful, and nations gay.
The music that can deepest reach,
And cure all ill, is cordial speech:
Mask thy wisdom with delight,
Toy with the bow, yet hit the white.
Of all wit's uses, the main one
Is to live well with who has none.
Cleave to thine acre; the round year
Will fetch all fruits and virtues here.
Fool and foe may harmless roam,
Loved and lovers bide at home.
A day for toll, an hour for sport,
But for a friend is life too short.
Although this garrulity of advising is
born with us, I confess that life is rather a
subject of wonder than of didactics. So
much fate, so much irresistible dictation from
temperament and unknown inspiration
enters into it, that we doubt we can say any-
thing out of our own experience whereby to
help each other. All the professions are timid
and expectant agencies. The priest is glad
if his prayers or his sermon meet the condi-
tion of any soul; if of two, if of ten, 'tis a
signal success. But he walked to the church
without any assurance that he knew the dis-
temper, or could heal it. The physician pre-
scribes hesitatingly out of his few resources
the same tonic or sedative to this new and
peculiar constitution which he has applied
with various success to a hundred men before.
Fate, Power, Wealth, Culture, Behavior, Worship, Con-
siderations by the Way, Beauty, and Illusions.
In 1856 English Traits had been published. Later
volumes were: Society and Solitude (1870) and Letters
and Social Aims (1876). Two posthumously pub-
lished volumes are: Miscellanies (1884) and the
Natural History of Intellect and Other Papers (1893).
A volume entitled Uncollected JFritings was published
in 1912. Emerson's Journals have been published in
10 volumes, 1909-1914.
COXSIDKRATIONS BY IMK WAY
369
If tile" patient mends he is glad and surprised.
The bwyer advises the cHent, and tells his
story to the jury and leaves it with them, and
is as gay and as much relieved as the client if
it turns out that he has a verdict. The judge
weighs the arguments and puts a brave face
on the matter, and, since there must be a
decision, decides as he can, and hopes he has
done justice and given satisfaction to the
community; but is only an advocate after
all. And so is all life a timid and unskillful
spectator. We do what we must, and call it
by the best names. We like very well to be
praised for our action, but our conscience says,
"Not unto us." ' Tis little we can do for
each other. We accompany the youth with
sympathy and manifold old sayings of the
wise to the gate of the arena, but 'tis certain
that not by strength of ours, or of the old
sayings, but only on strength of his own, un-
known to us or to any, he must stand or fall.
That by which a man conquers in any pass-
age is a profound secret to every other being
in the world, and it is only as he turns his
back on us and on all men and draws on this
most private wisdom, that any good can come
to him. What we have therefore to say of
life, is rather description, or if you please,
cetebration, than available rules.
Yet vigor is contagious, and whatever
makes us either think or feel strongly, adds
to our power and enlarges our field of action.
We have a debt to every great heart, to every
fine genius; to those who have put life and
fortune on the cast of an act of justice; to
those who have added new sciences; to those
who have refined life by elegant pursuits.
*Tis the fine souls who serve us, and not what
is called fine society. Fine society is only a
self-protection against the vulgarities of the
street and the tavern. Fine society, in the
common acceptation, has neither ideas nor
aims. It renders the service of a perfumery
or a laundry, not of a farm or factory. 'Tis
an exclusion and a precinct. Sydney Smith
said, "A few yards in London cement or dis-
solve friendship." It is an unprincipled
decorum; an affair of clean linen and coaches,
of gloves, cards, and elegance in trifles. There
are other measures of self-respect for a man
than the number of clean shirts he puts on
every day. Society wishes to be amused.
1 do not wish to be amused. I wish that
life should not be cheap, but sacred. I
wish the days to be as centuries, loaded,
fragrant. Now we reckon them as bank-
days, by some debt which is to be paid
us or which we are to pay, or some pleasure
we are to taste. Is all we have to do to draw
the breath in and blow it out again? Por-
phyry's definition is better: "Life is that
which holds matter together. " The babe
in arms is a channel through which the
energies we call fate, love, and reason, visibly
stream. See what a cometary train of aux-
iliaries man carries with him, of animals,
plants, stones, gases, and imponderable ele-
ments. Let us infer his ends from this pomp
of means. Mirabeau said, "Why should we
feel ourselves to be men, unless it be to suc-
ceed in everything, everywhere. You must
say of nothing. That is beneath fne, nor feel
that anything can be out of your power.
Nothing is impossible to the man who can
will. Is that necessary? That shall be: —
this is the only law of success." Whoever
said it, this is in the right key. But this is
not the tone and genius of the men in the
street. In the streets we grow cynical. The
men we meet are coarse and torpid. The
finest wits have their sediment. What quan-
tities of fribbles, paupers, invalids, epicures,
antiquaries, politicians, thieves, and triflers
of both sexes, might be advantageously
spared! Mankind divides itself into two
classes, — benefactors and malefactors. The
second class is vast, the first a handful. A
person seldom falls sick but the bystanders
are animated with a faint hope that he will
die: — quantities of poor lives, of distressing
invalids, of cases for a gun. Franklin said,
"Mankind are very superficial and dastardly:
they begin upon a thing, but, meeting with a
difiiculty, they fly from it discouraged; but
they have capacities, if they would employ
them." Shall we then judge a country by
the majority, or by the minority? By the
minority, surely. *Tis pedantry to estimate
nations by the census, or by square miles of
land, or other than by their importance to
the mind of the time.
Leave this hypocritical prating about the
masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, per-
nicious in their demands and influence, and
need not to be flattered but to be schooled.
I wish not to concede anything to them, but
to tame, drill, divide and break them up, and
draw individuals out of them. The worst of
370
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
charity is tliat the hves you are asked to pre-
serve are not worth preserving. Masses!
the cahiniity is the masses. I do not wish
any mass at all, but honest men only, lovely,
sweet, accomplished women only, and no
shovel-handed, narrow -brained, gin-drinking
million stcK'kingers or lazzaroni at all. If
government knew how, I should like to see
it check, not multiply the population. When
it reaches its true law of action, every man
that is born will be hailed as essential. Away
with this hurrah of masses, and let us have the
considerate vote of single men spoken on their
honor and their conscience. In old Egypt
it was established law that the vote of a
prophet be reckoned equal to a hundred
hands. I think it was much under-estimated.
"Clay and clay differ in dignity," as we dis-
cover by our preferences every day. What
a vicious practice is this of our politicians
at Washington pairing off! as if one man who
votes wrong, going away, could excuse you,
who mean to vote right, for going away; or
as if your presence did not tell in more ways
than in your vote. Suppose the three hun-
dred heroes at Thermopylae had paired off
with three hundred Persians: would it have
been all the same to Greece, and to history.''
Napoleon was called by his men Cent Mille.
Add honesty to him, and they might have
called him Hundred Million.
Nature makes fifty poor melons for one that
is good, and shakes down a tree full of gnarled,
wormy, unripe crabs, before you can find a
dozen dessert apples; and she scatters nations
of naked Indians and nations of clothed Chris-
tians, with two or three good heads among
them. Nature works very hard, and only hits
the white once in a million throws. In man-
kind she is contented if she yields one master
in a century. The more difficulty there is in
creating good men, the more they are used
when they come. I once counted in a little
neighborhood and found that every able-
bodied man had, say, from twelve to fifteen
persons dependent on him for material aid,
— to whom he is to be for spoon and jug, for
backer and sponsor, for nursery and hospital
and many functions beside: nor does it seem
to make much difference whether he is
bachelor or patriarch; if he do not violently
decline the duties that fall to him, this
amount of helpfulness will in one way or an-
other be brought home to him. This is the tax
which his abilities pay. 1 he good men are
employed for private centers of use, and for
larger influence. All revelations, whether of
mechanical or intellectual or moral science,
are made, not to communities, but to single
persons. All the marked events of our day,
all the cities, all the colonizations, may be
traced back to their origin in a private brain.
All the feats which make our civility were the
thoughts of a few good heads.
Meantime this spawning productivity is
not noxious or needless. You would say
this rabble of nations might be spared. I^ut
no, they are all counted and depended on.
Fate keeps everything alive so long as the
smallest thread of public necessity holds it
on to the tree. The coxcomb and bully and
thief class are allowed as proletaries, every
one of their vices being the excess or acridity
of a virtue. The mass are animal, in pupilage,
and near chimpanzee. But the units where-
of this mass is composed, are neuters, every
one of which may be grown to a queen-bee.
The rule is, we are used as brute atoms until
we think: then we use all the rest. Nature
turns all malfeasance to good. Nature pro-
vided for real needs. No sane man at last
distrusts himself. His existence is a perfect
answer to all sentimental cavils. If he is,- he
is wanted, and has the precise properties that
are required. That we are here, is proof we
ought to be here. We have as good right, and
the same sort of right to be here, as Cape
Cod or Sandy Hook have to be there.
To say then, the majority are wicked,
means no malice, no bad heart in the ob-
server, but simply that the majority are un-
ripe, and have not yet come to themselves,
do not yet know their opinion. That, if
they knew it, is an oracle for them and for all.
But in the passing moment the quadruped
interest is very prone to prevail; and this
beast-force, whilst it makes the discipline
of the world, the school of heroes, the glory
of martyrs, has provoked in every age the
satire of wits and the tears of good men. They
find the journals, the clubs, the governments,
the churches, to be in the interest and the pay
of the devil. And wise men have met this
obstruction in their times, like Socrates,
with his famous irony; like Bacon, with
life-long dissimulation; like Erasmus, with
his book The Praise uf Folly; like Rabelais,
with his satire rending the nations.
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY
371
"They were the fools who cried against me,
you will say," wrote the Chevalier de Bouf-
flers to Grimm; "aye, but the foolsj have the
advantage of numbers, and 'tis that which
decides. It is of no use for us to make war
with them; we shall not weaken them; they
will always be the masters. There will not
be a.practice or an usage introduced, of which
they are not the authors."
In front of these sinister facts, the first
lesson of history is the good of evil. Good is
a good doctor but Bad is sometimes a better.
The oppressions of William the Norman, sav-
age forest-laws and crushing despotism made
possible the inspirations of Magna Charta
under John. Edward I wanted money,
armies, castles, and as much as he could get.
It was necessary to call the people together
by shorter, swifter ways, — and the House of
Commons arose. To obtain subsidies, he
paid in privileges. In the twenty-fourth
year of his reign he decreed "that no tax
should be levied without consent of Lords
and Commons"; — which is the basis of the
English Constitution. Plutarch affirms
that the cruel wars which followed the
march of Alexander introduced the civility,
language, and arts of Greece into the savage
East; introduced marriage; built seventy
cities; and united hostile nations under one
government. The barbarians w^ho broke up
the Roman empire did not arrive a day too
soon. Schiller says the Thirty Years' War
made Germany a nation. Rough, selfish
despots serve men immensely, as Henry VIII
in the contest with the Pope; as the infat-
uations no less than the wisdom of Cromwell;
as the ferocity of the Russian czars; as the
fanaticism of the French regicides of 1789.
The frost which kills the harvest of a year,
saves the harvests of a century, by destroying
the weevil or the locust. Wars, fires, plagues,
break up immovable routine, clear the
ground of rotten races and dens of distemper,
and open a fair field to new men. There is a
tendency in things to right themselves, and
the war or revolution or bankruptcy that
shatters a rotten system, allows things to
take a new and natural order. The sharpest
evils are bent into that periodicity which
makes the errors of planets and the fevers and
distempers of men, self-limiting. Nature is
upheld by antagonism. Passions, resistance,
danger, are educators. We acquire the
strength we have overcome. Without war,
no soldiers; without enemies, no hero. The
sun were insipid, if the universe were not
opaque. And the glory of character is in
affronting the horrors of depravity to draw
thence new nobilities of power; as Art lives
and thrills in new use and combining of con-
trasts, and mining into the dark evermore for
blacker pits of night. What would painter
do, or what, would poet or saint, but for cru-
cifixions and hells .f* And evermore in the
world is this marvelous balance of beauty and
disgust, magnificence and rats. Not Anto-
ninus, but a poor washerwoman, said, "The
more trouble, the more lion; that's my prin-
ciple."
I do not think very respectfully of the de-
signs or the doings of the people who went to
California in 1849. It was a rush and a scram-
ble of needy adventurers, and, in the western
country, a general jail-delivery of all the
rowdies of the rivers. Some of them went
with honest purposes, some with very bad
ones, and all of them with the very common-
place wish to find a short way to wealth.
But nature watches over all, and turns this
malfeasance to good. California gets peo-
pled and subdued, civilized in this immoral
way, and on this fiction a real prosperity is
rooted and grown. 'Tis a decoy-duck; 'tis
tubs 'thrown to amuse the whale; but real
ducks, and whales that yield oil, are caught.
And out of Sabine rapes, and out of robbers'
forays, real Romes and their heroism come
in fullness of time.
In America, the geography is sublime but
the men are not: the inventions are excellent
but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed
of. The agencies by which events so grand
as the opening of California, of Texas, of
Oregon, and the junction of the two oceans,
are affected, are paltry, — coarse selfishness,
fraud, and conspiracy; and most of the great
results of history are brought about by dis-
creditable means.
The benefaction derived in Illinois and
the great West from railroads is inestimable,
and vastly exceeding any intentional phi-
lanthropy on record. What is the benefit
done by a good King Alfred, or by a Howard,
or Pestalozzi, or Elizabeth Fry, or Florence
Nightingale, or any lover, less or larger,
compared with the involuntary blessing
wrought on nations by the selfish capitalists
372
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
\vh(i iMiilt the Illinois, Michigan, and the net-
work of the Mississippi-valley roads, which
have evoked not only all the wealth of the soil,
but the energy of mdlions of men. It is
a sentence of ancient wisdom that "God
hangs the greatest weights on the smallest
wires. "
What happens thus to nations, befalls
every day in private houses. When the friends
of a gentleman brought to his notice the
follies of his sons, with many hmts of their
danger, he replied that he knew so much mis-
chief when he was a boy, and had turned out
on the whole so successfully, that he was
not alarmed by the dissipation of boys;
'twas dangerous water, but he thought they
would soon touch bottom*, and then swim
to the top. This is bold practice, and there
are many failures to a good escape. Yet
one would say that a good understanding
would suffice as well as moral sensibility to
keep one erect; the gratifications of the pas-
sions are so quickly seen to be damaging, and
— what men like least — seriously lowering
them in social rank. Then all talent sinks
with character.
^' Croyez moi, Verreur aussi a son merite,'*
said Voltaire. We see those who surmount,
by dint of some egotism or infatuation, ob-
stacles from w4iich the prudent recoil. The
right partisan is a heady narrow man,* who,
because he does not see many things, sees
some one thing with heat and exaggeration,
and if he falls among other narrow men, or on
objects which have a brief importance, as
some trade or politics of the hour, he prefers
it to the universe, and seems inspired and a
godsend to those who wish to magnify the
matter and carry a point. Better, certainly,
if we could secure the strength and fire
which rude, passionate men bring into
society, quite clear of their vices. But who
dares draw out the linchpin from the wagon-
wheel? 'Tis so manifest that there is no
moral deformity but is a good passion out of
place; that there is no man who is not in-
debted to his foibles; that, according to the old
oracle, "the Furies are the bonds of men";
that the poisons are our principal medicines,
which kill the disease and save the life. In the
high prophetic phrase, He causes the wrath of
man to praise him, and twists and wrenches
our evil to our good. Shakespeare wrote, —
" 'Tis said, best men are molded of their faults";
and great educators and lawgivers, and
especially generals and leaders of colonies,
mainly rely on this stuff, and esteem men of
irregular and passional force the best timber.
A man of sense and energy, the late head of
the Farm School in Boston Harbor, said to
me, "I want none of your good boys, — give
me the bad ones." And this is the reason, I
suppose, why, as soon as the children are
good, the mothers are scared, and think
they are going to die. Mirabeau said, " There
are none but men of strong passions capable
of going to greatness; none but such capable
of meriting the public gratitude." Passion,
though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.
Any absorbing passion has the effect to
deliver from the little coils and cares of every
day: 'tis the heat which sets our human
atoms spinning, overcomes the friction of
crossing thresholds and first addresses in
society, and gives us a good start and speed,
easy to continue w^hen once it is begun. In
short there is no man who is not at some time
indebted to his vices, as no plant that is not
fed from manures. We only insist that the
man meliorate, and that the plant grow up-
ward and convert the base into the better
nature.
The wise workman will not regret the
poverty or the solitude which brought
out his working talents. The youth is
charmed with the fine air and accomplish-
ments of the children of fortune. But all
great men come out of the middle classes.
'Tis better for the head; 'tis better for the
heart. Marcus Antoninus says that Fronto
told him that "the so-called high-born are
for the most part heartless"; whilst nothing
is so indicative of deepest culture as a tender
consideration of the ignorant. Charles
James Fox said of England, "The history of
this country proves that we are not to expect
from men in affluent circumstances the vigil-
ance, energy, and exertion without which the
House of Commons would lose its greatest
force and weight. Human nature is prone to
indulgence, and the most meritorious pub-
lic services have always been performed
by persons in a condition of life removed from
opulence." And yet what we ask daily, is
to be conventional. Supply, most kind gods!
this defect in my address, in my form, in my
fortunes, which puts me a little out of the
ring: supply it, and let me be like the rest
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY
373
whom I admire, and on good terms with them.
Hut the wise gods say, No, we have better
things for tliee. By humihations, by defeats,
by loss of sympathy, by gulfs of disparity,
learn a wider truth and humanity than that
of a fine gentleman. A Fifth-Avenue land-
lord, a West-end householder, is not the high-
est style of man; and though good hearts
and sound minds are of no condition, yet he
who is to be wise for many must not be pro-
tected. He must know the huts where poor
men lie, and the chores which poor men do.
The first-class minds, i^sop, Socrates, Cer-
vantes, Shakespeare, Franklin, had the poor
man's feeling and mortification. A rich man
was never insulted in his life; but this man
must be stung. A rich man was never in
danger from cold, or hunger, or war, or
rufiians, — and you can see he was not, from
the moderation of his ideas. 'Tis a fatal
disadvantage to be cockered and to eat too
much cake. What tests of manhood could
he stand? Take him out of his protections.
He is a good book-keeper; or he is a shrewd
adviser in the insurance oflfice; perhaps he
could pass a college examination, and take
his degrees; perhaps he can give wise counsel
in a court of law. Now plant him down
among farmers, firemen, Indians, and emi-
grants. Set a dog on him; set a highway-
man on him; try him with a course of mobs;
send him to Kansas, to Pike's Peak, to Ore-
gon; and, if he have true faculty, this may
be the element he wants, and he will come
out of it with broader wisdom and manly
power, i^sop, Saadi, Cervantes, Regnard,
have been taken by corsairs, left for dead,
sold for slaves, and know the realities of
human life.
Bad times have a scientific value. These
'jre occasions a good learner would not miss.
As we go gladly to Faneuil Hall to be played
upon by the stormy winds and strong fingers
of enraged patriotism, so is a fanatical perse-
cution, civil war, national bankruptcy or
revolution more rich in the central tones
than languid years of prosperity. What had
been, ever since our memory, solid continent,
yawns apart and discloses its composition
and genesis. We learn geology the morning
after the earthquake, on ghastly diagrams of
cloven mountains, upheaved plains, and the
dry bed of the sea.
In our life and culture everything is
worked up and comes in use, — passion, war,
revolt, bankruptcy, and not less, folly and
blunders, insult, ennui, and bad company.
Nature is a rag-merchant, who works up
every shred and ort and end into new crea-
tions; like a good chemist whom I found the
other day in his laboratory, converting his
old shirts into pure white sugar. Life is a
boundless privilege, and when you pay for
your ticket and get into the car, you have no
guess what good company you shall find
there. You buy much that is not rendered
in the bill. Men achieve a certain greatness
unawares, when working to another aim.
If now in this connection of discourse we
should venture on laying down the first obvi-
ous rules of life, I will not here repeat the
first rule of economy, already propounded
once and again, that every man shall main-
tain himself, — but I will say, get health.
No labor, pains, temperance, poverty, nor
exercise, that can gain it, must be grudged.
For sickness is a cannibal which eats up all
the life and youth it can lay hold of, and
absorbs its own sons and daughters. I figure
it as a pale, wailing, distracted phantom,
absolutely selfish, heedless of what is good
and great, attentive to its sensations, losing
its soul, and afflicting other souls with mean-
ness and mopings and with ministration to
its vpracity of trifles. Dr. Johnson said
severely, "Every man is a rascal as soon as
he is sick." Drop the cant, and treat it
sanely. In dealing with the drunken, we
do not affect to be drunk. We must treat
the sick with the same firmness, giving them
of course every aid, — but withholding our-
selves. I once asked a clergyman in a retired
town, who were his companions.? what men
of ability he saw.'' He replied that he spent
his time with the sick and the dying. I said
he seemed to me to need quite other com-
pany, and all the more that he had this; for
if people were sick and dying to any purpose,
we would leave all and go to them, but as
far as I had observed they were as frivolous
as the rest, and sometimes much more frivo-
lous. Let us engage our companions not to
spare us. I knew a wise woman who said
to her friends, *'When I am old, rule me."
And the best part of health is fine disposition.
It is more essential than talent, even in the
works of talent. Nothing will supply the
want of sunshine to peaches, and to make
374
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
knowledge valuable, you must have the
cheerfulness of wisdom. Whenever you are
sincerely pleased, you are nourished. 1 he
joy of the sjiirit indicates its strength. All
healthy things are sweet-tenijiered. (Jenius
works in sport, and goodness smiles to the
last; and for the reason that whoever sees
the law which distributes things, does not
despond, but is animated to great desires
and endeavors. He who desponds betrays
that he has not seen it.
'lis a Dutch proverb that "paint costs
nothing," such are its preserving qualities
in damp climates. Well, sunshine costs less,
yet is finer pigment. And so of cheerfulness,
or a good temper, the more it is spent, the
more of it remains. The latent heat of an
ounce of wood or stone is inexhaustible.
You may rub the same chip of pine to the
point of kindling a hundred times; and the
power of happiness of any soul is not to be
computed or drained. It is observed that a
depression of spirits develops the germs of a
plague in individuals and nations.
It is an old commendation of right be-
havior, '' Aliis IcctuSy sapiens sibi/' which our
English proverb translates, " Be merry and
wise." I know how easy it is to men of the
world to look grave and sneer at your
sanguine youth and its glittering dreams.
But I find the gayest castles in the air that
were ever piled, far better for comfort and
for use than the dungeons in the air that are
daily dug and caverned out by grumbling,
discontented people. I know those miserable
fellows, and I hate them, who see a black star
always riding through the light and colored
clouds in the sky overhead: waves of light
pass over and hide it for a moment, but the
black star keeps fast in the zenith. But
power dwells with cheerfulness; hope puts
us in a working mood, whilst despair is no
muse, and untunes the active powers. A
man should make life and Nature happier to
us, or he had better never been born. When
the political economist reckons up the un-
productive classes, he should put at the head
this class of pitiers of themselves, cravers of
sympathy, bewailing imaginary disasters. An
old French verse runs, in my translation: —
Some of your griefs you have cured,
And the sharpest you still have survived;
But what torments of pain you endured
From evils that never arrived!
There are three wants which never can be
satisfied: that of the rich, who wants some-
thmg more; that of the sick, who wants
something different; and that of the trav-
eler, who says, "Anywhere but here." The
Turkish cadi said to Layard, "After the
fashion of thy people, thou hast wandered
from one place to another, until thou art
happy and content in none." My country-
men are not less infatuated with the rococo
toy of Italy. All America seems on the point
of embarking for Europe. Hut we shall not
always traverse seas and lands with light
purposes, and for pleasure, as we say. One
day we shall cast out the passion for Europe
by the passion for America. Culture will
give gravity and domestic rest to those who
now travel only as not knowing how else to
spend money. Already, who provoke pity
like that excellent family party just arriving
in their well-appointed carriage, as far from
home and any honest end as ever? Each
nation has asked successively, "What are
they here for.''" until at last the party are
shamefaced, and anticipate the question at
the gates of each town.
Genial manners are good, and power of
accommodation to any circumstance; but
the high prize of life, the crowning fortune of
a man, is to be born with a bias to some
pursuit which finds him in employment and
happiness, — whether it be to make baskets,
or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or
songs. I doubt not this was the meaning of
Socrates, when he pronounced artists the
only truly wise, as being actually, not
apparently so.
In childhood we fancied ourselves walled
in by the horizon, as by a glass bell, and
doubted not by distant travel we should
reach the baths of the descending sun and
stars. On experiment the horizon flies before
us and leaves us on an endless common,
sheltered by no glass bell. Yet 'tis strange
how tenaciously we cling to that bell-
astronomy of a protecting domestic horizon.
I find the same illusion in the search after
happiness which I observe every summer
recommenced in this neighborhood, soon
after the pairing of the birds. The young
people do not like the town, do not like the
sea-shore, they will go inland; find a dear
cottage deep in the mountains, secret as their
hearts. They set forth on their travels in
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY
375
search of a home: they reach Berkshire;
they reach Vermont; they look at the
farms; — p;ood farms, hic;h mountain-sides;
but where is the seckision? The farm is near
this, 'tis near that; they have got far from
Boston, but 'tis near Albany, or near Bur-
Hnj^ton, or near Montreal. They explore a
farm, but the house is small, old, thin; dis-
contented people lived there, and are gone; —
there's too much sky, too much out-doors;
too public. The youth aches for solitude.
When he comes to the house he passes
through the house. That does not make the
deep recess he sought. "Ah! now I per-
ceive," he says, "it must be deep with
persons; friends only can give depth." Yes,
but there is a great dearth, this year, of
friends; hard to find, and hard to have when
found: they are just going away; they too
are in the whirl of the flitting world, and
have engagements and necessities. They are
just starting for Wisconsin; have letters
from Bremen; — see you again, soon. Slow,
slow to learn the lesson that there is but one
depth, but one interior, and that is — his
purpose. When joy or calamity or genius
shall show him it, then woods, then farms,
then city shopmen and cab-drivers, indif-
ferently with prophet or friend, will mirror
back to him its unfathomable heaven, its
populous solitude.
The uses of travel are occasional, and
short; but the best fruit it finds, when it
finds it, is conversation; and this is a main
function of life. What a difference in the
hospitality of minds! Inestimable is he to
whom we can say what we cannot say to our-
selves. Others are involuntarily hurtful to
us and bereave us of the power of thought,
impound and imprison us. As, when there
is sympathy, there needs but one wise man
in a company and all are wise, so a block-
head makes a blockhead of his companion.
Wonderful power to benumb possesses this
brother. When he comes into the office or
public room, the society dissolves; one after
another slips out, and the apartment is at
his disposal. What is incurable but a frivo-
lous habit.'* A fly is as untamable as a hyena.
Yet folly in the sense of fun, fooling, or
dawdling can easily be borne; as Talleyrand
said, *'I find nonsense singularly refreshing";
but a virulent, aggressive fool taints the
reason of a household. I have seen a whole
family of quiet, sensible people unhinged and
beside themselves, victims of such a rogue.
For the steady wronghcadedness of one per-
verse person irritates the bes' ; since we must
withstand absurdity. But resistance only
exasperates the acrid fool, who believes that
Nature and gravitation are quite wrong, and
he only is right. Hence all the dozen in-
mates are soon perverted, with whatever
virtues and industries they have, into con-
tradictors, accusers, explainers, and repairers
of this one malefactor; like a boat about to
be overset, or a carriage run away with, —
not only the foolish pilot or driver, but
everybody on board is forced to assume
strange and ridiculous attitudes, to balance
the vehicle and prevent the upsetting. For
remedy, whilst the case is yet mild, I recom-
mend phlegm and truth: let all the truth
that is spoken or done be at the zero of in-
differency, or truth itself will be folly. But
when the case is seated and malignant, the
only safety is in amputation; as seamen say,
you shall cut and run. How to live with
unfit companions.'' — for with such, life is
for the most part spent; and experience
teaches little better than our earliest instinct
of self-defense, namely, not to engage, not
to mix yourself in any manner with them,
but let their madness spend itself unopposed.
Conversation is an art in which a man has
all mankind for his competitors, for it is that
which all are practicing every day while they
live. Our habit of thought, — take men as
they rise, — is not satisfying; in the com-
mon experience I fear it is poor and squalid.
The success which will content them is a
bargain, a lucrative employment, an ad-
vantage gained over a competitor, a mar-
riage, a patrimony, a legacy, and the like.
With these objects, their conversation deals
with surfaces: politics, trade, personal
defects, exaggerated bad news, and the rain.
This is forlorn, and they feel sore and sensi-
tive. Now if one comes who can illuminate
this dark house with thoughts, show them
their native riches, what gifts they have,
how indispensable each is, what magical
powers over nature and men; what access to
poetry, religion, and the powers which con-
stitute character, — he wakes in them the
feeling of worth, his suggestions require new
ways of living, new books, new men, new arts
and sciences; — then we come out of our egg-
376
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
shell existence into the preat dome, and
see the zenith over and tiie nadir under us.
Instead of the tanks and buckets of knowl-
edfje to which we are daily confined, we come
down to the shore of the sea, and dip our
hands in its miraculous waves. 'Tis wonder-
ful the effect on the company. They are
not the men they were. They have all been
to California and all have come back million-
aires. Lhere is no book and no pleasure in
life comparable to it. Ask what is best in
our experience, and we shall say, a few pieces
of plain-dealing with wise people. Our con-
versation once and again has apprised us
that we belong to better circles than we have
yet beheld; that a mental power invites us
whose generalizations are more worth for
joy and for effect than anything that is now
called philosophy or literature. In excited
conversation we have glimpses of the Uni-
verse, hints of power native to the soul, far-
darting lights and shadows of an Andes
landscape, such as we can hardly attain in
lone meditation. Here are oracles sometimes
profusely given, to which the memory goes
back in barren hours.
Add the consent of will and temperament,
and there exists the covenant of friendship.
Our chief want in life is somebody who shall
make us do what we can. This is the service
of a friend. With him we are easily great.
There is a sublime attraction in him to
whatever virtue is in us. How he flings wide
the doors of existence! What questions we
ask of him! what an understanding we have!
how few words are needed! It is the only
real society. An Eastern poet, Ali Ben Abu
Taleb, writes w^ith sad truth: —
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend
to spare,
And he who has one enemy shall meet him every-
where.
But few writers have said anything better to
this point than Hafiz who indicates this
relation as the test of mental health: "Thou
learnest no secret until thou knowest friend-
ship, since to the unsound no heavenly
knowledge enters." Neither is life long
enough for friendship. That is a serious
and majestic affair, like a royal presence, or
a religion, and not a postilion's dinner to be
eaten on the run. There is a pudency about
friendship as about love, and though fine
souls never lose sight of it, yet they do not
name it. With the first class of men our
friendship or good understandmg goes quite
behind all accidents of estrangement, of con-
dition, of reputation. And yet we do not
provide for the greatest good of life. We
take care of our health; we lay up money;
we make our roof tight, and our clothing
sufficient; but who provides wisely that he
shall not be wanting in the best property of
all, — friends.'' We know that all our training
is to fit us for this, and we do not take the
step towards it. How long shall we sit and
wait for these benefactors.''
It makes no difference, in looking back five
years, how you have been dieted or dressed;
whether you have been lodged on the first
floor or the attic; whether you have had
gardens and baths, good cattle and horses,
have been carried in a neat equipage, or in a
ridiculous truck: these things are forgotten
so quickly, and leave no effect. But it counts
much whether we have had good companions
in that time, — almost as much as what we
have been doing. And see the overpowering
importance of neighborhood in all associa-
tion. As it is marriage, fit or unfit, that
makes our home, so it is who lives near us of
equal social degree, — a few people at con-
venient distance, no matter how bad com-
pany,— these, and these only, shall be your
life's companions; and all those who are
native, congenial, and by many an oath of
the heart sacramented to you, are gradually
and totally lost. You cannot deal system-
atically with this fine element of society,
and one may take a good deal of pains to
bring people together and to organize clubs
and debating societies, and yet no result
come of it. But it is certain that there is a
great deal of good in us that does not know
itself, and that a habit of union and com-
petition brings people up and keeps them up
to their highest point; that life would be
twice or ten times life if spent with wise and
fruitful companions. The obvious inference
is, a little useful deliberation and preconcert
when one goes to buy house and land.
But we live with people on other platforms;
we live with dependents; not only with the
young whom we are to teach all we know
and clothe with the advantages we have
earned, but also with those who serve us
directly, and for money. Yet the old rules
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY
377
hold good. Let not the tie be mercenary,
though the service is measured by money.
Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do
not make life hard to any. Ihis point is
acquiring new importance in American social
life. Our domestic service is usually a foolish
fracas of unreasonable demand on one side
and shirking on the other. A man of wit was
asked, in the train, what was his errand in
the city.^ He replied, "I have been sent to
procure an angel to do cooking." A lady
complained to me that of her two maidens,
one was absent-minded and the other was
absent-bodied. And the evil increases from
the ignorance and hostility of every ship-
load of the immigrant population swarming
into houses and farms. Few people discern
that it rests with the master or the mistress
what service comes from the man or the
maid; that this identical hussy was a tutelar
spirit in one house and a haridan in the
other. All sensible people are selfish, and
nature is tugging at every contract to make
the terms of it fair. If you are proposing
only your own, the other party must deal a
httle hardly by you. If you deal generously,
the other, though selfish and unjust, will
make an exception in your favor, and deal
truly with you. When I asked an iron-
master about the slag and cinder in railroad
iron, — "Oh," he said, "there's always good
iron to be had: if there's cinder in the iron
it is because there was cinder in the pay."
But why multiply these topics, and their
illustrations, which are endless? Life brings
to each his task, and whatever art you
select, algebra, planting, architecture, poems,
commerce, politics, — all are attainable, even
to the miraculous triumphs, on the same
terms of selecting that for which you are
apt; begin at the beginning, proceed in order,
step by step. 'Tis as easy to twist iron
anchors and braid cannons, as to braid
straw; to boil granite as to boil water, if you
take all the steps in order. Wherever there
is failure, there is some giddiness, some
superstition about luck, some step omitted,
which nature never pardons. The happy
conditions of life may be had on the same
terms. Their attraction for you is the pledge
that they are within your reach. Our
prayers are prophets. There must be fidelity,
and there must be adherence. How respect-
able the life that clings to its objects! Youth-
ful aspirations are fine things, your theories
and plans of life are fair and commendable: —
but will you stick .'' Not one, I fear, in that
Common full of people, or, in a thousand,
but one: and when you tax them with
treachery, and remind them of their high
resolutions, they have forgotten that they
made a vow. The individuals are fugitive,
and in the act of becoming something else,
and irresponsible. The race is great, the
ideal fair, but the men whiffling and unsure.
The hero is he who is immovably centered.
The main difl?"erence between people seems to
be that one man can come under obligations
on which you can rely, — is obligable; and
another is not. As he has not a law within
him, there's nothing to tie him to.
It is inevitable to name particulars of
virtue and of condition, and to exaggerate
them. But all rests at last on that integrity
which dwarfs talent, and can spare it. Sanity
consists in not being subdued by your means.
Fancy prices are paid for position and for
the culture of talent, but to the grand inter-
ests, superficial success is of no account. The
man, — it is his attitude, — not feats, but
forces, — not on set days and public occasions,
but at all hours, and in repose alike as in
energy, still formidable and not to be dis-
posed of. The populace says, w4th Home
Tooke, "If you would be powerful, pretend
to be powerful." I prefer to say, with the
old prophet, "Seekest thou great things?
seek them not": — or, what was said of a
Spanish prince, "The more you took from
him, the greater he looked." Plus on lui ote,
plus il est grand.
The secret of culture is to learn that a few
great points steadily reappear, alike in the
poverty of the obscurest farm and in the
miscellany of metropolitan life, and that
these few are alone to be regarded; — the
escape from all false ties; courage to be w^hat
we are, and love of what is simple and beauti-
ful; independence and cheerful relation,
these are the essentials, — these, and the wish
to serve, to add somew^hat to the well-being
of men.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862)
Thoreaii was descended on his father's side from a family living in the island of Jersey. His
mother was of Scotch extraction, the daughter of a Concord clergyman. He was born in ConcortI on
12 July, 1S17, the third of his parents' four children, and was christened David Henry, though he later
reversed the order of these names. While Thoreau was a young child the family removed to Chelms-
ford, and then to Boston, but returned to Concord in 1823. Thoreau's father was a mechanic and
maker of lead-pencils, who always remained poor, but the boy, nevertheless, managed to prepare
himself for college and to complete a course at Harvard, whence he was graduated in 1837. For
a while after this he taught school in Concord, with his brother John. But neither school-teaching
nor any other bread-winning employment which he later undertook was to him more than a means
to his real work. From the beginning of manhood he kept a journal in which he stored up the fruits
of his observation, reading, and reflection, and it was as a man of letters that he really lived and
worked. About this there can be no doubt; he early knew that he had something to say to the world,
and he constantly endeavored after the achievement of his purpose. Yet, at the same time, he was
in no hurry. He was so intensely concerned with the fine and right expression of the truth he knew,
and so little concerned over the immediate winning of public favor, that one who considered only the
outward events of his life might excusably regard him as little better than an aimless ne'er-do-well.
In 1839 Thoreau took, with his brother John, the excursion which later served as a framework
for the volume entitled A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers, but this volume was not actually
completed until 1847, and was not published until 1849. Meanwhile Thoreau had led a varied exist-
ence. He had long since begun writing poems and short prose pieces, and his earliest published piece,
the poem entitled Sympathy, had appeared in the first number of The Dial, in 1840. This poem, it
may be mentioned, is a disguised confession of Thoreau's love for Miss Ellen Sewall, daughter of a
clergyman at that time living in Scituate. Miss Sewall was loved also by Thoreau's brother John, but
she married neither of them. As far as is known, Thoreau never again was in love. He contributed
other poems and prose essays to later issues of The Dial, and in April, 1841, he went to the home of
one of The Dial's editors, Emerson, to live, until May, 1843, in a position rather difficult to define —
apparently one which combined the duties of a "hired man" with the privileges of a disciple and friend.
During the remainder of this year he lived on Staten Island, New York, acting as a tutor in the family
of Emerson's brother William. In 1844 he was back in Concord, helping his father to manufacture
lead-pencils. It was at this time that he devised such improvements in the process of manufacture
that the family's pencils became the best then made in America. However, instead of pursuing this
success, Thoreau, in 1845, left the business, saying that he could not further improve the product and
"that his life was too valuable to him to put what remained of it into pencils." And in July of this
year he took up his residence at Walden, where he remained until September, 1847. During the year
following he again lived at the Emerson house, while Emerson himself was in England.
In subsequent years Thoreau lived at his father's house, earning in various ways the small
amount of money he needed, sometimes by manual labor, sometimes by surveying land, sometimes by
lecturing, and occasionally by writing for periodicals. Walden was published in 1854. In the winter
of i860 Thoreau was brought down with a cold — the result of undue exposure — which developed into
tuberculosis. Late in the following spring he journeyed to Minnesota, hoping to be benefited by the dry
climate there. The hope was, however, vain. After his return he gradually became weaker and
weaker, until his death on 21 March, 1862.
As yet he remained practically unknown. Many fellow-townsmen set him down simply as an
eccentric of pernicious example — a man who unaccountably refused to make money when he could
have done so, lazy, selfish, unpatriotic, irreligious. But there was at least one friend who, while he
could extend the list of Thoreau's negations, or renunciations, could also give a reason for them.
Emerson wrote: "He was bred to no profession; he never married; he lived alone; he never went
to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the State; he ate no flesh, he drank no wine,
he never knew the use of tobacco; and, though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun. He chose
. . . to be the bachelor of thought and Nature." And why.'' "He was a born protestant. He
declined to give up his large ambition of knowledge and action for any narrow craft or profession,
378
SYMPATHY
379
aimirifj; at a much more comprehensive calhng, the art of living well. If he slighted and defied the
opinions of others, it was only that he was more intent to reconcile his practice with his own belief."
His aim was resolutely to cut off life's excrescences, its haphazard outgrowths, so that by these exclu-
sions he might at length come upon bright reality itself, the essential, unalloyed truth of our being.
The aim might be chimerical and, worse, the method wrong. Nevertheless, readers of A Weeky JVal-
detiy and several shorter pieces have found themselves confronted not merely with an unusual and
gifted naturalist, but, above that, with a man great in his intense conviction of the high possibilities
of life, and profoundly challenging in his stabs at our littleness and weakness, our grossness, and our
conventionality. And Thoreau has not been long in winning full recognition as an American classic.
The author (M. Van Doren) of a recent critical study concludes: "There can be little doubt that the
spirit of JValden has pervaded the American consciousness, stiffened the American lip, steadied the
American nerve, in a ponderable degree. By creating a classic image of the cynic hermit in ideal
solitude Thoreau has demonstrated some of the meannesses of the demands of Time and Matter, and
furnished the spirit and will for social criticism; he has made men acute critics, if not sensible shepherds,
of their own sentiments."
SYMPATHY 1
Lately, alas, I knew a gentle boy,
Whose features all were cast in Virtue's mold,
As one she had designed for Beauty's toy,
But after manned him for her own strong-
hold.
On every side he open was as day,
That you might see no lack of strength
within,
For walls and ports do only serve alway
For a pretense to feebleness and sin.
Say not that Caesar was victorious,
With toil and strife who stormed the House
of Fame: lo
In other sense this youth was glorious,
Himself a kingdom whereso'er he came.
No strength went out to get him victory,
When all was income of its own accord;
For where he went none other was to see,
But all were parcel of their noble lord.
He forayed like the subtle haze of summer, —
That stilly shows fresh landscapes to our
eyes,
And revolutions works without a murmur,
Or rustling of a leaf beneath the skies. 20
So was I taken unawares by this,
I quite forgot my homage to confess;
1 Following its publication in The Dial this poem
was included in A Week on the Concord and Merrimac
Rivers, Wednesday.
The selections from Thoreau's writings here re-
printed are used by permission of, and by arrangement
with, Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized
publishers.
Yet now am forced to know, though hard it
is,
I might have loved him, had I loved him less.
Each moment, as we nearer drew to each,
A stern respect withheld us farther yet,
So that we seemed beyond each other's reach,
And less acquainted than when first we met.
We two were one while we did sympathize,
So could we not the simplest bargain drive;
And what avails it now that we are wise, 31
If absence doth this doubleness contrive.^
Eternity may not the chance repeat,
But I must tread my single way alone,
In sad remembrance that we once did meet.
And know that bliss irrevocably gone.
The spheres henceforth my elegy shall sing.
For elegy has other subject none;
Each strain of music in my ears shall ring
Knell of departure from that other one. 40
Make haste and celebrate my tragedy;
With fitting strain resound ye woods and
fields;
Sorrow is dearer in such case to me
Than all the joys other occasion yields.
Is't then too late the damage to repair.''
Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp hath
reft
The empty husk, and clutched the useless
tare.
But in my hands the wheat and kernel left.
But if I love that virtue which he is,
Though it be scented in the morning air, 50
Still shall we be truest acquaintances,
Nor mortals know a sympathy more rare.
iSo
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
SIC VITAi
I AM n parcel of vain strivings tied
By a chance bond together,
DangHng this way and that, their hnks
Were made so loose and wide,
Methinks,
For milder weather.
A bunch of violets without their roots,
And sorrel intermixed.
Encircled by a wisp of straw
Once coiled about their shoots, lO
The law
By which I'm fixed.
A nosegay which Time clutched from out
Those fair Elysian fields,
With weeds and broken stems, in haste,
Doth make the rabble rout
That waste
The day he yields.
And here I bloom for a short hour unseen.
Drinking my juices up, 20
With no root in the land
To keep my branches green,
But stand
In a bare cup.
Some tender buds were left upon my stem
In mimicry of life,
But ah! the children will not know
Till time has withered them.
The woe
With which they're rife. 30
But now I see I was not plucked for nought.
And after in life's vase
Of glass set while I might survive,
But by a kind hand brought
Alive
To a strange place.
That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its
hours,
And by another year
Such as God knows, with freer air,
More fruits and fair flowers 40
Will bear,
While I droop here.
1 First published in The Dial, July, 1841; later
included in J Week, Friday. M. Van Doren (in
Thoreau, A Critical Study) has pointed out Thoreau's
indebtedness in this poem to George Herbert, par-
ticularly Herbert's Employment and Denial.
INDEPENDENCE^
My life more civil is and free
Than any civil polity.
Ye princes, keep your realms
And circumscribed power,
Not wide as are my dreams,
Nor rich as is this hour.
What can ye give which I have not?
What can ye take which I have got?
Can ye defend the dangerless?
Can ye inherit nakedness? 10
To all true wants Time's ear is deaf.
Penurious States lend no relief
Out of their pelf:
But a free soul — thank God —
Can help itself.
Be sure your fate
Doth keep apart its state, —
Not linked with any band,
Even the noblest in the land.
In tented fields with cloth of gold 20
No place doth hold,
But is more chivalrous than they are.
And sigheth for a nobler war;
A finer strain its trumpet rings,
A brighter gleam its armor flings.
The life that I aspire to live.
No man proposeth me;
No trade upon the street
Wears its emblazonry.
WALDEN
OR
LIFE IN THE WOODS ^
II. WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I
LIVED FOR
At a certain season of our life we are
accustomed to consider every spot as the
possible site of a house. I have thus sur-
veyed the country on every side within a
2 Published in Boston Commonwealth, 30 October,
1863. The last 14 lines had earlier been published
{Dial, October, 1842) under the title, The Black Knight,
and are reprinted with the same title in Miscellanies.
3 The volume contains 18 essays, or chapters, as
follows: Economy; Where I Lived, and What I Lived
For; Reading; Sounds; Solitude; Visitors; The Bean-
Field; The Village; The Ponds; Baker Farm;
WALDEN
381
dozen miles of where I live. In imagination
1 have bought all the farms in succession, for
all were to be bought, and I knew their price.
1 walked over each farmer's premises, tasted
his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry
with him, took his farm at his price, at any
price, mortgaging it to him in my mind; even
put a higher price on it, — took everything but
a deed of it, — took his word for his deed, for I
dearly love to talk, — cultivated it, and him too
to some extent, I trust, and withdrew when
I had enjoyed it long enough, leaving him to
carry it on. This experience entitled me to be
regarded as a sort of real-estate broker by my
friends. Wherever I sat, there I might live,
and the landscape radiated from me accord-
ingly. What is a house but a sedes, a seat ? —
better if a country seat. I discovered many
a site for a house not likely to be soon im-
proved, which some might have thought too
far from the village, but to my eyes the village
was too far from it. Well, there I might live,
I said; and there I did live, for an hour, a
summer and a winter life; saw how I could
let the years run off, buffet the winter
through, and see the spring come in. The
future inhabitants of this region, wherever
Higher Laws; Brute Neighbors; House-Warming;
Former Inhabitants, and Winter Visitors; Winter
Animals; The Pond in Winter; Spring; Conclusion.
Thoreau's opening words in the first chapter are:
"When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk
of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any
neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the
shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts,
and earned my living by the labor of my hands only.
I lived there two years and two months. At present
I am a sojourner in civilized life again.
"I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the
notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had
not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode
of life, which some would call impertinent, though
they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but,
considering the circumstances, very natural and
pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I
did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the
like. Others have been curious to learn what portion
of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and
some, who have large families, how many poor children
1 maintained. I will therefore ask those of my readers
who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if
I undertake to answer some of these questions in this
book. In most books, the /, or first person, is omitted;
in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism,
is the main difference. We commonly do not remember
that it is, after all, always the first person that is
speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if
there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Un-
fortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrow-
ness of my experience."
they may place their houses, may be sure
that they have been anticipated. An after-
noon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard,
wood-lot, and pasture, and to decide what
fine oaks or pines should be left to stand
before the door, and whence each blasted
tree could be seen to the best advantage;
and then I let it lie, fallow perchance, for a
man is rich in proportion to the number of
things which he can afford to let alone.
My imagination carried me so far that I
even had the refusal of several farms, — the
refusal was all I wanted, — but I never got
my fingers burned by actual possession. The
nearest that I came to actual possession was
when I bought the HoUowell place, and had
begun to sort my seeds, and collected mater-
ials with which to make a wheelbarrow to
carry it on or off with; but before the owner
gave me a deed of it, his wife — every man
has such a wife — changed her mind and
wished to keep it, and he offered me ten
dollars to release him. Now, to speak the
truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and
it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if 1 was
that man who had ten cents, or who had a
farm, or ten dollars, or all together. How-
ever, I let him keep the ten dollars and the
farm too, for I had carried it far enough; or
rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm
for just what I gave for it, and, as he was
not a rich man, made him a present of ten
dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds,
and materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found
thus that I had been a rich man without any
damage to my poverty. But I retained the
landscape, and I have since annually carried
off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow.
With respect to landscapes, —
I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute.
I have frequently seen a poet withdraw,
having enjoyed the most valuable part of a
farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that
he had got a few wild apples only. Why, the
owner does not know it for many years when
a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most
admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly
impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got
all the cream, and left the farmer only the
skimmed milk.
The real attractions of the Hollowell farm,
to me, were: its complete retirement, being
382
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
about two miles from tlic village, lialf a mile
from the nearest neighbor, and separated
from the highway by a broad field; its
bounding on the river, which the owner said
lirotected it by its fogs from frosts in the
spring, though that was nothing to me; the
gray color and ruinous state of the house and
barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put
such an interval betw^een me and the last
occupant; the hollow and lichen-covered
ajiple trees, gnawed by rabbits, showing
what kind of neighbors I should have; but
above all, the recollection I had of it from
my earliest voyages up the river, when the
house was concealed behmd a dense grove of
red maples, through which I heard the house-
dog bark. I was in haste to buy it, before
the proprietor finished getting outsomerocks,
cutting down the hollow apple trees, and
grubbing up some young birches which had
sprung up in the pasture, or, in short, had
made any more of his improvements. To
enjoy these advantages I was ready to carry
it on; like Atlas, to take the world on my
shoulders, — I never heard what compensa-
tion he received for that, — and do all those
things which had no other motive or excuse
but that I might pay for it and be unmolested
in my possession of it; for I knew all the
while that it would yield the most abundant
crop of the kind I wanted, if I could only
afford to let it alone. But it turned out as I
have said.
All that I could say, then, with respect to
farming on a large scale — I have always cul-
tivated a garden — was, that I had had my
seeds ready. Many think that seeds improve
with age. I have no doubt that time dis-
criminates between the good and the bad;
and when at last I shall plant, I shall be less
likely to be disappointed. But I would say
to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible
live free and uncommitted. It makes but
little difference whether you are committed
to a farm or the county jail.
Old Cato, whose De Re Rustica is my
Cultivator, says, — and the only translation
I have seen makes sheer nonsense of the
passage, — "When you think of getting a
farm turn it thus in your mind, not to buy
greedily; nor spare your pains to look at it,
and do not think it enough to go round it
once. The oftener you go there the more it
will please you, if it is good." I think I shall
not buy greedily, but go round and refund it
as long as I live, and be buried in it first, that
it may please me the more at last.
1 he present was my next experiment of
this kind, which I purpose to describe more
at length, for convenience putting the experi-
ence of two years into one. As I have said,i
I do not i)ropose to write an ode to dejection,
but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the
morning, standing on his roost, if only to
wake my neighbors up.
When first I took up my abode in the
woods, that is, began to spend my nights as
well as da3^s there, which, by accident, w^as
on Independence Day, or the Fourth of
July, 1845, my house was not finished for
winter, but was merely a defense against the
rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls
being of rough, weather-stained boards, with
wide chinks, which made it cool at night.
The upright white hewn studs and freshly
planed door and window casings gave it a
clean and airy look, especially in the morn-
ing, when its timbers were saturated with
dew, so that I fancied that by noon some
sweet gum would exude from them. To my
imagination it retained throughout the day
more or less of this auroral character, remind-
ing me of a certain house on a mountain
which I had visited a year before. This was
an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to enter-
tain a traveling god, and where a goddess
might trail her garments. The winds which
passed over my dwelling were such as sweep
over the ridges of mountains, bearing the
broken strains, or celestial parts only, of
terrestrial music. The morning wind forever
blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted;
but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus
is but the outside of the earth everywhere.
The only house I had been the owner of
before, if I except a boat,^ was a tent, which
I used occasionally when making excursions
in the summer, and this is still rolled up in
my garret; but the boat, after passing from
hand to hand, has gone down the stream of
time. With this more substantial shelter
1 The words which follow are printed, in the fashion
of a motto, at the beginning of the book.
2 The boat of his own making which he and his
brother John had used in their excursion on the Con-
cord and Merrimac Rivers. Thoreau sold this boat
to Nathaniel Hawthorne.
WALDEN
383
about me, I had made some progress toward
settling in the world. This frame, so slightly
clad, was a sort of crystallization around me,
and reacted on the builder. It was sugges-
tive somewhat as a picture in outlmes. I
did not need to go outdoors to take the air,
for the atmosphere within had lost none of
its freshness. It was not so much within-
doors as behind a door where I sat, even in
the rainiest weather. The Ilarivansa^ says,
"An abode without birds is like a meat with-
out seasoning." Such was not my abode, for
I found myself suddenly neighbor to the
birds; not by having imprisoned one, but
having caged myself near them. I was not
only nearer to some of those which commonly
frequent the garden and the orchard, but to
those wilder and more thrilling songsters of
the forest which never, or rarely, serenade a
villager, — the wood thrush, the veery, the
scarlet tanager, the field sparrow, the whip-
poor-will, and many others.
I was seated by the shore of a small pond,
about a mile and a half south of the village
of Concord and somewhat higher than it, in
the midst of an extensive wood between that
town and Lincoln, and about two miles south
of that our only field known to fame. Concord
Battle Ground; but I was so low in the woods
that the opposite shore, half a mile off, like
the rest, covered with wood, was my most
distant horizon. For the first week, when-
ever I looked out on the pond it impressed
me like a tarn high up on the side of a moun-
tain, its bottom far above the surface of other
lakes, and, as the sun arose, I saw it throw-
ing off its nightly clothing of mist, and here
and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or its
smooth reflecting surface was revealed, while
the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily with-
drawing in every direction into the woods,
as at the breaking up of some nocturnal
conventicle. The very dew seemed to hang
upon the trees later into the day than usual,
as on the sides of mountains.
This small lake was of most value as a
neighbor in the intervals of a gentle rain-
storm in August, when, both air and water
being perfectly still, but the sky overcast,
mid-afternoon had all the serenity of evening,
and the wood thrush sang around, and was
heard from shore to shore. A lake like this
1 A Sanskrit poem, part of the sacred literature of
the Hindoos.
is never smoother than at such a time; and
the clear portion of the air above it being
shallow and darkened by clouds, the water,
full of light and reflections, becomes a lower
heaven itself so much the more important.
From a hill-top near by, where the wood had
been recently cut off, there was a pleasing
vista southward across the pond, through a
wide indentation in the hills which form the
shore there, where their opposite sides slop-
ing toward each other suggested a stream
flowing out in that direction through a
wooded valley, but stream there was none.
That way I looked between and over the
near green hills to some distant and higher
ones in the horizon, tinged with blue. In-
deed, by standing on tiptoe I could catch a
glimpse of some of the peaks of the still bluer
and more distant mountain ranges in the
northwest, those true-blue coins from
heaven's own mint, and also of some portion
of the village. But in other directions, even
from this point, I could not see over or
beyond the woods which surrounded me.
It is well to have some water in your neigh-
borhood, to give buoyancy to and float the
earth. One value even of the smallest well
is, that when you look into it you see that
earth is not continent but insular. This is
as important as that it keeps butter cool.
When I looked across the pond from this
peak toward the Sudbury meadows, which
in time of flood I distinguished elevated per-
haps by a mirage in their seething valley,
like a coin in a basin, all the earth beyond
the pond appeared like a thin crust insulated
and floated even by this small sheet of inter-
vening water, and I was reminded that this
on which I dwelt was but dry land.
Though the view from my door was still
more contracted, I did not feel crowded or
confined in the least. There was pasture
enough for my imagination. The low shrub
oak plateau to which the opposite shore arose
stretched away toward the prairies of the West
and the steppes of Tartary, affording ample
room for all the roving families of men.
"There are none happy in the world but
beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon," —
said Damodara,2 when his herds required
new and larger pastures.
Both place and time were changed, and I
2/.^., Krishna, divinity in Hindoo mythology.
3^4
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe
and to those eras in history which had most
attracted me. \\ liere 1 hved was as far off
as many a re,-;ion viewed nightly by astron-
omers. We are wont to imauine rare and
delectable places in some remote and more
celestial corner of the system, behind the
constellation of Cassiopeia's Chair, far from
noise and disturbance. 1 discovered that my
house actually had its site in such a with-
drawn, but forever new and unprofaned,
part of the universe. If it were worth the
while to settle in those parts near to the
Pleiades or the Hyades, to Aldebaran or
Altair, then I was really there, or at an equal
remoteness from the life which I had left
behind, dwindled and twinkling with as fine
a ray to my nearest neighbor, and to be seen
only in moonless nights by hun. Such was
that part of creation where I had squatted; —
There was a shepherd that did live,
And held his thoughts as high
As were the mounts whereon his flocks
Did hourly feed him b3\
What should we think of the shepherd's life
if his flocks always wandered to higher pas-
tures than his thoughts?
Every morning was a cheerful invitation
to make my life of equal simplicity, and I
may say innocence, with Nature herself. I
have been as sincere a worshiper of Aurora
as the Greeks. I got up early and bathed in
the pond; that was a religious exercise, and
one of the best things which I did. They say
that characters were engraven on the bathmg
tub of King Tching-thang to this effect:
"Renew thyself completely each day; do it
again, and again, and forever agam." I can un-
derstand that. Morning brings back theheroic
ages. I was as much affected by the faint
hum of a mosquito making its invisible and
unimaginable tour through my apartment
at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with
door and windows open, as I could be by
any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was
Homer's requiem; itself an Iliad a.nd Odyssey
in the air, singing its own wTath and wander-
ings. There was something cosmical about
it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden,
of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the
world. The morning, which is the most
memorable season of the day, is the awaken-
ing hour. Then there is least somnolence in
us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us
awakes which slumbers all the rest of the
day and night. Little is to be expected of
that day, if it can be called a day, to which
we are not awakened by our Genius, but by
the mechanical nudgings of some servitor,
are not awakened by our own newly acquired
force and aspirations from within, accom-
panied by the undulations of celestial music,
instead of factory bells, and a fragrance
filling the air — to a higher life than we fell
asleep from; and thus the darkness bear its
fruit, and prove itself to be good, no less
than the light. That man who does not
believe that each day contains an earlier,
more sacred, and auroral hour than he has
yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is
pursuing a descending and darkening way.
After a partial cessation of his sensuous life,
the soul of man, or its organs rather, are
reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries
again what noble life it can make. All
memorable events, I should say, transpire
in morning time and in a morning atmo-
sphere. The Vedas say, "All intelligences
awake with the morning." Poetry and art,
and the fairest and most memorable of the
actions of men, date from such an hour.
All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the
children of Aurora, and emit their music at
sunrise. To him whose elastic and vigorous
thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a
perpetual morning. It matters not what the
clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men.
Morning is when I am awake and there is a
dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to
throw off sleep. W hy is it that men give so
poor an account of their day if they have not
been slumbering? They are not such poor
calculators. If they had not been overcome
with drowsiness, they would have performed
something. The millions are awake enough
for physical labor; but only one in a million
is awake enough for effective intellectual
exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a
poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be
alive. I have never yet met a man who was
quite awake. How could I have looked him
in the face?
We must learn to reawaken and keep our-
selves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by
an infinite expectation of the dawn, which
does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I
know of no more encouraging fact than the
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385
unquestionable ability of man to elevate his
life by a conscious endeavor.^ It is some-
thing to be able to paint a particular picture,
or to carve a statue, and so to make a few
objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious
to carve and paint the very atmosphere and
medium through which we look, which mor-
ally we can do. To affect the quality of the
day, that is the highest of arts. Every man
is tasked to make his life, even in its details,
worthy of the contemplation of his most
elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or
rather used up, such paltry mformation as
we get, the oracles would distinctly inform
us how this might be done.
I went to the woods because I wished to
live deliberately, to front only the essential
facts of life, and see if I could not learn what
it had to teach, and not, when I came to die,
discover that I had not lived. I did not wish
to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor
did I wish to practice resignation, unless it
was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep
and suck out all the marrow of life, to
live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to
rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath
and shave close, to drive life into a corner,
and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it
proved to be mean, why then to get the
whole and genuine meanness of it, and pub-
lish its meanness to the world; or if it were
sublime, to know it by experience, and be
able to give a true account of it in my next
excursion. For most men, it appears to me,
are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether
it is of the devil or of God, and have some-
what hastily concluded that it is the chief end
of man here to ''glorify God and enjoy him
forever." 2
Still we live meanly, like ants; though the
fable tells us that we were long ago changed
into men;3 like pygmies we fight with cranes;
it is error upon error, and clout upon clout,
1 Thoreau was fond of quoting these lines from
Samuel Daniel's poem To the Lady Margaret, Countess
of Cumberland:
"Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man."
2 The assertion is to be found in the Westminster
Catechism.
^Cf. A Week (Sunday): "According to fable, when
the island of y^gina was depopulated by sickness, at
the instance of ^acus, Jupiter turned the ants into
men, that is, as some think, he made men of the in-
habitants who lived meanly like ants."
and our best virtue has for its occasion a
superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our
life is frittered away by detail. An honest
man has hardly need to count more than his
ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add
his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity,
simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs
be as two or three, and not a hundred or a
thousand; instead of a million count half a
dozen, and keep your accounts on your
thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping
sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and
storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one
items to be allowed for, that a man has to
live, if he would not founder and go to the
bottom and not make his port at all, by dead
reckoning, and he must be a great calculator
indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify.
Instead of three meals a day, if it be neces-
sary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes,
five; and reduce other things in proportion.
Our life is like a German Confederacy, made
up of petty states, with its boundary forever
fluctuating, so that even a German cannot
tell you how it is bounded at any moment.
The nation itself, with all its so-called inter-
nal improvements, which, by the way, are all
external and superficial, is just such an
unwieldy and overgrown establishment,
cluttered with furniture and tripped up by
its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless
expense, by want of calculation and a worthy
aim, as the million households in the land;
and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a
rigid economy, a stern and more than Spar-
tan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose.
It lives too fast. Men think that it is essen-
tial that the Nation have commerce, and
export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and
ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt,
whether they do or not; but whether we
should live like baboons or like men, is a little
uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and
forge rails, and devote days and nights to the
work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to
improve themy who will build railroads. f* And
if railroads are not built, how shall we get to
heaven in season.^ But if we stay at home
and mind our business, who will want rail-
roads.^ We do not ride on the railroad; it
rides upon us. Did you ever think what
those sleepers are that underlie the railroad .f*
Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee
man. The rails are laid on them, and they
386
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
are covered with sand, and the cars run
smoothly over them. I hey are sound sleep-
ers, I assure you. And every f'ev years a new
lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some
have the pleasure of ridinc; on a rail, others
have the misfortune to he ridden upon. And
when they run over a man that is walking in
his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the
wrong position, and wake him up, they sud-
denly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry
ahout it, as if this were an exception. I am
glad to know that it takes a gang of men for
every five miles to keep the sleepers down
and level in their beds as it is, for this is a sign
that they may sometime get up again.
Why should we live with such hurry and
waste of life? We are determined to be
starved before we are hungry. Men say
that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they
take a thousand stitches to-day to save nine
to-morrow. As for zvorky we haven't any of
any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus'
dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads
still. If I should only give a few pulls at the
parish bell-rope, as for a fire, that is, without
setting the bell,i there is hardly a man on his
farm in the outskirts of Concord, notwith-
standing that press of engagements which
was his excuse so many times this morning,
nor a boy, nor a woman, I might almost say,
but would forsake all and follow that sound,
not mainly to save property from the flames,
but, if we will confess the truth, much more,
see it burn, since burn it must, and we, be it
known, did not set it on fire, — or to see it put
out, and have a hand in it, if that is done as
handsomely; yes, even if it were the parish
church itself. Hardly a man takes a half-
hour's nap after dinner, but when he wakes
he holds up his head and asks, "What's the
news.?" as if the rest of mankind had stood
his sentinels. Some give directions to be
waked every half-hour, doubtless for no other
purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell
what they have dreamed. After a night's
sleep the news is as indispensable as the
breakfast. ** Pray tell me anything new that
has happened to a man anywhere on this
globe," — and he reads it over his coffee and
rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out
^I.e., give a few slight pulls at the rope, obtaining
rapid taps of the clapper, instead of pulling the rope
until the bell is turned over with its mouth pointing
ur ward.
this morning on the Wachito River; never
dreaming the while that he lives in the dark
unfathomed mammoth cave of this world,
and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.
For my part, I could easily do without the
post-office. I think that there are very few
important communications made through it.
To speak critically, I never received more
than one or two letters in my life — I wrote
this some years ago — that were worth the
postage. The penny-post is, commonly, an
institution through which you seriously offer
a man that penny for his thoughts which is
so often safely offered in jest. And I am sure
that I never read any memorable news in a
newspaper. If we read of one man robbed,
or murdered, or killed by accident, or one.
house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one
steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on
the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed,
or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, —
w^e never need read of another. One is
enough. If you are acquainted with the
principle, what do you care for a myriad
instances and applications? To a philosopher
all newSy as it is called, is gossip, and they
who edit and read it are old women over their
tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gos-
sip. There was such a rush, as I hear, the
other day at one of the offices to learn the
foreign news by the last arrival, that several
large squares of plate glass belonging to the
establishment were broken by the pressure, —
news which I seriously think a ready wit
might write a twelvemonth, or twelve years,
beforehand with sufficient accuracy. As for
Spain, for instance, if you know how to
throw in Don Carlos and the Infanta, and
Don Pedro and Seville and Granada, from
time to time in the right proportions, — they
may have changed the names a little since I
saw the papers, — and serve up a bull-fight
when other entertainments fail, it will be
true to the letter, and give us as good an idea
of the exact state or ruin of things in Spain
as the most succinct and lucid reports under
this head in the newspapers: and as for Eng-
land, almost the last significant scrap of news
from that quarter was the revolution of
1649; and if you have learned the history of
her crops for an average year, you never need
attend to that thing again, unless your specu-
lations are of a merely pecuniary character.
If one may judge who rarely looks into the
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387
newspapers, nothing new does ever happen
in foreign parts, a French revolution not
excepted.
What news! how much more important
to know what that is which was never old!
'*Kieou-he-yu (great dignitary of the state
of Wei) sent a man to Khoung-tseu to know
his news. Khoung-tseu caused the messen-
ger to be seated near him, and questioned
him in these terms: What is your master
doing .f* The messenger answered with
respect: My master desires to diminish the
number of his faults, but he cannot come to
the end of them. The messenger being gone,
the philosopher remarked: What a worthy
messenger! What a worthy messenger!"
The preacher, instead of vexing the ears of
drowsy farmers on their day of rest at the
end of the week, — for Sunday is the fit con-
clusion of an ill-spent week, and not the
fresh and brave beginning of a new one, —
with this one other draggle-tail of a sermon,
should shout with thundering voice, *' Pause!
Avast! Why so seeming fast, but deadly
slow?'*
Shams and delusions are esteemed for
soundest truths, while reality is fabulous.
If men would steadily observe realities only,
and not allow themselves to be deluded, life,
to compare it with such things as we know,
would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian
Nights' Entertainments. If we respected
only what is inevitable and has a right to be,
music and poetry would resound along the
streets. When we are unhurried and wise,
we perceive that only great and worthy
things have any permanent and absolute
existence, that petty fears and petty pleas-
ures are but the shadow of the reality. This
is always exhilarating and sublime. By
closing the eyes and slumbering, and con-
senting to be deceived by shows, men estab-
lish and confirm their daily life of routine
and habit everywhere, which still is built on
purely illusory foundations. Children, who
play life, discern its true law and relations
more clearly than men, who fail to live it
worthily, but who think that they are wiser
by experience, that is, by failure. I have
read in a Hindoo book, that "there was a
king's son, who, being expelled in infancy
from his native city, was brought up by a
forester, and, growing up to maturity in that
state, imagined himself to belong to the bar-
barous race with which he lived. One of his
father's ministers having discovered him,
revealed to him what he was, and the mis-
conception of his character was removed,
and he knew himself to be a prince. So
soul," continues the Hindoo philosopher,
"from the circumstances in which it is
placed, mistakes its own character, until the
truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher,
and then it knows itself to be Brahme." I
perceive that we inhabitants of New England
live this mean life that we do because our
vision does not penetrate the surface of
things. We think that that is which appears
to be. If a man should walk through this
town and see only the reality, where, think
you, would the " Mill-dam "1 go to? If he
should give us an account of the realities he
beheld there, we should not recognize the
place in his description. Look at a meeting-
house, or a court-house, or a jail, or a shop,
or a dwelling-house, and say what that thing
really is before a true gaze, and they would
all go to pieces in your account of them.
Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts
of the system, behind the farthest star, before
Adam and after the last man. In eternity
there is indeed something true and sublime.
But all these times and places and occasions
are now and here. God himself culminates
in the present moment, and will never be
more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And
we are enabled to apprehend at all what is
sublime and noble only by the perpetual
instilling and drenching of the reality that
surrounds us. The universe constantly and
obediently answers to our conceptions;
whether we travel fast or slow, the track is
laid for us. Let us spend our lives in con-
ceiving then. The poet or the artist never
yet had so fair and noble a design but some
of his posterity at least could accomplish it.
Let us spend one day as deliberately as
Nature, and not be thrown off the track by
every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls
on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or
break fast, gently and without perturbation;
let company come and let company go, let
the bells ring and the children cry, — deter-
mined to make a day of it. Why should we
knock under and go with the stream? Let
us not be upset and overwhelmed in that
1 Concord's favorite gossiping-place.
38S
HENin' DAVID THOREAU
terrible rnpid nnci whirlpool called a dinner,
situated in the meridian shallows. Weather
this danger and you are safe, for the rest of
the way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves,
with niorninp; vii^or, sail by it, looking
another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses.'
If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is
hoarse for its pains. U the bell rings, why
should we run.'' We will consider what kind
of music they are like. Let us settle ourselves,
and work and wedge our feet downward
through the mud and slush of opinion, and
prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and
appearance, that alluvion which covers the
globe, through Paris and London, through
New York and Boston and Concord, through
Church and State, through poetry and
philosophy and religion, till we come to a
hard bottom and rocks in place, which we
can call realityy and say, This is, and no mis-
take; and then begin, having a point d'appui,
below freshet and frost and fire, a place
where you might found a wall or a state, or
set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge,
not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that
future ages might know how deep a freshet
of shams and appearances had gathered from
time to time. If you stand right fronting
and face to face to a fact, you will see the
sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were
a scimitar, and feel its sweet edge dividing
you through the heart and marrow, and so
you will happily conclude your mortal career.
Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If
we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in
our throats and feel cold in the extremities;
if we are alive, let us go about our business.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
I drink at it; but while I drink I see the
sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.
Its thin current slides away, but eternity
remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the
sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I
cannot count one. I know not the first letter
of the alphabet. I have always been regret-
ting that I was not as wise as the day I was
born. 1 he intellect is a cleaver; it discerns
and rifts its way into the secret of things.
I do not wish to be any more busy with my
hands than is necessary. My head is hands
and feet. I feel all my best faculties con-
centrated in it. My instinct tells me that
1 When his vessel passed by the Sirens.
my head is an organ for burrowing, as some
creatures use their snout and fore paws, and
with It I would mmc and burrow my way
through these hills. 1 think that the richest
vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the
divHiing-rod and thin rising vapors I judge;
and here I will begin to mine.
III. READING
With a little more deliberation in the
choice of their pursuits, all men would per-
haps become essentially students and obser-
vers, for certainly their nature and destiny
are interesting to all alike. In accumulating
property for ourselves or our posterity, in
founding a family or a state, or acquiring
fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing
with truth we are immortal, and need fear
no change nor accident. The oldest Egyp-
tian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner
of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and
still the trembling robe remains raised, and
I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since
it was I in him that was then so bold, and it
is he in me that now reviews the vision. No
dust has settled on that robe; no time has
elapsed since that divinity was revealed.
That time which we really improve, or which
is improvable, is neither past, present, nor
future.
My residence was more favorable, not only
to thought, but to serious reading, than a
university; and though I was beyond the
range of the ordinary circulating library, I
had more than ever come within the influence
of those books which circulate round the
world, whose sentences were first written on
bark, and are now merely copied from time
to time on to linen paper. Says the poet Mir
Camar Uddin Mast, "Being seated, to run
through the region of the spiritual world; I
have had this advantage in books. To be
intoxicated by a single glass of wine; I have
experienced this pleasure when I have drunk
the liquor of the esoteric doctrines." I kept
Homer's Iliad on my table through the sum-
mer, though I looked at his page only now
and then. Incessant labor with my hands,
at first, for I had my house to finish and my
beans to hoe at the same time, made more j
study impossible. Yet I sustained myself ^
by the prospect of such reading in future.
I read one or two shallow books of travel in
WALDEN
389
the intervals of my work, till that employ-
ment made me ashamed of myself, and I
asked where it was then that / lived.
[he student may read Homer or ^Eschylus
in the Greek without danger of dissipation
or luxuriousness, for it implies that he in
some measure emulate their heroes, and con-
secrate morning hours to their pages. The
heroic books, even if printed in the character
of our mother tongue, will always be in a
language dead to degenerate times; and we
must laboriously seek the meaning of each
word and line, conjecturing a larger sense
than common use permits out of what wis-
dom and valor and generosity we have. The
modern cheap and fertile press, with all its
translations, has done little to bring us nearer
to the heroic writers of antiquity. They
seem as solitary, and the letter in which they
are printed as rare and curious, as ever. It
is worth the expense of youthful days and
costly hours, if you learn only some words
of an ancient language, which are raised out
of the triviainess of the street, to be perpetual
suggestions and provocations. It is not in
vain that the farmer remembers and repeats
the few Latin words which he has heard.
Men sometimes speak as if the study of the
classics would at length make way for more
modern and practical studies; but the adven-
turous student will always study classics, in
whatever language they may be written and
however ancient they may "be. For what are
the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts
of man? They are the only oracles which
are not decayed, and there are such
answers to the most modern inquiry into
them as Delphi and Dodona never gave.
We might as well omit to study Nature
because she is old. To read well, that
is, to read true books in a true spirit,
is a noble exercise, and one that will
task the reader more than any exercise which
the customs of the day esteem. It requires
a training such as the athletes underwent,
the steady intention almost of the whole life
to this object. Books must be read as delib-
erately and reservedly as they were written.
It is not enough even to be able to speak the
language of that nation by which they are
written, for there is a memorable interval
between the spoken and the written language,
the language heard and the language read.
The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a
tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and
we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of
our mothers. The other is the maturity and
experience of that; if that is our mother
tongue, this is our father tongue, a reserved
and select expression, too significant to be
heard by the ear, which we must be born
again in order to speak. The crowds of men
who merely spoke the Greek and Latin
tongues in the Middle Ages were not entitled
by the accident of birth to read the works of
genius written in those languages; for these
were not written in that Greek or Latin which
they knew, but in the select language of
literature. They had not learned the nobler
dialects of Greece and Rome, but the very
materials on which they were written were
waste paper to them, and they prized instead
a cheap contemporary literature. But when
the several nations of Europe had acquired
distinct though rude written languages of
their own, sufficient for the purposes of their
rising literatures, then first learning revived,
and scholars were enabled to discern from
that remoteness the treasures of antiquity.
What the Roman and Grecian multitude
could not hear, after the lapse of ages a few
scholars read, and a few scholars only are still
reading it.
However much we may admire the orator's
occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest
written words are commonly as far behind
or above the fleeting spoken language as the
firmament with its stars is behind the clouds.
There are the stars, and they who can may
read them. The astronomers forever com-
ment on and observe them. They are not
exhalations like our daily colloquies and
vaporous breath. What is called eloquence
in the forum is commonly found to be
rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to
the inspiration of a transient occasion, and
speaks to the mob before him, to those who
can hear him; but the writer, whose more
equable life is his occasion, and who would
be distracted by the event and the crowd
which inspire the orator, speaks to the
intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any
age who can understand him.
No wonder that Alexander carried the
Iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious
casket. A written word is the choicest of
relics. It is something at once more inti-
mate with us and more universal than any
3QO
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
other work of art. It is the work of art
nearest to hfe itself. It may be translated
into every lanmiai^e, and not only be read
but actually breathed from all human lips; —
not be represented on canvas or in marble
only, but be carved out of the breath of life
itself. 1 he symbol of an ancient man's
thought becomes a modern man's speech.
Two thousand summers have imparted to
the monuments of Grecian literature, as to
her marbles, only a maturer golden and
autumnal tint, for they have carried their
own serene and celestial atmosphere into all
lands to protect them against the corrosion
of time. Books are the treasured wealth
of the world and the fit inheritance of genera-
tions and nations. Books, the oldest and
the best, stand naturally and rightfully on
the shelves of every cottage. They have no
cause of their own to plead, but while they
enlighten and sustain the reader his common
sense will not refuse them. Their authors are
a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every
society, and, more than kings or emperors,
exert an influence on mankind. When the
illiterate and perhaps scornful trader has
earned by enterprise and industry his coveted
leisure and independence, and is admitted
to the circles of wealth and fashion, he turns
inevitably at last to those still higher but
yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius,
and is sensible only of the imperfection of his
culture and the vanity and insufl'iciency of
all his riches, and further proves his good
sense by the pains which he takes to secure
for his children that intellectual culture
whose want he so keenly feels; and thus it is
that he becomes the founder of a family.
Those who have not learned to read the
ancient classics in the language in which they
were written must have a very imperfect
knowledge of the history of the human race;
for it is remarkable that no transcript of
them has ever been made into any modern
tongue, unless our civilization itself may be
regarded as such a transcript. Homer has
never yet been printed in English, nor
i^schylus, nor Virgil even, — works as refined,
as solidly done, and as beautiful almost as
the morning itself; for later writers, say what
we will of their genius, have rarely, if ever,
equaled the elaborate beauty and finish and
the lifelong and heroic literary labors of the
ancients. They only talk of forgetting them
who never knew them. It will be soon
enough to forget them when we have the
learning and the genius which will enable us
to attend to and appreciate them. I hat age
will be rich indeed when those relics which we
call Classics, and the still older and more
than classic but even less known Scriptures
of the nations, shall have still further ac-
cumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled
with Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with
Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and
all the centuries to come shall have suc-
cessively deposited their trophies in the
forum of the world. By such a pile we may
hope to scale heaven at last.
The works of the great poets have never
yet been read by mankind, for only great
poets can read them. They have only been
read as the multitude read the stars, at most
astrologically, not astronomically. Most
men have learned to read to serve a paltry
convenience, as they have learned to cipher
in order to keep accounts and not be cheated
in trade; but of reading as a noble intel-
lectual exercise they know little or nothing;
yet this only is reading, in a high sense, not
that which lulls us as a luxury and suffers the
nobler faculties to sleep the while, but what
we have to stand on tip-toe to read and de-
vote our most alert and wakeful hours to.
I think that having learned our letters we
should read the best that is in literature, and
not be forever repeating our a-b-abs, and
words of one syllable, in the fourth or fifth
classes, sitting on the lowest and foremost
form all our lives. i Most men are satisfied
if they read or hear read, and perchance have
been convicted by the wisdom of one good
book, the Bible, and for the rest of their lives
vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what
is called easy reading. There is a work in
several volumes in our Circulating Library
entitled Little Reading, which I thought re-
ferred to a town of that name which I had
not been to. There are those who, like
cormorants and ostriches, can digest all sorts
of this, even after the fullest dinner of meats
and vegetables, for they suffer nothing to be
1 "Read the best books first, or you may not have
a chance to read them at all, . . . Certainly, we do
not need to be soothed and entertained always like
children. He who resorts to the easy novel, because
he is languid, does no better than if he took a nap." —
^ Week, Sunday.
WALDEN
391
wasted. If others are the machines to pro-
vide this provender, they are the machines
to read it. They read the nine thousandth
tale about Zebulon and Sophronia, and how
they loved as none had ever loved before,
and neither did the course of their true love
run smooth, — at any rate, how it did run and
stumble, and get up again and go on! how
some poor unfortunate got up on to a steeple,
who had better never have gone up as far as
the belfry; and then, having needlessly got
him up there, the happy novelist rings the
bell for all the world to come together and
hear, O dear! how he did get down again!
For my part, I think that they had better
metamorphose all such aspiring heroes of
universal noveldom into man weather-cocks,
as they used to put heroes among the con-
stellations, and let them swing round there
till they are rusty, and not come down at all
to bother honest men with their pranks.
The next time the novelist rings the bell I
will not stir though the meeting-house burn
down. ''The Skip of the Tip-Toe-Hopy a
Romance of the Middle Ages, by the cele-
brated author of Tittle-Tol-Tariy to appear in
monthly parts; a great rush; don't all come
together." All this they read with saucer
eyes, and erect and primitive curiosity, and
with unwearied gizzard, whose corrugations
even yet need no sharpening, just as some
little four-year-old bencher his two-cent gilt-
covered edition of Cinderella, — without any
improvement, that I can see, in the pro-
nunciation, or accent, or emphasis, or any
more skill in extracting or inserting the
moral. The result is dullness of sight, a
stagnation of the vital circulations, and a
general deliquium and sloughing off of all
the intellectual faculties. This sort of gin-
gerbread is baked daily and more sedu-
lously than pure wheat or rye-and-Indian in
almost every oven, and finds a surer market.
The best books are not read even by those
who are called good readers. What does our
Concord culture amount to? There is in
this town, with a very few exceptions, no
taste for the best or for very good books even
in English literature, whose words all can
read and spell. Even the college-bred and
so-called liberally educated men here and
elsewhere have really little or no acquaint-
ance with the English classics; and as for the
recorded wisdom of mankind, the ancient
classics and Bibles, which are accessible to
all who will know of them, there are the
feeblest efforts anywhere made to become
acquainted with them. I know a wood-
chopper, of middle age, who takes a French
paper, not for news as he says, for he is above
that, but to "keep himself in practice," he
being a Canadian by birth; and when I ask
him what he considers the best thmg he can
do in this world, he says, beside this, to keep
up and add to his English.' Fhis is about as
much as the college-bred generally do or
aspire to do, and they take an English paper
for the purpose. One who has just come
from reading perhaps one of the best English
books will find how many with whom he can
converse about it.^* Or suppose he comes
from reading a Greek or Latin classic in the
original, whose praises are familiar even to
the so-called illiterate; he will find nobody at
all to speak to, but must keep silence about
it. Indeed, there is hardly the professor in
our colleges, who, if he has mastered the diflB-
culties of the language, has proportionally
mastered the difficulties of the wit and
poetry of a Greek poet, and has any sym-
pathy to impart to the alert and heroic
reader; and as for the sacred Scriptures, or
Bibles of mankind, who in this town can tell
me even their titles .? Most men do not know
that any nation but the Hebrews have had
a scripture. A man, any man, will go con-
siderably out of his way to pick up a silver
dollar; but here are golden words, which the
wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and
whose worth the wise of every succeeding
age have assured us of; — and yet we learn
to read only as far as Easy Reading, the
primers and class-books, and when we leave
school, the Little Readingy and story-books,
which are for boys and beginners; and our
reading, our conversation and thinking, are
all on a very low level, worthy only of
pygmies and manikins.
I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men
than this our Concord soil has produced,
whose names are hardly known here. Or
shall I hear the name of Plato and never
read his book.'' As if Plato were my towns-
man and I never saw him, — my next neigh-
^ There is more about this woodchopper in the
chapter entitled Visitors (not reprinted here). His
name was Alek Therien.
392
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
bor and 1 never heard hini speak or attended
to the wisdom of his words. But how
actually is it? His Dialogues, which contain
what was immortal in him, lie on the next
shelf, and yet I never read them. We are
underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and
in tiiis respect I confess I do not make any
very broad distinction between the illiter-
ateness of my townsman who cannot read
at ail and the illiterateness of him who has
learned to read only what is for children and
feeble intellects. We should be as good as
the worthies of antiquity, but partly by first
knowing how good they were. We are a
race of tit-men, and soar but little higher in
our intellectual flights than the columns of
the daily paper.
It is not all books that are as dull as their
readers. There are probably words ad-
dressed to our condition exactly, which, if
we could really hear and understand, would
be more salutary than the morning or the
spring to our lives, and possibly put a new
aspect on the face of things for us. How
many a man has dated a new era in his life
from the reading of a book! The book
exists for us, perchance, which will explain
our miracles and reveal new ones. The at
present unutterable things we may find
somewhere uttered. These same questions
that disturb and puzzle and confound us
have in their turn occurred to all the wise
men; not one has been omitted; and each
has answered them, according to his ability,
by his words and his life. Moreover, with
wisdom we shall learn liberality. The soli-
tary hired man on a farm in the outskirts of
Concord, who has had his second birth and
peculiar religious experience, and is driven
as he believes into silent gravity and exclu-
siveness by his faith, may think it is not true;
but Zoroaster, thousands of years ago,
traveled the same road and had the same
experience; but he, being wise, knew it to
be universal, and treated his neighbors
accordingly, and is even said to have in-
vented and established v/orship among men.
Let him humbly commune with Zoroaster
then, and through the liberalizing influence
of all the worthies, with Jesus Christ himself,
and let "our church" go by the board.
We boast that we belong to the Nineteenth
Century and are making the most rapid
strides of any nation. But consider how
little this village docs for its own culture. I
do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to
be flattered by them, for that will not ad-
vance either of us. We need to be pro-
voked,— goaded like oxen, as we are, into a
trot. We have a comparatively decent sys-
tem of common schools, schools for infants
only; but excepting the half-starved Lyceum
in the winter, and latterly the puny beginning
of a library suggested by the State, no
school for ourselves. We spend more on
almost any article of bodily aliment or ail-
ment than on our mental aliment. It is time
that we had uncommon schools, that we did
not leave ofi^ our education when we begin
to be men and women. It is time that vil-
lages ware universities, and their elder
inhabitants the fellows of universities, with
leisure — if they are, indeed, so well ofl" — to
pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives.
Shall the w^orld be confined to one Paris or
one Oxford forever.'' Cannot students be
boarded here and get a liberal education
under the skies of Concord.^ Can we not
hire some Abelard to lecture to us.? Alas!
what with foddering the cattle and tending
the store, we are kept from school too long,
and our education is sadly neglected. In
this country, the village should in some re-
spects take the place of the nobleman of
Europe. It should be the patron of the fine
arts. It is rich enough. It wants only the
magnanimity and refinement. It can spend
money enough on such things as farmers and
traders value, but it is thought Utopian to
propose spending money for things which
more intelligent men know to be of far more
worth. This town has spent seventeen
thousand dollars on a town-house, thank
fortune or politics, but probably it will not
spend so much on living wit, the true meat
to put into that shell, in a hundred years.
The one hundred and twenty-five dollars
annually subscribed for a Lyceum in the
winter is better spent than any other equal
sum raised in the town. If we live in the
Nineteenth Century, why should we not
enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth
Century off^ers? Why should our life be in
any respect provincial? If we will read
newspapers, why not skip the gossip of
Boston and take the best newspaper in the
world at once.'' — not be sucking the pap of
"neutral family" papers, or browsing Olive-
WALDEN
39:
Branches^ here in Now England. Let the
reports of all the learned societies come to us,
and we will see if they know anything. Why
should we leave it to Harper and Brothers
and Redding and Co. 2 to select our reading.^*
As the nobleman of cultivated taste sur-
rounds himself with whatever conduces to
his culture, — genius — learning — -wit — books
— paintings — statuary — music — philosophi-
cal instruments, and the like; so let the vil-
lage do, — not stop short at a pedagogue, a
parson, a sexton, a parish library, and three
selectmen, because our Pilgrim forefathers
got through a cold winter once on a bleak
rock with these. To act collectively is ac-
cording ro the spirit of our institutions; and
I am confident that, as our circumstances
are more flourishing, our means are greater
than the nobleman's. New England can
hire all the wise men in the world to come
and teach her, and board them round the
while, and not be provincial at all. That is
the uncoynmon school we want. Instead of
noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.
If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the
river, go round a little there, and throw one
arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance
which surrounds us.
IV. SOUNDS
But while we are confined to books,
though the most select and classic, and read
only particular written languages, which are
themselves but dialects and provincial, we
are in danger of forgetting the language
which all things and events speak without
metaphor, which alone is copious and stan-
dard. Much is published, but little printed.
The rays which stream through the shutter
will be no longer remembered when the
shutter is wholly removed. No method nor
discipline can supersede the necessity of
being forever on the alert. What is a course
of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter
how well selected, or the best society, or the
most admirable routine of life, compared
with the discipline of looking always at what
is to be seen ^. Will you be a reader, a student
merely, or a seer.^ Read your fate, see what
is before you, and walk on into futurity.
1 Methodist weekly journal, formerly published in
Boston.
2 Boston firm of booksellers flourishing at the time
when this volume was written.
I did not read books the first summer; I
hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than
this. There were times when I could not
afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present
moment to any work, whether of the head or
hands. I love a broad margin to my life.
Sometimes, in a summer morning, having
taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my
sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt
in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories
and sumacs, in undisturbed solitude and
stillness, while the birds sang around or
flitted noiseless through the house, until by
the sun falling in at my west window, or the
noise of some traveler's wagon on the distant
highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time.
I grew in those seasons like corn in the night,
and they were far better than any work of
the hands would have been. They were not
time subtracted from my life, but so much
over and above my usual allowance. I
realized what the Orientals mean by con-
templation and the forsaking of works. For
the most part, I minded not how the hours
went. The day advanced as if to light some
work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now
it is evening, and nothing memorable is ac-
complished. Instead of singing like the birds,
I silently smiled at my incessant good
fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting
on the hickory before my door, so had I my
chuckle or suppressed warble which he
might hear out of my nest. My days were
not days of the week, bearing the stamp of
any heathen deity, nor were they minced into
hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock;
for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it
is said that "for yesterday, to-day, and
to-morrow they have only one word, and
they express the variety of meaning by
pointing backward for yesterday, forward for
to-morrow, and overhead for the passing
day." This was sheer idleness to my fellow-
townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and
flowers had tried me by their standard, I
should not have been found wanting. A
man must find his occasions in himself, it is
true. The natural day is very calm, and
will hardly reprove his indolence.
I had this advantage, at least, in my mode
of life, over those who were obliged to look
abroad for amusement, to society and the
theater, that my life itself was become my
amusement and never ceased to be novel. It
.VH
HENRY DAVID TIIOREAU
was a drama of many scenes and without an
end. If we were always, indeed, getting our
living, and regulating our lives accordinj"; to
the last and best mode we had learned, we
should never be troubled with ennui. Fol-
low your j^enius closely enough, and it will
not fail to show you a fresh prospect every
hour. Housework was a pleasant pastime.
When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and,
setting all my furniture out of doors on the
grass, bed and bedstead making but one
budget, dashed water on the floor, and
sprinkled white sand from the pond on it,
and then with a broom scrubbed it clean and
white; and by the time the villagers had
broken their fast the morning sun had dried
my house sufficiently to allow me to move in
again, and my meditations were almost un-
interrupted. It was pleasant to see my
whole household eflfects out on the grass,
making a little pile like a gypsy's pack, and
my three-legged table, from which I did not
remove the books and pen and ink, standing
amid the pines and hickories. They seemed
glad to get out themselves, and as if unwilling
to be brought in. I was sometimes tempted
to stretch an awning over them and take my
seat there. It was worth the while to see the
sun shine on these things, and hear the free
wind blow on them; so much more inter-
esting most familiar objects look out of doors
than in the house. A bird sits on the next
bough, life-everlasting grows under the table,
and blackberry vines run round its legs;
pine cones, chestnut burs, and strawberry
leaves are strewn about. It looked as if this
was the way these forms came to be trans-
ferred to our furniture, to tables, chairs, and
bedsteads, — because they once stood in their
midst.
My house was on the side of a hill, im-
mediately on the edge of the larger wood, in
the midst of a young forest of pitch pines and
hickories, and half a dozen rods from the
pond, to which a narrow footpath led down
the hill. In my front yard grew the straw-
berry, blackberry, and life-everlasting, johns-
wort and goldenrod, shrub oaks and sand
■ cherry, blueberry and groundnut. Near the
end of May, the sand cherry {Cerasus
pumila) adorned the sides of the path with
its delicate flowers arranged in umbels
cylindrically about its short stems, which
last, in the fall, weighed down with good-
sized and handsome cherries, fell over in
wreaths like rays on every side. I tasted
them out of compliment to Nature, though
they were scarcely palatable. 1 he sumac
{Rhus glabra) grew luxuriantly about the
house, pushing up through the embankment
which I had made, and growing five or six
feet the first season. Its broad pinnate
tropical leaf was pleasant though strange to
look on. The large buds, suddenly pushing
out late in the spring from dry sticks which
had seemed to be dead, developed themselves
as by magic into graceful green and tender
boughs, an inch in diameter; and some-
times, as I sat at my window, so heedlessly
did they grow and tax their weak joints, I
heard a fresh and tender bough suddenly fall
like a fan to the ground, when there was not
a breath of air stirring, broken off by its own
weight. In August, the large masses of ber-
ries, which, when in flower, had attracted
many wild bees, gradually assumed their
bright velvety crimson hue, and by their
weight again bent down and broke the
tender limbs.
As I sit at my window this summer after-
noon, hawks are circling about my clearing;
the tantivy of wild pigeons, flying by twos
and threes athwart my view, or perching
restless on the white pine boughs behind my
house, gives a voice to the air; a fish hawk
dimples the glassy surface of the pond and
brings up a fish; a mink steals out of the
marsh before my door and seizes a frog by
the shore; the sedge is bending under the
weight of the reed-birds flitting hither and
thither; and for the last half-hour I have
heard the rattle of railroad cars, now dying
away and then reviving like the beat of a
partridge, conveying travelers from Boston
to the country. For I did not live so out of
the world as that boy who, as I hear, was
put out to a farmer in the east part of the
town, but ere long ran away and came home
again, quite down at the heel and homesick.
He had never seen such a dull and out-of-
the-way place; the folks were all gone off;
why, you couldn't even hear the whistle!
I doubt if there is such a place in Massa-
chusetts now: —
In truth, our village has become a butt
For one of those fleet railroad shafts, and o'er
Our peaceful plain its soothing sound is — Concord.
WALDEN
395
Uhc Fitclibur^ Railroad touches tlic pond
about a hundred rods south of where 1 dwell.
I usually go to the village along its cause-
way, and am, as it were, related to society
by this link. The men on the freight trains,
who go over the whole length of the road,
bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they
pass me so often, and apparently they take
me for an employee; and so I am. I too
would fain be a track-repairer somewhere in
the orbit of the earth.
The whistle of the locomotive penetrates
my woods summer and winter, sounding like
the scream of a hawk saiHng over some
farmer's yard, informing me that many rest-
less city merchants are arriving within the
circle of the town, or adventurous country
traders from the other side. As they come
under one horizon, they shout their warning
to get off the track to the other, heard some-
times through the circles of two towns. Here
come your groceries, country; your rations,
countrymen! Nor is there any man so inde-
pendent on his farm that he can say them
nay. And here's your pay for them! screams
the countryman's whistle; timber like long
battering-rams going twenty miles an hour
against the city's walls, and chairs enough
to seat all the weary and heavy-laden that
dwell within them. With such huge and
lumbering civility the country hands a chair
to the city. All the Indian huckleberry hills
are stripped, all the cranberry meadows are
raked into the city. Up comes the cotton,
down goes the w^oven cloth; up comes the
silk, down goes the woolen; up come the
books, but down goes the wit that writes
them.
When I meet the engine with its train of
cars moving off with planetary motion, —
or, rather, like a comet, for the beholder
knows not if with that velocity and with that
direction it will ever revisit this system,
since its orbit does not look like a returning
curve, — with its steam cloud like a banner
streaming behind in golden and silver
wreaths, like many a downy cloud which I
have seen, high in the heavens, unfolding its
masses to the light, — as if this traveling
demigod, this cloud-compeller, would ere
long take the sunset sky for the livery of his
train; when I hear the iron horse make the
hills echo with his snort like thunder, shak-
ing the earth with his feet, and breathing
fire and smoke from his nostrils (what kind
of winged horse or fiery dragon they will put
into the new Mythology I don't know), it
seems as if the earth had got a race now
worthy to inhabit it. If all were as it seems,
and men made the elements their servants
for noble ends! If the cloud that hangs over
the engine were the perspiration of heroic
deeds, or as beneficent as that which floats
over the farmer's fields, then the elements
and Nature herself would cheerfully accom-
pany men on their errands and be their
escort.
I watch the passage of the morning cars
with the same feeling that I do the rising of
the sun, which is hardly more regular. Their
train of clouds stretching far behind and
rising higher and higher, going to heaven
while the cars are going to Boston, conceals
the sun for a minute and casts my distant
field into the shade, a celestial train beside
which the petty train of cars which hugs the
earth is but the barb of the spear. The
stabler of the iron horse was up early this
winter morning by the light of the stars amid
the mountains, to fodder and harness his
steed. Fire, too, was awakened thus early
to put the vital heat in him and get him off.
If the enterprise were as innocent as it is
early! If the snow lies deep, they strap on
his snowshoes, and, with the giant plow, plow
a furrow from the mountains to the sea-
board, in which the cars, like a following
drill-barrow, sprinkle all the restless men and
floating merchandise in the country for seed.
All day the fire-steed flies over the country,
stopping only that his master may rest, and
I am awakened by his tramp and defiant
snort at midnight, when in some remote glen
in the woods he fronts the elements incased
in ice and snow; and he will reach his stall
only with the morning star, to start once
more on his travels without rest or slumber.
Or perchance, at evening, I hear him in his
stable blowing off" the superfluous energy of
the day, that he may calm his nerves and
cool his liver and brain for a few hours of iron
slumber. If the enterprise were as heroic
and commanding as it is protracted and
unwearied!
Far through unfrequented woods on the
confines of towns, where once only the hunter
penetrated by day, in the darkest night dart
these bright saloons without the knowledge
396
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
of tlicir inhabitants; this moment stopping
at some brilliant station-house in town or
city, where a social crowd is gathered, the
next in the Dismal Swamp, scaring the owl
and fox. The startings and arrivals of the
cars are now the epochs in the village day.
They go and come with such regularity and
precision, and their whistle can be heard so
far, that the farmers set their clocks by them,
and thus one well-conducted institution
regulates a whole country. Have not men
improved somewhat in punctuality since the
railroad was invented? Do they not talk
and think faster in the depot than they did
in the stage-office."* There is something
electrifying in the atmosphere of the former
place. I have been astonished at the miracles
it has wrought; that some of my neighbors,
who, I should have prophesied, once for all,
would never get to Boston by so prompt a
conveyance, are on hand when the bell rings.
To do things "railroad fashion" is now the
byword; and it is worth the while to be
warned so often and so sincerely by any
power to get off its track. There is no
stopping to read the riot act, no firing over
the heads of the mob, in this case. We have
constructed a fate, an Atropos, that never
turns aside. (Let that be the name of your
engine.) Men are advertised that at a cer-
tain hour and minute these bolts will be shot
toward particular points of the compass; yet
it interferes with no man's busmess, and the
children go to school on the other track. We
live the steadier for it. We are all educated
thus to be sons of Tell. The air is full of
invisible bolts. Every path but your own is
the path of fate. Keep on your own track,
then.
What recommends commerce to me is its
enterprise and bravery. It does not clasp its
hands and pray to Jupiter. I see these men
every day go about their business with more
or less courage and content, domg more even
than they suspect, and perchance better
employed than they could have consciously
devised. I am less affected by their heroism
who stood up for half an hour in the front
line at Buena Vista, ^ than by the steady and
cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the
snow-plow for their winter quarters; who
1 The battle of this name was fought against a
superior Mexican force on 22 and 23 February, 1 847.
have not merely the three-o'-clock-in-the-
morning courage,^ which Bonaparte thought
was the rarest, but whose courage does not
go to rest so early, who go to sleep only when
the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron
steed are frozen. On this morning of the
Great Snow, perchance, which is still raging
and chilling men's blood, I hear the muffled
tone of their engine bell from out the fog
bank of their chilled breath, which announces
that the cars are coming, without long delay,
notwithstanding the veto of a New England
northeast snow-storm, and I behold the plow-
men covered with snow and rime, their heads
peering above the mold-board which is turn-
ing down other than daisies and the nests of
field mice,^ like boulders of the Sierra
Nevada, that occupy an outside place in the
universe.
Commerce is unexpectedly confident and
serene, alert, adventurous, and unwearied.
It is very natural in its methods withal, far
more so than many fantastic enterprises and
sentimental experiments, and hence its sin-
gular success. I am refreshed and expanded
when the freight train rattles past me, and
I smell the stores which go dispensing their
odors all the w^ay from Long Wharfs to Lake
Champlain, reminding me of foreign parts, of
coral reefs, and Indian oceans, and tropical
climes, and the extent of the globe. I feel
more like a citizen of the world at the sight
of the palm-leaf which will cover so many
flaxen New England heads the next summer,
the Manilla hemp and cocoanut husks, the
old junk, gunny bags, scrap iron, and rusty
nails. This carload of torn sails is more
legible and interesting now than if they
should be wrought into paper and printed
books. Who can write so graphically the
history of the storms they have weathered
as these rents have done.'' They are proof-
sheets which need no correction. Here goes
lumber from the Maine woods, which did
not go out to sea in the last freshet, risen
four dollars on the thousand because of w^hat
did go out or was split up; pine, spruce,
cedar, — first, second, third, and fourth
qualities, so lately all of one quality, to wave
- Actually it was two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage
which Napoleon said he had found very rare.
3 In allusion to Burns's poems. To a Mountain Daisy
and To a Mouse.
* I.e., Boston.
WALDEN
397
over the bear, and moose, and caribou. Next
rolls 1 homaston lime, a prime lot, which will
get far among the hills before it gets slacked.
These rags in bales, of all hues and qualities,
the lowest condition to which cotton and
linen descend, the final result of dress, — of
patterns which are now no longer cried up,
unless it be in Milwaukee, as those splendid
articles, English, French, or American prints,
ginghams, muslins, etc., gathered from all
quarters both of fashion and poverty, going
to become paper of one color or a few shades
only, on which, forsooth, will be written tales
of real life, high and low, and founded on
fact! This closed car smells of salt fish, the
strong New England and commercial scent,
reminding me of the Grand Banks and the
fisheries. Who has not seen a salt fish,
thoroughly cured for this world, so that
nothing can spoil it, and putting the persever-
ance of the saints to the blush? with which
you may sweep or pave the streets, and split
your kindlings, and the teamster shelter
himself and his lading against sun, wind, and
rain behind it, — and the trader, as a Con-
cord trader once did,i hang it up by his door
for a sign when he commences business, until
at last his oldest customer cannot tell surely
whether it be animal, vegetable, or mineral,
and yet it shall be as pure as a snowflake,
and if it be put into a pot and boiled, will
come out an excellent dun-fish for a Satur-
day's dinner. Next Spanish hides, w^ith the
tails still preserving their twist and the angle
of elevation they had when the oxen that
wore them w^ere careering over the pampas
of the Spanish Main, — a type of all ob-
stinacy, and evincing how almost hopeless
and incurable are all constitutional vices. I
confess that, practically speaking, when I
have learned a man's real disposition, I have
no hopes of changing it for the better or
worse in this state of existence. As the
Orientals say, *'A cur's tail may be warmed,
and pressed, and bound round with ligatures,
and after a twelve years' labor bestowed
1 "Deacon Parkman, Thoreau tells, lived in the
house he now occupies and kept a store close by. He
hung out a salt fish for a sign, and it hung so long, and
grew so hard and black and deformed that the deacon
forgot what thing it was, and nobody in town knew,
but being examined chemically it proved to be salt
fish. But duly every morning the deacon hung it on
its peg." — Emerson's Journal.
upon it, still it will retain its natural form."
1 he only effectual cure for such inveteracies
as these tails exhibit is to make glue of them,
which I believe is what is usually done with
them, and then they will stay put and stick.
Here is a hogshead of molasses or of brandy
directed to John Smith, Cuttingsville, Ver-
mont, some trader among the Green Moun-
tains, who imports for the farmers near his
clearing, and now-perchance stands over his
bulkhead and thinks of the last arrivals on
the coast, how they may affect the price for
him, telling his customers this moment, as
he has told them twenty times before this
morning, that he expects some by the next
train of prime quality. It is advertised in
the Cuttingsville Times.
While these things go up other things come
down. Warned by the whizzing sound, I
look up from my book and see some tall pine,
hewn on far northern hills, which has winged
its way over the Green Mountains and the
Connecticut, shot like an arrow through the
township within ten minutes, and scarce
another eye beholds it; going
to be the mast
Of some great ammiral.
And hark! here comes the cattle-train bear-
ing the cattle of a thousand hills, sheepcots,
stables, and cow-yards in the air, drovers
with their sticks, and shepherd boys in the
midst of their flocks, all but the mountain
pastures, whirled along like leaves blow^n
from the mountains by the September gales.
The air is filled with the bleating of calves
and sheep, and the hustling of oxen, as if a
pastoral valley were going by. When the
old bell-wether at the head rattles his bell,
the mountains do indeed skip like rams and
the little hills like lambs. ^ A carload of
drovers, too, in the midst, on a level with
their droves now, their vocation gone, but
still clinging to their useless sticks as their
badge of office. But their dogs, w^here are
they.'' It is a stampede to them; they are
quite thrown out; they have lost the scent.
Methinks I hear them barking behind the
Peterboro' Hills, or panting up the western
slope of the Green Mountains. They \\\\\ not
be in at the death. Their vocation, too, is
gone. Their fidelity and sagacity are below
2 Psalm cxiv, 4.
.^98
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
par now. I liey will slink hnck to their
kennels in clis^race, or |urcliance run wild
and strike a league with the wolf and the fox.
So is your pastoral life whirled past and
away. Hut the bell riniis, and I must get off
the track and let the cars go by; —
What's the railroad to me.''
I never go to see
Where it ends.
It fills a few hollows,
And makes hanks for the swallows,
It sets the sand a-hlowing,
And the blackberries a-growing,
but I cross it like a cart-path in the woods.
I will not have my eyes put out and my ears
spoiled by its smoke and steam and hissing.
Now that the cars are gone by and all the
restless world with them, and the fishes in
the pond no longer feel their rumbling, I am
more alone than ever. For the rest of the
long afternoon, perhaps, my meditations are
interrupted only by the faint rattle of a
carriage or team along the distant highway.
Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells,
the Lincoln, Acton, Bedford, or Concord
bell, when the wind was favorable, a faint,
sweet, and, as it were, natural melody, worth
importing into the wilderness. At a sufficient
distance over the woods this sound acquires
a certain vibratory hum, as if the pine
needles in the horizon were the strings of a
harp which it swept. All sound heard at the
greatest possible distance produces one and
the same effect, a vibration of the universal
lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere
makes a distant ridge of earth interesting
to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it.
There came to me in this case a melody which
the air had strained, and which had con-
versed with every leaf and needle of the
wood, that portion of the sound which the
elements had taken up and modulated and
echoed from vale to vale. The echo is, to
some extent, an original sound, and therein
is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely
a repetition of what was worth repeating in
the bell, but partly the voice of the wood;
the same trivial words and notes sung by a
wood-nymph.
At evening, the distant lowing of some cow
in the horizon beyond the woods sounded
sweet and melodious, and at first I would
mistake it for the voices of certain minstrels
by whom I was sometimes serenaded, who
might be straying over hill and dale; but
soon I was not unpleasantly disappointed
when it was prolonged into the cheap and
natural music of the cow. I do not mean
to be satirical, but to express my apprecia-
tion of those youths' singing, when I state
that I perceived clearly that it was akin to
the music of the cow, and they were at length
one articulation of Nature.
Regularly at half-past seven, in one part
of the summer, after the evening train had
gone by, the whip-poor-wills chanted their
vespers for half an hour, sitting on a stump
by my door, or upon the ridge-pole of the
house. They would begin to sing almost
with as much precision as a clock, within five
minutes of a particular time, referred to the
setting of the sun, every evening. I had a
rare opportunity to become acquainted with
their habits. Sometimes I heard four or five
at once in different parts of the wood, by
accident one a bar behind another, and so
near me that I distinguished not only the
cluck after each note, but often that singular
buzzing sound like a fly in a spider's web,
only proportionally louder. Sometimes one
would circle round and round me in the
woods a few feet distant as if tethered by a
string, when probably I was near its eggs.
They sang at intervals throughout the night,
and were again as musical as ever just before
and about dawn.
When other birds are still, the screech
owls take up the strain, like mourning
women their ancient u-lu-lu. Their dismal
scream is truly Ben Jonsonian.i Wise mid-
night hags! It is no honest and blunt tu-
whit tu-who of the poets, but, without jest-
ing, a most solemn graveyard ditty, the
mutual consolations of suicide lovers remem-
bering the pangs and the delights of supernal
love in the infernal groves. Yet I love to
hear their wailing, their doleful responses,
trilled along the woodside; reminding me
sometimes of music and singing birds; as
if it were the dark and tearful side of music,
the regrets and sighs that would fain be sung.
They are the spirits, the low spirits and
melancholy forebodings, of fallen souls that
1 F. H. Allen suggests that Thoreau probably had
in mind the witches' scene in Jonson's Masque of
Queens.
WALDEN
399
once in human sliape ni2;ht-\valk:ccl tlie earth
and did the deeds of darkness, now expiating
tlieir sins with their wailing hymns or thren-
odies in the scenery of their transgressions.
1 hey give me a new sense of the variety and
capacity of tliat nature which is our common
dweUing. Oh-o-o-o-o that I never had been
hnr-r-r-r-n! sighs one on this side of the pond,
and circles with the restlessness of despair to
some new perch on the gray oaks. Then —
that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n! echoes
another on the farther side with tremulous
sincerity, and — bor-r-r-r-n! comes faintly
from far in the Lincoln woods.
I was also serenaded by a hooting owl.
Near at hand you could fancy it the most
melancholy sound in Nature, as if she meant
by this to stereotype and make permanent
in her choir the dying moans of a human
being, — some poor weak relic of mortality
who has left hope behind, and howls like
an animal, yet with human sobs, on entering
the dark valley, made more awful by a cer-
tain gurgling melodiousness, — I find myself
beginning with the letters gl when I try to
imitate it, — expressive of a mind which has
reached the gelatinous, mildewy stage in the
mortification of all healthy and courageous
thought. It reminded me of ghouls and
idiots and insane bowlings. But now one
answers from far woods in a strain made
really melodious by distance, — Hoo hoo
hoo, hoorer hoo; and indeed for the most part
it suggested only pleasing associations,
whether heard by day or night, summer or
winter.
I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do
the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It
is a sound admirably suited to swamps and
twilight woods which no day illustrates, sug-
gesting a vast and undeveloped nature which
men have not recognized. 7 hey represent
the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts
which all have. All day the sun has shone on
the surface of some savage swamp, where
the single spruce stands hung with usnea
lichens, and small hawks circulate above, and
the chickadee lisps amid the evergreens, and
the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath; but
now a more dismal and fitting day dawns,
and a different race of creatures awakes to
express the meaning of Nature there.
Late in the evening I heard the distant
rumbling of wagons over bridges, — a sound
heard farther than almost any other at
night, — the baying of dogs, and sometimes
again the lowing of some disconsolate cow
in a distant barn-yard. In the meanwhile
all the shore rang with the trump of bull-
frogs, the sturdy spirits of ancient wine-
bibbers and wassailers, still unrepentant,
trying to sing a catch in their Stygian lake, —
if the Walden nymphs will pardon the com-
parison, for though there are almost no
weeds, there are frogs there, — who would
fain keep up the hilarious rules of their old
festal tables, though their voices have waxed
hoarse and solemnly grave, mocking at mirth,
and the wine has lost its flavor, and become
only liquor to distend their paunches, and
sweet intoxication never comes to drown
the memory of the past, but mere saturation
and waterloggedness and distention. The
most aldermanic, with his chin upon a heart-
leaf, which serves for a napkin to his drooling
chaps, under this northern shore quaffs a
deep draught of the once scorned water, and
passes round the cup with the ejaculation
tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r-oo?ik, tr-r-r-oonk! and
straightway comes over the water from
some distant cove the same password re-
peated, where the next in seniority and girth
has gulped down to his mark; and when this
observance has made the circuit of the shores,
then ejaculates the master of ceremonies,
with satisfaction, tr-r-r-oonk! and each in
his turn repeats the same down to the least
distended, leakiest, and flabbiest paunched,
that there be no mistake; and then the bowl
goes round again and again, until the sun
disperses the morning mist, and only the
patriarch is not under the pond, but vainly
bellowing troonk from time to time, and
pausing for a reply.
I am not sure that I ever heard the sound
of cock-crowing from my clearing, and I
thought that it might be worth the while to
keep a cockerel for his music merely, as a
singing bird. The note of this once wild
Indian pheasant is certainly the most re-
markable of any bird's, and if they could be
naturalized without being domesticated, it
would soon become the most famous sound
in our woods, surpassing the clangor of the
goose and the hooting of the owl; and then
imagine the cackling of the hens to fill the
pauses when their lords' clarions rested!
No wonder that man added this bird to his
400
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
tame stock, — to say nothing of the eggs and
drumsticks. IV) walk in a winter morning
in a wood where these birds abounded, their
native woods, and hear the wild cockerels
crow on the trees, clear and shrill for miles
over the resounding earth, drowning the
feebler notes of other birds, — think of it!
It would put nations on the alert. Who
would not be early to rise, and rise earlier
and earlier every successive day of his life,
till he became unspeakably healthy, wealthy,
and wise? This foreign bird's note is cele-
brated by the poets of all countries along
with the notes of their native songsters. All
climates agree with brave Chanticleer. He
is more indigenous even than the natives.
His health is ever good, his lungs are sound,
his spirits never flag. Even the sailor on
the Atlantic and Pacific is awakened by his
voice; but its shrill sound never roused me
from my slumbers. I kept neither dog, cat,
cow, pig, nor hens, so that you would have
said there was a deficiency of domestic
sounds; neither the churn, nor the spinning-
wheel, nor even the singing of the kettle, nor
the hissing of the urn, nor children crying,
to comfort one. An old-fashioned man
would have lost his senses or died of ennui
before this. Not even rats in the wall, for
they were starved out, or rather were never
baited in, — only squirrels on the roof and
under the floor, a whip-poor-will on the
ridge-pole, a blue jay screaming beneath
the window, a hare or woodchuck under the
house, a screech owl or a cat owl behmd it,
a flock of wild geese or a laughing loon on the
pond, and a fox to bark in the night. Not
even a lark or an oriole, those mild planta-
tion birds, ever visited my clearing. No
cockerels to crow nor hens to cackle in the
yard. No yard! but unfenced nature reach-
ing up to your very sills. A young forest
growing up under your windows, and wild
sumacs and blackberry vines breaking
through into your cellar; sturdy pitch pines
rubbing and creaking against the shingles
for want of room, their roots reaching quite
under the house. Instead of a scuttle or a
blind blown off in the gale, — a pine tree
snapped off or torn up by the roots behind
your house for fuel. Instead of no path to
the front-yard gate in the Great Snow, —
no gate — no front-yard, — and no path to the
civilized world.
V. SOLITUDE
This is a delicious evening, when the
whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight
through every pore. I go and come with a
strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself.
As I walk along the stony shore of the pond
in my shirt-sleeves, though it is cool as well
as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing
special to attract me, all the elements are
unusually congenial to me. The bullfrogs
trump to usher in the night, and the note of
the whip-poor-will is borne on the rippling
wind from over the water. Sympathy with
the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost
takes away my breath; yet, like the lake,
my serenity is rippled but not ruffled. These
small waves raised by the evening wind are
as remote from storm as the smooth reflect-
ing surface. Though it is now dark, the wind
still blows and roars in the wood, the waves
still dash, and some creatures lull the rest
with their notes. The repose is never com-
plete. The wildest animals do not repose,
but seek their prey now; the fox, and skunk,
and rabbit, now roam the fields and woods
without fear. They are Nature's watchmen,
— links which connect the days of animated
life.
When I return to my house I find that
visitors have been there and left their cards,
either a bunch of flowers, or a wreath of ever-
green, or a name in pencil on a yellow
walnut leaf or a chip. They who come rarely
to the woods take some little piece of the
forest into their hands to play with by the
way, which they leave, either intentionally
or accidentally. One has peeled a willow
wand, woven it into a ring, and dropped it on
my table. I could always tell if visitors
had called in my absence, either by the
bended twigs or grass, or the print of their
shoes, and generally of what sex or age
or quality they were by some slight trace left,
as a flower dropped, or a bunch of grass
plucked and thrown away, even as far off"
as the railroad, half a mile distant, or by the
lingering odor of a cigar or pipe. Nay, I
was frequently notified of the passage of a
traveler along the highway sixty rods off by
the scent of his pipe.
There is commonly sufficient space about
us. Our horizon is never quite at our elbows.
The thick wood is not just at our door, nor
VVALDEN
401
the pond, but somewhat is always clearing,
famiUar and worn by us, appropriated and
fenced in some way, and reclamied from
Nature. For what reason have I this vast
range and circuit, some square miles of un-
frequented forest, for my privacy, abandoned
to me by men? My nearest neighbor is a
mile distant, and no house is visible from any
place but the hdl-tops withm half a mile of
my own. I have my horizon bounded by
woods all to myself; a distant view of the
railroad where it touches the pond on the
one hand, and of the fence which skirts
the woodland road on the other. But for the
most part it is as solitary where I live as on
the prairies. It is as much Asia or Africa as
New England. I have, as it were, my own
sun and moon and stars, and a little world
all to myself. At night there was never a
traveler passed my house, or knocked at my
door, more than if I were the first or last man;
unless it were in the spring, when at long in-
tervals some came from the village to fish
for pouts, — they plainly fished much more in
the Walden Pond of their own natures, and
baited their hooks with darkness, — but they
soon retreated, usually with light baskets,
and left "the world to darkness and to me,"
and the black kernel of the night was never
profaned by any human neighborhood. I
believe that men are generally still a little
afraid of the dark, though the witches are all
hung, and Christianity and candles have
been introduced.
Yet I experienced sometimes that the
most sweet and tender, the most innocent
and encouraging society may be found in any
natural object, even for the poor misanthrope
and most melancholy man. There can be
no very black melancholy to him who lives
in the midst of nature and has his senses still.
There was never yet such a storm but it was
^olian music to a healthy and innocent ear.
Nothing can rightly compel a simple and
brave man to a vulgar sadness. While I
enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust
that nothing can make life a burden to me.
The gentle rain which waters my beans and
keeps me in the house to-day is not drear and
melancholy, but good for me too. Though it
prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more
worth than my hoeing. If it should continue
so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the
ground and destroy the potatoes in the low
lands, it would still be good for the grass on
the uplands, and, being good for the grass, it
would be good for me. Sometimes, when I
compare myself with other men, it seems as if
I were more favored by the gods than they,
beyond any deserts that I am conscious of;
as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands
which my fellows have not, and were especi-
ally guided and guarded. I do not flatter
myself, but if it be possible they flatter me.
I have never felt lonesome, or in the least op-
pressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and
that was a few weeks after I came to the
woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the
near neighborhood of man w^as not essential
to a serene and healthy life. To be alone
was something unpleasant. But I was at the
same time conscious of a slight insanity in
my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery.
In the midst of a gentle rain while these
thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of
such sweet and beneficent society in Nature,
in the very pattering of the drops, and in
every sound and sight around my house,
an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all
at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as
made the fancied advantages of human
neighborhood insignificant, and I have never
thought of them since. Every little pine
needle expanded and swelled with sympathy
and befriended me. I was so distinctly
made aware of the presence of something
kindred to me, even in scenes which we are
accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also
that the nearest of blood to me and human-
est was not a person nor a villager, that I
thought no place could ever be strange to
me again. —
Mourning untimely consumes the sad;
Few are their days in the land of the living,
Beautiful daughter of Toscar. ^
Some of my pleasantest hours were during
the long rain-storms in the spring or fall,
which confined me to the house for the after-
noon as well as the forenoon, soothed by
their ceaseless roar and pelting; when an early
twilight ushered in a long evening in which
many thoughts had time to take root and
unfold themselves. In those driving north-
east rains which tried the village houses so,
when the maids stood ready with mop and
1 Metrical version of a passage in James Macpher-
son's Ossianic prose-poem Croma,
402
1IKNI<> D.W'Il) rilOlil-AU
pail in front entries to keep the delude out, I
sat behintl my door in my little house, which
was all entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its
protection. In one heavy thunder-shower
the li^htnin^ struck a large pitch pine across
the pond, making a very conspicuous and
perfectly regular spiral groove from top to
bottom, an inch or more deep, and four or
five inches wide, as you would groove a
walking-stick. I passed it again the other
day, and was struck with awe on looking up
and beholding that mark, now more distinct
than ever, where a terrific and resistless bolt
came down out of the harmless sky eight
years ago. Men frecjuently say to me, "I
should think you would feel lonesome down
there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy
and snowy days and nights especially."
I am tempted to reply to such, — This whole
earth which we inhabit is but a point in space.
How far apart, think you, dwell the two
most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the
breath of whose disk cannot be appreciated
by our instruments.'' Why should I feel
lonely.'' is not our planet in the Milky Way?
This which you put seems to me not to be
the most important question. What sort of
space is that which separates a man from
his fellows and makes him solitary? I have
found that no exertion of the legs can bring
two minds much nearer to one another.
What do we want most to dwell near to?
Not to many men surely, the depot, the
post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house,
the school-house, the grocery. Beacon Hill,
or the Five Points, ^ where men most congre-
gate, but to the perennial source of our life,
whence in all our experience we have found
that to issue, as the willow stands near the
water and sendsout its roots in that direction.
This will vary with different natures, but this
is the place where a wise man will dig his
cellar. . . lone evening overtook one of
my townsmen, who has accumulated what
is called "a handsome property," — though
I never got 3. fair view of it, — on the Walden
road, driving a pair of cattle to market, who
inquired of me how I could bring my mind to
give up so many of the comforts of life. I
answered that I was very sure I liked it pas-
' Beacon Hill, crowned by the State House, was
formerly the most desirable residential section of
Boston, while the Five Points was formerly notorious
as the most vicious section of the city of New York. .
sably well; I was not joking. And so I went
home to my bed, and left him to pick his
way through the darkness and the mud to
Brighton, — or Bright-town, — which place
he would reach some time in the morning.
Any prospect of awakening or coming to
life to a dead man makes indifferent all times
and places. The place where that may occur
is always the same, and indescribably pleas-
ant to all our senses. For the most part we
allow only outlying and transient circum-
stances to make our occasions. They are,
in fact, the cause of our distraction. Nearest
to all things is that power which fashions
their being. Next to us the grandest laws
are continually being executed. Next to us
is not the workman whom we have hired,
with whom we love so well to talk, but the
workman whose work we are.
"How vast and profound is the influence
ofthe subtile powers of Heaven and of Earth!"
"We seek to perceive them, and we do not
see them; we seek to hear them, and we do
not hear them; identified with the substance
of things, they cannot be separated from
them."
"They cause that in all the universe men
purify and sanctify their hearts, and clothe
themselves in their holiday garments to offer
sacrifices and oblations to their ancestors.
It is an ocean of subtile intelligences. They
are everywhere, above us, on our left, on our
right; they environ us on all sides."
We are the subjects of an experiment
which is not a little interesting to me. Can
we not do without the society of our gossips
a little while under these circumstances,
— have our own thoughts to cheer us? Con-
fucius says truly, "Virtue does not remain as i
an abandoned orphan; it must of necessity '
have neighbors."
With thinking we may be beside ourselves
in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the
mind we can stand aloof from actions and
their consequences; and all things, good and
bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not
wholly involved in Nature. I may be either
the driftwood in the stream, or Indra^ in the
sky looking down on it. I may be affected by
a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand,
I may not be affected by an actual event which
appears to concern me much more. I only
2 Chief god of the air in Hindoo mythology.
WALDEN
403
know myself as a human entity; the scene,
so to speak, of thoup;hts and affections; and
am sensible of a certain doubleness by which
I can stand as remote from myself as from
another. However intense my experience,
I am conscious of the presence and criti-
cism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not
a part of me, but spectator, sharin^^ no ex-
perience, but taking; note of it, and that is
no more I than it is you. When the play,
it ma\' be the tragedy, of life is over, the
spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fic-
tion, a work of the imagination only, so far
as he was concerned. This doubleness may
easily make us poor neighbors and friends
sometimes.
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater
part of the time. To be in company, even
with the best, is soon wearisome and dissi-
pating. I love to be alone. I never found the
companion that was so companionable as
solitude. We are for the most part more
lonely when we go abroad among men than
when we stay in our chambers. A man think-
ing or working is always alone, let him be
where he will. Solitude is not measured by
the miles of space that intervene between a
man and his fellows. The really diligent stu-
dent in one of thecrowded hives of Cambridge
College is as solitary as a dervis in the desert.
The farmer can work alone in the field or
the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and
not feel lonesome, because he is employed;
but when he comes home at night he cannot
sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his
thoughts, but must be where he can "see
the folks," and recreate, and, as he thinks,
remunerate himself for his day's solitude;
and hence he wonders how the student can
sit alone in the house all night and most of
the day without ennui and "the blues"; but
he does not realize that the student, though
in the house, is still at work in his field, and
chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his,
and in turn seeks the same recreation and
society that the latter does, though it may
be a more condensed form of it.
Society is commonly too cheap. We meet
at very short intervals, not having had time
to acquire any new^ value for each other. We
meet at meals three times a day, and give
each other a new taste of that old musty
cheese that we are. We have had to agree
on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and
politeness, to make this frequent meeting
tolerable and that we need not come to open
war. We meet at the post-ofiice, and at the
sociable, and about the fireside every night;
we live thick and are in each other's way, and
stumble over one another, and I think that
we thus lose some respect for one another.
Certainly less frequency would suffice for
all important and hearty communications.
Consider the girls in a factory, — never alone,
hardly in their dreams. It would be better if
there were but one inhabitant to a square
mile, as where I live. The value of a man is
not in his skin, that we should touch him.
I have heard of a man lost in the woods and
dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot
of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the
grotesque visions with which, owing to bod-
ily weakness, his diseased imagination sur-
rounded him, and which he believed to be
real. So also, owing to bodily and mental
health and strength, we may be continually
cheered by a like but more normal and natural
society, and come to know" that we are never
alone.
I have a great deal of company in my
house; especially in the morning, when no-
body calls. Let me suggest a few compari-
sons, that some one may convey an idea
of my situation. I am no more lonely than
the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or
than Walden Pond itself. What company
has that lonely lake, I pray.'* And yet it has
not the blue devils, but the blue angels in it,
in the azure tint of its waters. The sun is
alone, except in thick weather, when there
sometimes appear to be two, but one is a
mock sun. God is alone, — but the devil, he
is far from being alone; he sees a great deal
of company; he is legion. I am no more
lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a
pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-
fly, or a humble-bee. I am no more lonely
than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or
the north star, or the south wind, or an April
shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider
in a new house.
I have occasional visits in the long winter
evenings, when the snow falls fast and the
wind howls in the wood, from an old settler
and original proprietor,^ who is reported to
have dug Walden Pond, and stoned it, and
■1 Probably Pan is meant.
404
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
fringed it witli pine woods; who tells me
stories of old time and of new eternity; and
between us we manage to pass a cheerful
eveninfj with social mirth and pleasant views
of things, even without apples or cider, —
a most wise and humorous friend, whom I
love much, who keeps himself more secret
than ever did Gofte or Whalley;i and though
he is thought to be dead, none can show
where he is buried. An elderly dame,^ too,
dwells in my neighborhood, invisible to most
persons, in whose odorous herb garden I love
to stroll sometimes, gathering simples and
listening to her fables; for she has a genius
of unequaled fertility, and her memory runs
back farther than mythology, and she can
tell me the original of every fable, and on
what fact every one is founded, for the in-
cidents occurred when she was young. A
ruddy and lusty old dame, who delights in all
weathers and seasons, and is likely to outlive
all her children yet.
The indescribable innocence and benefi-
cence of Nature, — of sun and wind and rain,
of summer and winter, — such health, such
cheer, they afford forever! and such sym-
pathy have they ever with our race, that all
Nature would be affected, and the sun's
brightness fade, and the wnnds would sigh
humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the
woods shed their leaves and put on mourn-
ing in midsummer, if any man should ever
for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have intel-
ligence with the earth? Am I not partly
leaves and vegetable mold myself.''
What is the pill which will keep us well,
serene, contented.'' Not my or thy great-
grandfather's, but our great-grandmother
Nature's universal, vegetable, botanic medi-
cines, by which she has kept herself young
always, outlived so many old Parrs^ in her
day, and fed her health with their decaying
fatness. For my panacea, instead of one of
those quack vials of a mixture dipped from
Acheron and the Dead Sea, which come out
of those long shallow black-schooner looking
wagons which we sometimes see made to
carry bottles, let me have a draught of un-
diluted morning air. Morning air! If men
1 Puritan regicides who fled to New England and
there lived in hiding.
2 Dame Nature.
3 Thomas Parr died in London in 1635, reputed to
be 152 years old.
will not drink of this at the fountain-head of
the day, why, then, we must even bottle up
some and sell it in the shops, for the benefit
of those who have lost their subscription
ticket to morning time in this world. But re-
member, it will not keep quite till noonday
even m the coolest cellar, but drive out the
stopples long ere that and follow westward
the steps of Aurora. I am no worshiper of
Hygeia, who was the daughter of that old
herb-doctor i^sculapius, and who is rep-
resented on monuments holding a serpent
in one hand, and in the other a cup out of
which the serpent sometimes drinks; but
rather of Hebe, cup-bearer to Jupiter, who
w^as the daughter of Juno and wild lettuce,
and who had the power of restoring gods and
men to the vigor of youth. She was probably
the only thoroughly sound-conditioned,
healthy, and robust young lady that ever
walked the globe, and wherever she came
it w^as spring.
VII. THE BEAN-FIELD
Meanwhile my beans, the length of
whose rows, added together, was seven miles
already planted, were impatient to be hoed,
for the earliest had grown considerably be-
fore the latest were in the ground; indeed
they were not easily to be put oflF. What was
the meaning of this so steady and self-res-
pecting, this small Herculean labor, I knew
not. I came to love my rows, my beans,
though so many more than I wanted. They
attached meto the earth, and so I got strength
like Antaeus. But why should I raise them.''
Only Heaven knows. This was my curious
labor all summer, — to make this portion of
the earth's surface, which had yielded only
cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the
like, before, sweet wild fruits and pleasant
flowers, produce instead this pulse. What
shall I learn of beans or beans of me? I
cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I
have an eye to them; and this is my day's
work. It is a fine broad leaf to look on. My
auxiliaries are the dews and rains which
water this dry soil, and what fertility is in
the soil itself, which for the most part is lean
and effete. My enemies are worms, cool days,
and most of all woodchucks. The last have
nibbled for me a quarter of an acre clean. But
WALDEN
405
what right had I to oust johnswort and the
rest, and break up their ancient herb garden?
Soon, however, the remaining beans will be
too tough for them, and go forward to meet
new foes.
When I was four years old, as I well re-
member, I was brought from Boston to this
my native town, through these very woods
and this field, to the pond. It is one of the
oldest scenes stamped on my memory. And
now to-night my flute has waked the echoes
over that very water. The pines still stand
here older than I; or, if some have fallen, I
have cooked my supper with their stumps,
and a new growth is rising all around, pre-
paring another aspect for new infant eyes.
Almost the same johnswort springs from the
same perennial root in this pasture, and even
I have at length helped to clothe that fabu-
lous landscape of my infant dreams, and
one of the results of my presence and in-
fluence is seen in these bean leaves, corn
blades, and potato vines.
I planted about two acres and a half of
upland; and as it was only about fifteen years
since the land was cleared, and I myself had
got out two or three cords of stumps, I did
not give it any manure; but in the course of
the summer it appeared by the arrowheads
which I turned up in hoeing, that an extinct
nation had anciently dwelt here and planted
corn and beans ere white men came to clear
the land, and so, to some extent, had ex-
hausted the soil for this very crop.
Before yet any woodchuck or squirrel had
run across the road, or the sun had got above
the shrub oaks, while all the dew was on,
though the farmers warned me against it,
— I would advise you to do all your work if
possible while the dew is on, — I began to
level the ranks of haughty weeds in my bean-
field and throw dust upon their heads. Early
in the morning I worked barefooted, dabbling
like a plastic artist in the dewy and crum-
bling sand, but later in the day the sun blis-
tered my feet. There the sun lighted me to
hoe beans, pacing slowly backward and for-
ward over that yellow gravelly upland, be-
tween the long green rows, fifteen rods, the
one end terminating in a shrub oak copse
where I could rest in the shade, the other
in a blackberry field where the green berries
deepened their tints by the time I had made
another bout. Removing the weeds, putting
fresh soil about the bean stems, and encour-
aging this weed which 1 had sown, making
the yellow soil express its summer thought in
bean leaves and blossoms rather than in
wormwood and piper and millet grass, mak-
ing the earth say beans instead of grass, —
this was my daily work. As I had little aid
from horses or cattle, or hired men or boys,
or improved implements of husbandry, I
was much slower, and became much more
intimate with my beans than usual. But
labor of the hands, even when pursued to
the verge of drudgery, is perhaps never the
worst form of idleness. It has a constant and
imperishable moral, and to the scholar it
yields a classic result. A very agricola lahori-
osiis was I to travelers bound westward
through Lincoln and Wayland to nobody
knows where; they sitting at their ease in
gigs, with elbows on knees, and reins loosely
hanging in festoons; I the home-staying,
laborious native of the soil. But soon my
homestead was out of their sight and thought.
It was the only open and cultivated field for
a great distance on either side of the road,
so they made the most of it; and sometimes
the man in the field heard more of travelers'
gossip and comment than was meant for his
ear: "Beans so late! peas so late!" — for I
continued to plant when others had begun to
hoe, — the ministerial husbandman had not
suspected it. "Corn, my boy, for fodder;
corn for fodder." "Does he live there.''"
asks the black bonnet of the gray coat; and
the hard-featured farmer reins up his grate-
ful dobbin to inquire what you are doing
where he sees no manure in the furrow, and
recommends a little chip dirt, or any little
waste stuff, or it may be ashes or plaster.
But here were two acres and a half of fur-
rows, and only a hoe for cart and two hands
to draw it, — there being an aversion to other
carts and horses, — and chip dirt far away.
Fellow-travelers as they rattled by com-
pared it aloud with the fields which th.ey had
passed, so that I came to know how I stood
in the agricultural world. This was one field
not in Mr. Colman's report. ^ And, by the way,
who estimates the value of the crop which
nature yields in the still wilder fields unim-
proved by man.'' The crop of English hay is
1 Henry Colman (died 1849) was State Commissioner
for the Agricultural Survey of Massachusetts.
4o6
HENRY DAVID niOREAU
carefully wci^lucl, the moisture calculated,
the silicates and the potash; but in all dells
and pond-holes in the woods and pastures
and swamps grows a rich and various crop
only un reaped by man. Mine was, as it were,
the connecting link between wild and cul-
tivated fields; as some states are civilized,
and others half-civilized, and others savage or
barbarous, so my field was, though not in a
bad sense, a half-cultivated field. They
were beans cheerfully returning to their
wild and primitive state that I cultivated,
and my hoe played the Ranz des V achcs^
for them.
Near at hand, upon the topmost spray of
a birch, sings the brown thrasher — or red
mavis, as some love to call him — all the
morning, glad of your society, that would
find out another farmer's field if yours were
not here. While you are planting the seed,
he cries, — "Drop it, drop it, — cover it up,
cover it up, — pull it up, pull it up, pull it up. "
But this was not corn, and so it was safe
from such enemies as he. You may wonder
what his rigmarole, his amateur Paganini'^
performances on one string or on twenty,
have to do with your planting, and yet prefer
it to leached ashes or plaster. It was a cheap
sort of top dressing in which I had entire
faith.
As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows
with my hoe, I disturbed the ashes of un-
chronicled nations who in primeval years
lived under these heavens, and their small
implements of war and hunting were brought
to the light of this modern day. They lay
mingled with other natural stones, some of
w hich bore the marks of having been burned
by Indian fires, and some by the sun, and
also bits of pottery and glass brought hither
by the recent cultivators of the soil. When
my hoe tinkled against the stones, that mu-
sic echoed to the woods and the sky, and was
an accompaniment to my labor which yielded
an instant and immeasurable crop. It was
no longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed
beans; and I remembered with as much pity
as pride, if I remembered at all, my acquaint-
ances W'ho had gone to the city to attend the
oratorios. The nighthawk circled overhead
in the sunny afternoons — for I sometimes
1 Air played in Switzerland to call in cattle.
2 Italian violinist (1784-1840).
made a day of it — like a mote in the eye, or
in heaven's eye, falhng from time to time
with a swoop and a sound as if the
heavens were rent, torn at last to very rags
and tatters, and yet a seamless cope remained;
small imps that fill the air and lay their eggs
on the ground on bare sand or rocks on the
tojTS of hills, where few have found them;
graceful and slender like ripples caught up
from the pond, as leaves are raised by the
wind to float in the heavens; such kindred-
ship is in nature. The hawk is aerial brother
of the wave which he sails over and surveys^
those his perfect air-inflated wings answer-
ing to the elemental unfledged pinions of
the sea. Or sometimes I watched a pair of
hen-hawks circling high in the sky, alter-
nately soaring and descending, approaching
and leaving one another, as if they were the
embodiment of my own thoughts. Or I was
attracted by the passage of wild pigeons from
this wood to that, wath a slight quivering
winnowing sound and carrier haste; or from
under a rotten stump my hoe turned up a
sluggish portentous and outlandish spotted
salamander, a trace of Egypt and the Nile,
yet our contemporary. When I paused to
lean on my hoe, these sounds and sights I
heard and saw anywhere in the row, a part
of the inexhaustible entertainment which
the country oflFers. I
On gala days the town fires its great guns,
which echo like popguns to these woods, and
some waifs of martial music occasionally pene-
trate thus far. To me, away there in my
bean-field at the other end of the town, the big
guns sounded as if a puffball had burst; and
when there was a military turnout of which I
was ignorant, I have sometimes had a vague J
sense all the day of some sort of itching and I
disease in the horizon, as if some eruption
would break out there soon, either scarlatina
or canker-rash, until at length some more
favorable puflF of wind, making haste over
the fields and up the Wayland road, brought
me information of the "trainers." It seemed
by the distant hum as if somebody's bees
had swarmed, and that the neighbors, ac-
cording to Virgil's advice,^ by a faint tin-
tinnabulum upon the most sonorous of their
domestic utensils, were endeavoring to call
them down into the hive again. And when
3 In GeorgicSy Bk, IV.
WALDEN
407
the sound died quite away, and the hum had
ceased, and the most favorable breezes told
no tale, I knew that they had got the last
drone of them all safely into the Middlesex
hive, and that now their minds were bent on
the honey with which it was smeared.
I felt proud to know that the liberties of
Massachusetts and of our fatherland were in
such safe keeping; and as I turned to my
hoeing again I was filled with an inexpress-
ible confidence, and pursued my labor cheer-
fully with a calm trust m the future.
When there were several bands of musi-
cians, it sounded as if all the village was a
vast bellows, and all the buildings expanded
and collapsed alternately with a din. But
sometimes it was a really noble and inspiring
strain that reached these woods, and the
trumpet that sings of fame, and I felt as if
I could spit a Mexican^ with a good relish,
— for why should we always stand for trifles.?
— and looked round for a woodchuck or a
skunk to exercise my chivalry upon. These
iTiartial strains seemed as far away as Pal-
estine, and reminded me of a march of cru-
saders in the horizon, with a slight tantivy
and tremulous motion of the elm tree tops
which overhang the village. This was one of
the great days; though the sk}' had from my
clearing only the same everlastingly great
look that it wears daily, and I saw no dif-
ference m it.
It was a singular experience that long ac-
quaintance which I cultivated with beans,
what with planting, and hoeing, and har-
vesting, and threshing, and picking over and
selling them, — the last was the hardest of all,
— I might add eating, for I did taste. I was
determined to know beans. When they were
growing, I used to hoe from five o'clock in
the morning till noon, and commonly spent
the rest of the day about other affairs. Con-
sider the intimate and curious acquaintance
one makes with various kinds of weeds, — •
it will bear some iteration in the account, for
there was no little iteration in the labor,
— disturbing their delicate organizations so
ruthlessly, and making such invidious dis-
tinctions with his hoe, leveling whole ranks
of one species, and sedulously cultivating
another. That's Roman wormwood, — that's
1 The war against Mexico was in progress at this
time.
pigweed, — that's sorrel, — that's piper-grass,
— have at him, chop him up, turn his roots
upward to the sun, don't let him have a fiber
in the shade, if you do he'll turn himself
t'other side up and be as green as a leek in
two days. A long war, not with cranes, but
with weeds, those Trojans who had sun and
rain and dews on their side. Daily the beans
saw me come to their rescue armed with a
hoe, and thin the ranks of their enemies,
filling up the trenches with weedy dead.
Many a lusty crest-waving Hector, that tow-
ered a whole foot above his crow^ding com-
rades, fell before my weapon and rolled in
the dust.
Those summer days which some of my
contemporaries devoted to the fine arts in
Boston or Rome, and others to contemplation
in India, and others to trade in London or
New York, I thus, with the other farmers of
New England, devoted to husbandry. Not
that I wanted beans to eat, for I am by
nature a Pythagorean, so far as beans are con-
cerned, whether they mean porridge or voting,
and exchanged them for rice; but, perchance,
as some must work in fields if only for the
sake of tropes and expression, to serve a
parable-maker one day. It was on the whole
a rare amusement, which, continued too long,
might have become a dissipation. Though
I gave them no manure, and did not hoe
them all once, I hoed them unusually well
as far as I went, and was paid for it in the end,
"there being in truth," as Evelyn says, "no
compost or L^tation whatsoever comparable
to this continual motion, repastination, and
turning of the mold with the spade. " "The
earth," he adds elsewhere, "especially if
fresh, has a certain magnetism in it, by which
it attracts the salt, power, or virtue (call
it either) which gives it life, and is the logic
of all the labor and stir we keep about it,
to sustain us; all dungings and other sordid
temperings being but the vicars succedan-
eous to this improvement." Moreover,
this being one of those "worn-out and ex-
hausted lay fields which enjoy their sabbath,"
had perchance, as Sir Kenelm Digby thinks
likely, attracted "vital spirits" from the air.
I harvested twelve bushels of beans.
But to be more particular, for it is com-
plained that Mr. Colman has reported chiefly
the expensive experiments of gentlemen
farmers, my outgoes were, —
4o8
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
For a lioo ....
Plowing, liarrowinp, aiul
furrowinji ....
Beans for seed
Potatoes f«>r seed .
Peas for seed ....
Turnip seed ....
White line for crow fence
Horse cultivator and boy
three hours ....
Horse and cart to get crop
J^o 54
7 50 Too much
I 33
o 40
o 06
0 02
1 00
o 75
In all
i>H 72J
My income was {patremfamilias -jendaceniy
71011 emacem esse oportet^), from
Nine bushels and twelve
quarts of beans sold . .$1694
Five bushels large potatoes . 2 50
Nine bushels small . . . 2 25
Grass I 00
Stalks o 75
In all $23 44
Leaving a pecuniary profit,
as I have elsewhere said, of
7i>1
This is the result of my experience in rais-
ing beans: Plant the common small white
bush bean about the first of June, in rows
three feet by eighteen inches apart, being
careful to select fresh round and unmixed
seed. First look out for worms, and supply
vacancies by planting anew. Then look out
for woodchucks, if it is an exposed place, for
they will nibble off the earliest tender leaves
almost clean as they go; and again, when the
young tendrils make their appearance, they
have notice of it, and will shear them off with
both buds and young pods, sitting erect like
a squirrel. But above all harvest as early as
possible, if you would escape frosts and have
a fair and salable crop; you may save much
loss by this means.
This further experience also I gained: I
said to myself, I will not plant beans and
corn with so much industry another summer,
but such seeds, if the seed is not lost, as sin-
cerity, truth, simplicity, faith, innocence,
and the like, and see if they will not grow in
this soil, even with less toil and manurance,
and sustain me, for surely it has not been ex-
hausted for these crops. Alas! I said this to
1 It behooves a householder to be a seller, not a
buyer. (Cato, De Re Ruslica.)
myself; but now another summer is gone, and
another, and another, and I am obliged to
say to you. Reader, that the seeds which I
planted, if indeed they zvere the seeds of those
virtues, were worm-eaten or had lost their
vitality, and so did not come up. Commonly
men will only be brave as their fathers were
brave, or timid. This generation is very sure
to plant corn and beans each new year pre-
cisely as the Indians did centuries ago and
taught the first settlers to do, as if there were
a fate in it. I saw an old man the other day,
to 4ny astonishment, making the holes with
a hoe for the seventieth time at least, and
not for himself to lie down in ! But why should
not the New Englander try new adventures,
and not lay so much stress on his grain, his
potato and grass crop, and his orchards, —
raise other crops than these.'' Why concern
ourselves so much about our beans for seed,
and not be concerned at all about a new gen-
eration of men.? We should really be fed and
cheered if when we met a man we were sure
to see that some of the qualities which I have
named, which we all prize more than those
other productions, but which are for the most
part broadcast and floating in the air, had
taken root and grown in him. Here comes
such a subtile and ineffable quality, for in-
stance, as truth or justice, though the slight-
est amount or new variety of it, along the
road. Our ambassadors should be instructed
to send home such seeds as these, and Con-
gress help to distribute them over all the
land. We should never stand upon ceremony
with sincerity. We should never cheat and
insult and banish one another by our mean-
ness, if there were present the kernel of
worth and friendliness. We should not
meet thus in haste. Most men I do not meet
at all, for they seem not to have time; they
are busy about their beans. We would not
deal with a man thus plodding ever, leaning
on a hoe or a spade as a staff between his
work, not as a mushroom, but partially risen
out of the earth, something more than erect,
like swallows alighted and walking on the
ground: —
And as he spake, his wings would now and then
Spread, as he meant to fly, then close again, —
so that we should suspect that we might be
conversing with an angel. Bread may not
always nourish us; but it always does us good,
WALDEN
409
it even takes stiffness out of our joints, and
makes us supple and buoyant, when we knew
not what ailed us, to recognize any gener-
osity in man or Nature, to share any unmixed
and heroic joy.
Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at
least, that husbandry was once a sacred art;
but it is pursued with irreverent haste and
heedlessness by us, our object being to have
large farms and large crops merely. We have
no festival, nor procession, nor ceremony,
not excepting our cattle-shows and so-called
Thanksgivings, by which the farmer expresses
a sense of the sacredness of his calling, or
is reminded of its sacred origin. It is the
premium and the feast which tempt him.
He sacrifices not to Ceres and the Terrestrial
Jove, but to the infernal Plutus rather. By
avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit
from which none of us is free, of regarding
the soil as property, or the means of acquir-
ing property chiefly, the landscape is de-
formed, husbandry is degraded with us, and
the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He
knows Nature but as a robber. Cato says
that the profits of agriculture are particularly
pious or just {maximeque pius quaestus),
and according to Varro the old Romans
"called the same earth Mother and Ceres,
and thought that they who cultivated it led
a pious and useful life, and that they alone
were left of the race of King Saturn."
We are wont to forget that the sun looks
on our cultivated fields and on the prairies
and forests without distinction. They all
reflect and absorb his rays alike, and the
former make but a small part of the glorious
picture which he beholds in his daily course.
In his view the earth is all equally cultivated
like a garden. Therefore we should receive
the benefit of his light and heat with a cor-
responding trust and magnanimity. What
though I value the seed of these beans, and
harvest that in the fall of the year? This
broad field which I have looked at so long
looks not to me as the principal cultivator,
but away from me to influences more genial
to it, which water and make it green. These
beans have results which are not harvested
by me. Do they not grow for woodchucks
partly.'* The ear of wheat (in Latin spica,
obsoletely speca, from spe, hope) should not
be the only hope of the husbandman; its
kernel or grain (granuin, from gerendo, bear-
ing) is not all that it bears. How, then, can
our harvest fail? Shall I not rejoice also at
the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are
the granary of the birds? It matters little
comparatively whether the fields fill the
farmer's barns. 1 he true husbandman will
cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest
no concern whether the woods will bear
chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor
with every day, relinquishing all claim to the
produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his
mind not only his first but his last fruits also.
XI. HIGHER LAWS
As I came home through the woods with my
string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now
quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a wood-
chuck stealing across my path, and felt a
strange thrill of savage delight, and was
strongly tempted to seize and devour him
raw; not that I was hungry then, except for
that wildness which he represented. Once or
twice, however, while I lived at the pond, I
found myself ranging the woods, like a half-
starved hound, with a strange abandonment,
seeking some kind of venison which I might
devour, and no morsel could have been too
savage for me. The wildest scenes had
become unaccountably familiar. I found in
myself, and still find, an instinct toward a
higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as
do most men, and another toward a primi-
tive rank and savage one, and I reverence
them both. I love the wild not less than the
good. The wildness and adventure that are
in fishing still recommended it to me. I
like sometimes to take rank hold on life and
spend my day more as the animals do. Per-
haps I have owed to this employment and to
hunting, when quite young, my closest
acquaintance with Nature. They early in-
troduce us to and detain us in scenery with
which otherwise, at that age, we should have
little acquaintance. Fishermen, hunters,
woodchoppers, and others, spending their
lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar
sense a part of Nature themselves, are often
in a more favorable mood for observing
her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than
philosophers or poets even, who approach her
with expectation. She is not afraid to ex-
hibit herself to them. The traveler on the
prairie is naturally a hunter, on the head
4IO
HKNRY DAVID THOREAU
waters of the Missouri and Columbia a trap-
pi r, ami at the Falls of St. Mary a fisherman,
lie wiu) is only a traveler learns things at
second-hand and by the halves, and is poor
authority. We are most interested when
science rejiorts what those men already know
practically or instinctively, for that alone is
a true humanity^ or account of human experi-
ence.
They mistake who assert that the Yankee
has few amusements, because he has not so
many public holidays, and men and boys do
not play so many games as they do in Eng-
land, for here the more primitive but solitary
amusements of hunting, fishing, and the like
have not yet given place to the former. Al-
most every New England boy among my
contemporaries shouldered a fowling-piece
between the ages of ten and fourteen; and
his hunting and fishing grounds were not
limited, like the preserves of an English
nobleman, but were more boundless even
than those of a savage. No wonder, then,
that he did not oftener stay to play on the
common, l^ut already a change is taking
place, owing, not to an increased humanity,
but to an increased scarcity of game, for
perhaps the hunter is the greatest friend
of the animals hunted, not excepting the
Humane Society.
Moreover, when at the pond, I wished
sometimes to add fish to my fare for variety.
I have actually fished from the same kind of
necessity that the first fishers did. Whatever
humanity I might conjure up against it
was all factitious, and concerned my phi-
losophy more than my feelmgs. I speak of
fishmg only now, for I had long felt dif-
ferently about fowling, and sold my gun be-
fore I went to the woods. Not that I am less
humane than others, but I did not perceive
that my feelings were much affected. I did
not pity the fishes nor the worms. This was
habit. As for fowling, during the last years
that I carried a gun my excuse was that I
was studying ornithology, and sought only
new or rare birds. But I confess that I am
now inclined to think that there is a finer
way of studying ornithology than this. It
requires so much closer attention to the
habits of the birds, that, if for that reason
only, I have been willing to omit the gun.
Yet notwithstanding the objection on the
score of humanity, I am compelled to doubt
if ecjually valuable sports are ever substi-
tuted for these; and when some of my friends
have asked me anxiously about their boys,
whether they should let them hunt, I have
answered, yes, — remembering that it was one
of the best parts of my education, — make
them hunters, though sportsmen only at
first, if possible, mighty hunters at last, so
that they shall not find game large enough
for them in this or any vegetable wilderness,
— hunters as well as fishers of men. Thus far
I am of the opinion of Chaucer's nun,i who
yavc not of the text a pulled hen
That saith that hunters ben not holy men.
There is a period in the history of the indi-
vidual, as of the race, when the hunters are
the "best men," as the Algonquins called
them. We cannot but pity the boy who has
never fired a gun; he is no more humane,
while his education has been sadly neglected.
This was my answer with respect to those
youths who were bent on this pursuit, trust-
ing that they would soon outgrow it. No
humane being, past the thoughtless age of
boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature
which holds its life by the same tenure that
he does. The hare in its extremity cries like
a child. I warn you, mothers, that my sym-
pathies do not always make the usual phii-
a?ithropic distinctions.
Such is oftenest the young man's intro-
duction to the forest, and the most original
part of himself. He goes thither at first as a
hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the
seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes
his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it
may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole be-
hind. The mass of men are still and always
young in this respect. In some countries a
hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such
a one might make a good shepherd's dog, but
is far from being the Good Shepherd. I have
been surprised to consider that the only ob-
vious employment, except wood-chopping,
ice-cutting, or the like business, which ever
to my knowledge detained at Walden Pond
for a whole half-day any of my fellow-
citizens, whether fathers or children of the
town, with just one exception, was fishing.
Commonly they did not think that they were
lucky, or well paid for their time, unless they
1 It was the Monk. {Canterbury Tales, Prologue,
11.177-178.)
WALDEN
411
^ot a long strinp; of fish, though they had the
opportunity of seeing the pond all the while.
They might go there a thousand ti?nes before
the sediment of fishing would sink to the
bottom and leave their purpose pure; but
no doubt such a clarifying process would be
going on all the while. The Governor and
his Council faintly remember the pond,
for they went a-fishing there when they
were boys; but now they are too old and
dignified to go a-fishing, and so they know it
no more forever. Yet even they expect to
go to heaven at last. If the legislature re-
gards it, it is chiefly to regulate the number
of hooks to be used there; but they know
nothing about the hook of hooks with which
to angle for the pond itself, impaling the
legislature for a bait. Thus, even in civilized
communities, the embryo man passes through
the hunter stage of development.
I have found repeatedly, of late years, that
I cannot fish without falling a little in self-
respect. I have tried it again and again. I
have skill at it, and, like many of my fellows,
a certain instinct for it, which revives from
time to time, but always when I have done I
feel that it would have been better if I had
not fished. I think that I do not mistake.
It is a faint intimation, yet so are the first
streaks of morning. There is unquestion-
ably this instinct in me which belongs to the
lower orders of creation; yet with every year
I am less a fisherman, though without more
humanity or even wisdom; at present I am
no fisherman at all. But I see that if I were to
live in a wilderness I should again be tempted
to become a fisher and hunter in earnest.
Beside, there is something essentially unclean
about this diet and all flesh, and I began
to see where house-work commences, and
whence the endeavor, which costs so much,
to wear a tidy and respectable appearance
each day, to keep the house sweet and free
from all ill odors and sights. Having been
my ow^n butcher and scullion and cook, as
well as the gentleman for whom the dishes
were served up, I can speak from an unusually
complete experience. The practical objec-
tion to animal food in my case was its un-
cleanness; and besides, when I had caught
and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish,
they seemed not to have fed me essentially.
It was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost
more than it came to. A little bread or a
few potatoes would have done as well, with
less trouble and filth. Like many of my con-
temporaries, I had rarely for many years used
animal food, or tea, or coffee, etc.; not so
much because of any ill effects which I had
traced to them, as because they were not
agreeable to my imagination. The re-
pugnance to animal food is not the effect of
experience, but is an instinct. It appeared
more beautiful to live low and fare hard in
many respects; and though I never did so, I
went far enough to please my imagination.
I believe that every man who has ever been
earnest to preserve his higher or poetic
faculties in the best condition has been
particularly inclined to abstain from ani-
mal food, and from much food of any
kind. It is a significant fact, stated by en-
tomologists,— I find it in Kirby and Spence,^
— that "some insects in their perfect state,
though furnished with organs of feeding,
make no use of them"; and they lay it down
as "a general rule, that almost all insects in
this state eat much less than in that of larvae.
The voracious caterpillar when transformed
into a butterfly . . . and the gluttonous
maggot when become a fly" content them-
selves with a drop or two of honey or some
other sweet liquid. The abdomen under the
wings of the butterfly still represents the
larva. This is the tidbit which tempts his
insectivorous fate. The gross feeder is a
man in the larva state; and there are whole
nations in that condition, nations without
fancy or imagination, whose vast abdomens
betray them.
It is hard to provide and cook so simple
and clean a diet as will not offend the im-
agination; but this, I think, is to be fed
when we feed the body; they should both sit
down at the same table. Yet perhaps this
may be done. The fruits eaten temperately
need not make us ashamed of our appetites,
not interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But
put an extra condiment into your dish, and
it will poison you. It is not worth the while
to live by rich cookery. Most men would
feel shame if caught preparing with their
own hands precisely such a dinner, whether
of animal or vegetable food, as is every day
prepared for them by others. Yet till this
is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if
1 Authors oi An Introduction to Entomology, London,
1 81 5-1 826 (4 vols.).
412
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
j^entlcmcn mid Indies, nrc not true men nnd
women. This certainly sup;Rests what chnnj^e
is to he m;ide. It may he vain to ask why
the imagination will not he reconciled to
flesh and fat. I am satisfied that it is not.
Is it not a reproach that man is a carnivor-
ous animal? True, he can and does live, in a
great measure, by preying on other animals;
but this is a miserable way, — as any one
who will go to snaring rabbits, or slaughter-
ing lambs, may learn, — and he will be re-
garded as a benefactor of his race who shall
teach man to confine himself to a more inno-
cent and wholesome diet. Whatever my ow n
practice may be, I have no doubt that, it is
a part of the destiny of the human race, in
its gradual improvement, to leave off eating
animals, as surely as the savage tribes have
left off eating each other when they came in
contact with the more civilized.
If one listens to the faintest but constant
suggestions of his genius, which are certainly
true, he sees not to what extremes, or even
insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way,
as he grows more resolute and faithful, his
road lies. The faintest assured objection
which one healthy man feels will at length
prevail over the arguments and customs of
mankind. No man ever followed his genius
till it misled him. Though the result were
bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say
that the consequences were to be regretted,
for these were a life in conformity to higher
principles. If the day and the night are
such that you greet them with joy, and life
emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-
scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry,
more immortal, — that is your success. All
nature is your congratulation, and you have
cause momentarily to bless yourself. The
greatest gains and values are farthest from
being appreciated. We easily come to doubt
if they exist. We soon forget them. They
are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts
most astounding and most real are never
communicated by man to man. The true
harvest of my daily life is somewhat as in-
tangible and indescribable as the tints of
morning or evening. It is a little star-dust
caught, a segment of the rainbow which I
have clutched.
Yet, for my part, I was never unusually
squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat
with a good relish, if it were necessary. I
am glad to have drunk water so long, for the
same reason that I prefer tlie natural sky
to an opium-eater's heaven. I would fain
keep sober always; and there are infinite
degrees of drunkenness. I believe that
water is the only drink for a wise man; wine
is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing
the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm
coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea!
Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by
them! Even music may be intoxicating.
Such apparently slight causes destroyed
Greece and Rome, and will destroy England
and America. Of all ebriosity, who does not
prefer to be intoxicated by the air he
breathes? I have found it to be the most
serious objection to coarse labors long con-
tinued, that they compelled me to eat and
drink coarsely also. But to tell the truth, I
find myself at present somewhat less particu-
lar in these respects. I carry less religion to
the table, ask no blessing; not because I am
wiser than I was, but, I am obliged to con-
fess, because, however much it is to be re-
gretted, with years I have grown more
coarse and indifferent. Perhaps these ques-
tions are entertained only in youth, as most
believe of poetry. My practice is ** no-
where," my opinion is here. Nevertheless
I am far from regarding myself as one of
those privileged ones to whom the Ved^
refers when it says, that "he who has true
faith in the Omnipresent Supreme Being
may eat all that exists," that is, is not bound
to inquire what is his food, or who prepares
it; and even in their case it is to be observed,
as a Hindoo commentator has remarked, that
the Vedant limits this privilege to "the
time of distress."
Who has not sometimes derived an in-
expressible satisfaction from his food in
which appetite had no share? I have been
thrilled to think that I owed a mental per-
ception to the commonly gross sense of taste,
that I have been inspired through the palate,
that some berries which I had eaten on a
hillside had fed my genius. "The soul not
being mistress of herself," says Thseng-tseu,
"one looks, and one does not see; one
listens, and one does not hear; one eats, and
one does not know the savor of food." He
who distinguishes the true savor of his food
» I.e., Veda.
WALDEN
413
can never be a glutton; he who does not
cannot be otherwise. A puritan may go to
his brown-bread crust with as gross an
appetite as ever an alderman to his turtle.
Not that food which entereth into the mouth
deHletli a man, but the appetite with which
it is eaten. 1 It is neither the quahty nor the
quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors;
when that which is eaten is not a viand to
sustain our animal, or inspire our spiritual
life, but food for the worms that possess us.
If the hunter has a taste for mud-turtles,
muskrats, and other such savage tidbits, the
fine lady indulges a taste for jelly made of a
calf's foot, or for sardines from over the sea,
and they are even. He goes to the mill-pond,
she to her preserve-pot. The wonder is how
they, how you and I, can live this slimy,
beastly life, eating and drinking.
Our whole life is startlingly moral. There
is never an instant's truce between virtue and
vice. Goodness is the only investment that
never fails. In the music of the harp which
trembles round the world it is the insisting
on this which thrills us. The harp is the
traveling patterer for the Universe's Insur-
ance Company, recommending its laws, and
our little goodness is all the assessment that
we pay. Though the youth at last grows
indifferent, the laws of the universe are not
indifferent, but are forever on the side of the
most sensitive. Listen to every zephyr for
some reproof, for it is surely there, and he is
unfortunate who does not hear it. We can-
not touch a string or move a stop but the
charming moral transfixes us. Many an irk-
some noise, go a long way off, is heard as
music, a proud, sweet satire on the meanness
of our lives.
We are conscious of an animal in us, which
aw^akens in proportion as our higher nature
slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and per-
haps cannot be wholly expelled; like the
worms which, even in life and health, occupy
our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw
from it, but never change its nature. I fear
that it may enjoy a certain health of its own;
that we may be well, yet not pure. The
other day I picked up the lower jaw of a hog,
with white and sound teeth and tusks, which
suggested that there was an animal health
and vigor distinct from the spiritual. This
CJ. St. Matthew, xv, 11.
creature succeeded by other means than
temperance and purity. " Ihat in which men
differ from brute beasts," says Mencius,-
"is a thing very inconsiderable; the common
herd lose it very soon; superior men preserve
it carefully." Who knows what sort of life
would result if we had attained to purity?
If I knew so wise a man as could teach me
purity I would go to seek him forthwith. "A
command over our passions, and over the
external senses of the body, and good acts,
are declared by the Ved to be indispensable
in the mind's approximation to God." Yet
the spirit can for the time pervade and con-
trol every member and function of the body,
and transmute what in form is the grossest
sensuality into purity and devotion. The
generative energy, which, when we are loose,
dissipates and makes us unclean, when we
are continent invigorates and inspires us.
Chastity is the flowering of man; and what
are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and
the like, are but various fruits which succeed
it. Man flows at once to God when the
channel of purity is open. By turns our
purity inspires and our impurity casts us
down. He is blessed who is assured that the
animal is dying out in him day by day, and
the divine being established. Perhaps there
is none but has cause for shame on account
of the inferior and brutish nature to which he
is allied. I fear that we are such gods or
demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine
allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite,
and that, to some extent, our very life is our
disgrace. —
How Happy's he who hath due place assigned
To his beasts and disafforested his mind!
Can use his horse, goat, wolf, and ev'ry beast,
And is not ass himself to all the rest!
Else man not only is the herd of swine,
But he's those devils too which did incline
Them to a headlong rage, and made them worse.'
All sensuality is one, though it takes many
forms; all purity is one. It is the same
whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or
sleep sensually. They are but one appetite,
and we only need to see a person do any one
2/.(f., Meng-Tse, teacher of Confucianism, flourished
about 300 B.C.
» Donne, Letter to Sir Edicard Herbert, 11. 9-10,
13-17-
414
HENin' DAVID TIIOREAU
of these things to know how «ireat a sensualist
he is. I he inijHire can neither stand nor sit
with purity. W lien tlie reptile is attacked at
one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at
another. If you would be chaste, you must
be temperate. What is chastity.^ How
shall a man know if he is chaste.'' He shall
not know it. We have heard of this virtue,
but we know not what it is. We speak con-
formably to the rumor which we have heard.
From exertion come wisdom and purity;
from sloth ignorance and sensuality. In the
student sensuality is a sluggish habit of
mind. An unclean person is universally a
slothful one, one who sits by a stove, whom
the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes
without being fatigued. If you would avoid
uncleanness, and all the sins, work earnestly,
though it be at cleaning a stable. Nature is
hard to be overcome, but she must be over-
come. What avails it that you are Christian,
if you are not purer than the heathen, if you
deny yourself no more, if you are not more
religious.'' I know of many systems of re-
ligion esteemed heathenish whose precepts
fill the reader with shame, and provoke him
to new endeavors, though it be to the per-
formance of rites merely.
I hesitate to say these things, but it is not
because of the subject, — I care not how
obscene my words are, — but because I can-
not speak of them without betraying my
impurity. We discourse freely without
shame of one form of sensuality, and are
silent about another. We are so degraded
that we cannot speak simply of the neces-
sary functions of human nature. In earlier
ages, in some countries, every function was
reverently spoken of and regulated by law.
Nothing was too trivial for the Hindoo law-
giver, however offensive it may be to modern
taste. He teaches how to eat, drink, cohabit,
void excrement and urine, and the like,
elevating what is mean, and does not falsely
excuse himself by calling these things trifles.
Every man is the builder of a temple,
called his body, to the god he worships, after
a style purely his own, nor can he get off by
hammering marble instead. We are all
sculptors and painters, and our material is
our own flesh and blood and bones. Any
nobleness begins at once to refine a man's
features, any meanness or sensuality to
imbrute them.
John Farmer sat at his door one September
evening, after a hard day's work, his mind
still running on his labor more or less. Hav-
ing bathed, he sat down to re-create his
intellectual man. It was a rather cool even-
ing, and some of his neighbors were appre-
hending a frost. He had not attended to
the train of his thoughts long when he heard
some one playing on a flute, and that sound
harmonized with his mood. Still he thought
of his work; but tiie burden of his thought
w'as, that though this kept running in his
head, and he found himself planning and
contriving it against his will, yet it concerned
him very little. It was no more than the
scurf of his skin, which was constantly
shuffled off. But the notes of the flute came
home to his ears out of a different sphere
from that he worked in, and suggested work
for certain faculties which slumbered in him.
They gently did away with the street, and
the village, and the state in which he lived.
A voice said to him, — Why do you stay here
and live this mean moiling life, when a
glorious existence is possible for you? Those
same stars twinkle over other fields than
these. — But how to come out of this con-
dition and actually migrate thither? All
that he could think of was to 'practice some
new austerity, to let his mind descend into
his body and redeem it, and treat himself
with ever increasing respect.
XII. BRUTE NEIGHBORS
Sometimes I had a companion^ in my fish-
ing, who came through the village to my
house from the other side of the town, and
the catching of the dinner was as much a
social exercise as the eating of it.
Hermit. I wonder what the world is doing
now. I have not heard so much as a locust
over the sweet-fern these three hours. The
pigeons are all asleep upon their roosts, —
no flutter from them. Was that a farmer's
noon horn which sounded from beyond the
w^oods just now? The hands are coming in
to boiled salt beef and cider and Indian
bread. Why will men worry themselves so?
He that does not eat need not work. I won-
der how much they have reaped. Who
would live there where a body can never
I William Ellery Channing.
WALDEN
415
think for the barkin*; of Hose?' And oh, the
housekeeping! to keep bright the devil's
door-knobs, and scour his tubs tliis bright
day! Better not keep a house. Say, some
liollow tree; and then for morning calls and
dinner-parties! Only a woodpecker tapping.
Oh, they swarm; the sun is too warm there;
they are born too far into life for me. I have
water from the spring, and a loaf of brown
bread on the shelf. — Hark! I hear a rustling
of the leaves. Is it some ill-fed village hound
yielding to the instinct of the chase .^ or the
lost pig which is said to be in these woods,
whose tracks I saw after the rain.'' It comes
on apace; my sumacs and sweetbriers
tremble. — Eh, Mr. Poet, is it you.^ How do
you like the world to-day.''
Poet. See those clouds; how they hang!
That's the greatest thing I have seen to-day.
There's nothing like it in old paintings,
nothing like it in foreign lands, — unless when
we were off the coast of Spain. That's a
true Mediterranean sky. I thought, as I
have my living to get, and have not eaten
to-day, that I might go a-fishing. That's the
true industry for poets. It is the only trade
I have learned. Come, let's along.
Hermit. I cannot resist. My brown bread
will soon be gone. I will go with you gladly
soon, but I am just concluding a serious
meditation. I think that I am near the end
of it. Leave me alone, then, for a while. But
that we may not be delayed, you shall be
digging the bait meanwhile. Angleworms
are rarely to be met with in these parts,
where the soil was never fattened with
manure; the race is nearly extinct. The
sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to
that of catching the fish, when one's appe-
tite is not too keen; and this you may have
all to yourself to-day. I would advise you
to set in the spade down yonder among the
ground-nuts, where you see the johnswort
waving. I think that I may warrant you
one worm to every three sods you turn up, if
you look well in among the roots of the grass,
as if you were weeding. Or, if you choose
to go farther, it will not be unwise, for I have
found the increase of fair bait to be very
nearly as the squares of the distances.
Hermit alone. Let me see; where was I.''
Methinks I was nearly in this frame of mind;
1 1.e.y a dog.
the world lay about at this angle. Shall I
go to heaven or a-fishing. ^ If I should soon
bring this meditation to an end, would
another so sweet occasion be likely to offer .^
I was as near being resolved into the essence
of things as ever I was in my life. I fear my
thoughts will not come back to me. If it
would do any good, I would whistle for them.
When they make us an offer, is it wise to say,
We will think of it.? My thoughts have left
no track, and I cannot find the path again.
What was it that I was thinking oP. It was
a very hazy day. I will just try these three
sentences of Confut-see;2 they may fetch
that state about again. I know not whether
it was the dumps or a budding ecstasy. Mem.
There never is but one opportunity of a kind.
Poet. How now. Hermit, is it too soon.'' I
have got just thirteen whole ones, beside
several which are imperfect or undersized;
but they will do for the smaller fry; they do
not cover up the hook so much. Those
village worms are quite too large; a shiner
may make a meal off one without finding the
skewer.
Hermit. Well, then, let's be off. Shall we
to the Concord.'' There's good sport there if
the water be not too high.
Why do precisely these objects which we
behold make a world? Why has man just
these species of animals for his neighbors;
as if nothing but a mouse could have filled
this crevice? I suspect that Pilpay and Co.^
have put animals to their best use, for they
are all beasts of burden, in a sense, made to
carry some portion of our thoughts.
The mice which haunted my house were
not the common ones, which are said to have
been introduced into the country, but a wild
native kind not found in the village. I sent
one to a distinguished naturalist, and it
interested him much. When I was building,
one of these had its nest underneath the
house, and before I had laid the second floor,
and swept out the shavings, would come out
regularly at lunch time and pick up the
crumbs at my feet. It probably had never
seen a man before; and it soon became quite
familiar, and would run over my shoes and
up my clothes. It could readily ascend the
2 I.e., Confucius.
^ I.e., the makers of fables. (Pilpay is now usually
rendered as Bidpai.)
4i6
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
sides of the room by short impulses, hke a
s(jiiirrel, which it resembled in its motions.
At lencddle with it without becoming proportionately brutified! Is it a praiseworthy matter that I have
spent five golden months in providing food for cows and horses? It is not so."
Not long after he left Brook Farm Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody, whom he had come to
love several years before, and who brought him an inestimable treasure of understanding sympathy,
while she also helped to draw him into the center of New England's intellectual life. With her he went
to Concord, where they lived in the Old Manse from 1842 until 1846. In the former year an enlarged
edition of Twice-Told Tales was published, while in 1 841-1842 the series of children's books called
Grandfather's Chair and Biographical Stories for Children were published. The Celestial Railroad
appeared in 1843, and Mosses from an Old Manse in 1846. Despite this activity, however, Hawthorne
was not yet earning sufficient money to keep himself out of debt, and in 1846 he accepted the post of
Surveyor of the Port of Salem — a position which he kept for three years, when another change in the
national administration again forced him out of office. During this period of financial security he wrote
nothing, but he had been meditating a long tale, which he now immediately began to write. It was
The Scarlet Letter, his greatest work, published in 1850 and immediately recognized as a book that
placed its author at the head of imaginative waiters in America. Following its completion Hawthorne
went to Lenox, among the Berkshire hdls, where he lived for about two years, having for a near neigh-
bor Herman Melville. Here The House of the Seven Gables (1851) and The Blithedale Romance (1852)
were written. In 1852 Hawthorne purchased a house in Concord — which he called "The Wayside" —
and moved there, expecting it to be his home for the remainder of his life. In the same year he pub-
lished A JVcnder-Book for Girls and Boys and a campaign biography of his friend Franklin Pierce. In
the following year Pierce, now President, appointed him U. S. Consul at Liverpool, where he remained
until 1857, and then went to Italy for a stay of two years. Tanglewood Tales had been published in
1853. The 'Marble Faun, the result of his Italian stay, was now published in i860. In 1863 appeared
Our Old Home, a series of observations upon England. The year after this Hawthorne died, while on
a journey undertaken for the sake of his health, in which he was accompanied by his friend Pierce, at
Plymouth, New Hampshire, on 18 May. In following years several more or less fragmentary pieces
were published, as well as six volumes of Passages from Note-Books which have rightfully taken their
place as an integral and valuable part of Hawthorne's great literary accomplishment.
Perhaps no better evaluation of that accomplishment has been made than the one with which
Henry James closed his interesting, though not altogether accurate or trustworthy. Life of Ilazvthorne
in the "English Men of Letters" series: "He was a beautiful, natural, original genius, and his life had
been singularly exempt from worldly preoccupations and vulgar efforts. It had been as pure, as sim-
ple, as unsophisticated, as his work. He had lived primarily in his domestic affections, w^hich were
of the tenderest kind; and then — w^ithout eagerness, without pretension, but with a great deal of quiet
devotion — in his charming art. His work will remain; it is too original and exquisite to pass away;
among the men of imagination he will always have his niche. No one has had just that vision of life,
and no one has had a literary form that more successfully expressed his vision. He was not a moral-
ist, and he was not simply a poet. The moralists are weightier, denser, richer, in a sense; the poets
are more purely inconclusive and irresponsible. He combined in a singular degree the spontaneity of
the imagination with a haunting care for moral problems. Man's conscience was his theme, but he
saw it in the light of a creative fancy which added, out of its own substance, an interest, and, I may
almost say, an importance."
THE SCARLET LETTER
433
THE SCARLET LETTERS
I. THE PRISON-DOOR
A THRONG of bearded men, in sad-colored
garments, and gray, steeple-crowned hats,
intermixed with women, some wearing hoods
and others bareheaded, was assembled m front
of a wooden edifice, the door of which was
heavily timbered with oak, and studded with
iron spikes.
The founders of a new colony, whatever
Utopia of human virtue and happmess they
might originally project, have mvariably
recognized it among their earliest practical
necessities to allot a portion of the virgm soil
as a cemetery, and another portion as the site
of a prison. In accordance with this rule, it
may safely be assumed that the forefathers
of Boston had built the first prison-house
somewhere in the vicinity of CornhiU, almost
as seasonably as they marked out the first
burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson's lot, and
round about his grave, which subsequently
became the nucleus of all the congregated
sepulchers in the old churchyard of King's
Chapel. Certain it is, that, some fifteen or
twenty years after the settlement of the
town, the wooden jail was already marked
with weather-stains and other indications of
age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its
beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust
on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door
looked more antique than anything else in
the New World. Like all that pertains to
crime, it seemed never to have known a
1 On 4 February, 1850, Hawthorne wrote to Horatio
Bridge: "I finished my book only yesterday, one end
being in press in Boston, while the other was in my
head here in Salem; so that, as you see, the story is
at least fourteen miles long. . . . The publisher tells
me lit] will not be out before April. He speaks of it
in tremendous terms of approbation. So does Mrs.
Hawthorne, to whom I read the conclusion last night.
It broke her heart, and sent her to bed with a grievous
headache, which I look upon as a tremendous success."
Some years later, in England, Hawthorne wrote:
"Speaking of Thackeray, I cannot but wonder at his
coolness in respect to his own pathos, and compare it
with my emotions when I read the last scene of The
Scarlet Letter to my wife just after writing it — tried to
read it, rather, for my voice swelled and heaved, as
if I were tossed up and down on an ocean as it subsides
after a storm. But I was in a very nervous state
then, having gone through a great diversity of emotion
while writing it, for many months."
The Scarlet Letter is reprinted in this volume by
permission of, and by arrangement with, Houghton
Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers.
youthful era. Before this ugly edifice, and
between it and the wheel-track of the street,
was a grass-plot, much overgrown with bur-
dock, pigweed, apple-peru, and such unsightly
vegetation, which evidently found something
congenial in the soil that had so early borne
the black flower of civilized society, a prison.
But, on one side of the portal, and rooted
almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-
bush, covered, in this month of June, with
its delicate gems, which might be imagined
to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to
the prisoner as he went in, and to the con-
demned criminal as he came forth to his
doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature
could pity and be kind to him.
This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has
been kept alive in history; but whether it
had merely survived out of the stern old
wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic
pines and oaks that originally overshadowed
it, — or whether, as there is fair authority for
believing, it had sprung up under the foot-
steps of the sainted Ann Hutchinson, as she
entered the prison-door, — we shall not take
upon us to determine. Finding it so directly
on the threshold of our narrative, which is
now about to issue from that inauspicious
portal, we could hardly do otherwise than
pluck one of its flowers, and present it to
the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to
symbolize some sweet moral blossom, that
may be found along the track, or relieve the
darkening close of a tale of human frailty
and sorrow.
II. THE MARKET-PLACE
The grass-plot before the jail, in Prison
Lane, on a certain summer morning, not less
than two centuries ago, was occupied by a
pretty large number of the inhabitants of
Boston; all with their eyes intently fastened
on the iron-clamped oaken door. Amongst
any other population, or at a later period in
the history of New England, the grim rigidity
that petrified the bearded physiognomies of
these good people would have augured some
awful business in hand. It could have be-
tokened nothing short of the anticipated
execution of some noted culprit, on whom
the sentence of a legal tribunal had but con-
firmed the verdict of public sentiment. But,
in that early severity of the Puritan charac-
ter, an inference of this kind could not so
4.54
NAIIIANIEL HAWIIIORNK
indubitably be drawn. It might be that a
sluii,ij;ish bond-servant, or an undutiful child,
whom his parents had given over to the civil
autliority, was to be corrected at the whip-
ping-post. It might be that an Antinomian,
a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist was
to be scourged out of the town, or an idle
and vagrant Indian, whom the white man's
fire-water had made riotous about the streets,
was to be driven with stripes into the shadow
of the forest. It might be, too, that a witch,
like old Mistress Ilibbins, the bitter-tempered
widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the
gallows. In either case, there was very much
the same solemnity of demeanor on the part
of the spectators; as befitted a people amongst
whom religion and law were almost identical,
and in whose character both were so thor-
oughly interfused, that the mildest and the
severest acts of public disciphne w^ere alike
made venerable and awful. Meager, indeed,
and cold was the sympathy that a trans-
gressor might look for, from such bystanders,
at the scaffold. On the other hand, a pen-
alty, which, in our days, would infer a degree
of mocking infamy and ridicule, might then
be invested with almost as stern a dignity
as the punishment of death itself.
It was a circumstance to be noted, on the
summer morning when our story begins its
course, that the women, of whom there were
several in the crowd, appeared to take a
peculiar interest in whatever penal infliction
might be expected to ensue. The age had
not so much refinement, that any sense of
impropriety restrained the wearers of petti-
coat and farthingale from stepping forth into
the public ways, and wedging their not un-
substantial persons, if occasion were, into
the throng nearest tj the scaffold at an
execution. Morally, as well as materially,
there was a coarser fiber in those wives and
maidens of old English birth and breeding,
than in their fair descendants, separated from
them by a series of six or seven generations;
for, throughout that chain of ancestry, every
successive mother has transmitted to her
child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and
briefer beauty, and a slighter physical frame,
if not a character of less force and solidity,
than her own. The women who w^ere now
standing about the prison-door stood within
less than half a century of the period when
the man-like EHzabeth had been the not
altogether unsuitable representative of the
sex. They were her countrywomen; and the
beef and ale of their native land, with a moral
diet not a whit more refined, entered largely
into their composition. The bright morning
sun, therefore, shone on broad shoulders and
well -developed busts, and on round and ruddy
cheeks, that had ripened in the far-off island,
and had hardly yet grown paler or thinner in
the atmosphere of New England. Ihere was,
moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech
among these matrons, as most of them seemed
to be, that would startle us at the present
day, whether in respect to its purport or its
volume of tone.
"Goodwives," said a hard-featured dame
of fifty, "I'll tell ye a piece of my mind. It
would be greatly for the public behoof, if we
women, being of mature age and church-
members in good repute, should have the
handling of such malefactresses as this
Hester Prynne. What think ye, gossip. f* If
the hussy stood up for judgment before us
five, that are now here in a knot together,
would she come oflF w^ith such a sentence as
the worshipful magistrates have awarded.''
Marry, I trow not!"
"People say," said another, "that the
Reverend Master Dimmesdale, her godly
pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that
such a scandal should have come upon his
congregation."
"The magistrates are God-fearing gentle-
men, but merciful overmuch, — that is a
truth," added a third autumnal matron.
"At the very least, they should have put the
brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne's fore-
head. Madam Hester would have winced
at that, I warrant me. But she, — the
naughty baggage, — little will she care what
they put upon the bodice of her gown! Why,
look you, she may cover it w-ith a brooch, or
such like heathenish adornment, and so walk
the streets as brave as ever!"
"Ah, but," interposed, more softly, a
young wife, holding a child by the hand,
"let her cover the mark as she will, the pang
of it will be always in her heart."
"What do we talk of marks and brands,
whether on the bodies of her gown, or the
flesh of her forehead.^" cried another female,
the ugliest as well as the most pitiless of
these self-constituted judges. "This woman
has brought shame upon us all, and ought to
IHE SCARLET LETTER
435
die. Ls there not law for it? Truly, there is,
both in the Scripture and the statute-book.
Then let the niap;istrates, who have made it
of no effect, thank themselves if their own
wives and daughters go astray!"
"Mercy on us, goodwife," exclaimed a man
in the crowd, "is there no virtue in woman,
save what springs from a wholesome fear of
the gallows.'' That is the hardest word yet!
Hush, now, gossips! for the lock is turning
in the prison-door, and here comes Mistress
Prynne herself."
The door of the jail being flung open from
within, there appeared, in the first place, like
a black shadow emerging into sunshine, the
grim and grisly presence of the town-beadle,
with a sword by his side, and his staflF of
office in his hand. This personage prefigured
and represented in his aspect the w^hole dis-
mal severity of the Puritanic code of law,
which It was his busmess to admmister in its
final and closest application to the oflFender.
Stretching forth the official staff in his left
hand, he laid his right upon the shoulder of a
young woman, whom he thus drew forward;
until, on the threshold of the prison-door,
she repelled him, by an action marked with
natural dignity and force of character, and
stepped into the open air, as if by her own
free will. She bore in her arms a child, a
baby of some three months old, who winked
and turned aside its little face from the too
vivid light of day; because its existence,
heretofore, had brought it acquainted only
with the gray twilight of a dungeon, or other
darksome apartment of the prison.
When the young woman — the mother of
this child — stood fully revealed before the
crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to
clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not so
much by an impulse of motherly affection,
as that she might thereby conceal a certain
token, which was wrought or fastened into
her dress. In a moment, however, wisely
judging that one token of her shame would
but poorly serve to hide another, she took
the baby on her arm, and, with a burning
blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance
that would not be abashed, looked around
at her townspeople and neighbors. On the
breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, sur-
rounded with an elaborate embroidery and
fantastic flourishes of gold-thread, appeared
the letter A. It was so artistically done, and
with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuri-
ance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a
last and fitting decoration to the apparel
which she wore; and which was of a splendor
in accordance with the taste of the age, but
greatly beyond what was allowed by the
sumptuary regulations of the colony.
The young woman was tall, with a figure
of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had
dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it
threw off the sunshine with a gleam, and a
face which, besides being beautiful from
regularity of feature and richness of complex-
ion, had the impressiveness belonging to a
marked brow and deep black eyes. She was
lady-like, too, after the manner of the femi-
nine gentility of those days; characterized
by a certain state and dignity, rather than
by the delicate, evanescent, and indescrib-
able grace, which is now recognized as its
indication. And never had Hester Prynne
appeared more lady-like, in the antique inter-
pretation of the term, than as she issued from
the prison. Those who had before known
her, and had expected to behold her dimmed
and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were
astonished, and even startled, to perceive how
her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the
misfortune and ignominy in which she was
enveloped. It may be true, that, to a sensi-
tive observer, there was something exquisitely
painful in it. Her attire, which, indeed, she
had wrought for the occasion, in prison, and
had modeled much after her own fancy,
seemed to express the attitude of her spirit,
the desperate recklessness of her mood, by
its wild and picturesque peculiarity. But the
point which drew all eyes, and, as it were,
transfigured the wearer, — so that both men
and women, who had been familiarly ac-
quainted with Hester Prynne, were now
impressed as if they beheld her for the first
time, — was that Scarlet Letter, so fantas-
tically embroidered and illuminated upon
her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, tak-
ing her out of the ordinary relations with
humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by
herself.
"She hath good skill at her needle, that's
certain," remarked one of her female spec-
tators; "but did ever a woman, before this
brazen hussy, contrive such a way of show-
ing it! Why, gossips, what is it but to laugh
in the faces of our godly magistrates, and
436
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
make a pride out of what they, worthy
gentlemen, meant for a punishment?"
"It were well," muttered the most iron-
visac;ed of the old dames, "if we stripped
Madam Hester's rich gown off her dainty
shoulders; and as for the red letter, which
she hath stitched so curiously, I'll bestow a
rag of mine own rheumatic flannel, to make
a fitter one!"
"O, peace, neighbors, peace!" whispered
their youngest companion; "do not let her
hear you! Not a stitch in that embroidered
letter, but she has felt it in her heart."
The grim beadle now made a gesture with
his staflP.
"Make way, good people, make w^ay, in
the King's name!" cried he. "Open a
passage; and, I promise ye. Mistress Prynne
shall be set where man, woman, and child
may have a fair sight of her brave apparel,
from this time till an hour past meridian.
A blessing on the righteous Colony of the
Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged
out into the sunshine! Come along, Madam
Hester, and show your scarlet letter in the
market-place!"
A lane was forthwith opened through the
crowd of spectators. Preceded by the beadle,
and attended by an irregular procession of
stern-browed men and unkindly visaged
women, Hester Prynne set forth towards the
place appointed for her punishment. A
crowd of eager and curious school-boys,
understanding little of the matter in hand,
except that it gave them a half-holiday, ran
before her progress, turning their heads con-
tinually to stare into her face, and at the
winking baby in her arms, and at the igno-
minious letter on her breast. It was no great
distance, in those days, from the prison-door
to the market-place. Measured by the
prisoner's experience, however, it might be
reckoned a journey of some length; for,
haughty as her demeanor was, she perchance
underwent an agony from every footstep of
those that thronged to see her, as if her heart
had been fluHg into the street for them all to
spurn and trample upon. In our nature,
however, there is a provision, alike marvelous
and merciful, that the sufferer should never
know the intensity of what he endures by
its present torture, but chiefly by the pang
that rankles after it. With almost a serene
deportment, therefore, Hester Prynne passed
through this portion of her ordeal, and came
to a sort of scaflbld, at the western extremity
of the market-place. It stood nearly beneath
the eaves of Boston's earliest church, and
appeared to be a fixture there.
In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion
of a penal machine, which now, for two or
three generations past, has been merely his-
torical and traditionary among us, but was
held, in the old time, to be as effectual an
agent, in the promotion of good citizenship,
as ever was the guillotine among the terror-
ists of France. It was, in short, the plat-
form of the pillory; and above it rose the
framework of that instrument of discipline,
so fashioned as to confine the human head
in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the
public gaze. The very ideal of ignominy was
embodied and made manifest in this con-
trivance of wood and iron. There can be
no outrage, methinks, against our common
nature, — whatever be the delinquencies of
the individual, — no outrage more flagrant
than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for
shame; as it was the essence of this punish-
ment to do. In Hester Prynne's instance,
however, as not unfrequently in other cases,
her sentence bore, that she should stand a
certain time upon the platform, but without
undergoing that gripe about the neck and
confinement of the head, the proneness to
which was the most devilish characteristic of
this ugly engine. Knowing well her part, she
ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was
thus displayed to the surrounding multitude,
at about the height of a man's shoulders
above the Street.
Had there been a Papist among the crowd
of Puritans, he might have seen in this beau-
tiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and
mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an
object to remind him of the image of Divine
Maternity, which so many illustrious painters
havevied with oneanother torepresent; some-
thing which should remind him, indeed, but
only by contrast, of that sacred image of
sinless motherhood, whose infant was to
redeem the world. Here, there was the taint
of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of
human life, working such eflPect, that the
world was only the darker for this woman's
beauty, and the more lost for the infant that
she had borne.
The scene was not without a mixture of
THE SCARLET LET'IER
437
awe, such as must always invest the spec-
tacle of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature,
before society shall have grown corrupt
enough to smile, instead of shuddering, at it.
The witnesses of Hester Prynne's disgrace
had not yet passed beyond their simplicity.
They were stern enough to look upon her
death, had that been the sentence, without
a murmur at its severity, but had none of the
heartlessness of another social state, which
would find only a theme for jest in an exhibi-
tion like the present. Even had there been
a disposition to turn the matter into ridi-
cule, it must have been repressed and over-
powered by the solemn presence of men no
less dignified than the Governor, and several
of his counselors, a judge, a general, and the
ministers of the town; all of whom sat or
stood in a balcony of the meeting-house,
looking down upon the platform. When
such personages could constitute a part of
the spectacle, without risking the majesty
or reverence of rank and office, it was safely
to be inferred that the infliction of a legal
sentence would have an earnest and effectual
meaning. Accordingly, the crowd was
somber and grave. The unhappy culprit
sustained herself as best a woman might,
under the heavy weight of a thousand unre-
lenting eyes, all fastened upon her, and con-
centrated at her bosom. It was almost intol-
erable to be borne. Of an impulsive and
passionate nature, she had fortified herself
to encounter the stings and venomous stabs
of public contumely, wreaking itself in every
variety of insult; but there was a quality so
much more terrible in the solemn mood of
the popular mind, that she longed rather to
behold all those rigid countenances con-
torted with scornful merriment, and herself
the object. Had a roar of laughter burst from
the multitude, — each man, each woman, each
little shrill-voiced child, contributing their
individual parts, — Hester Prynne might have
repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful
smile. But, under the leaden infliction
which it was her doom to endure, she felt, at
moments, as if she must needs shriek out
with the full power of her lungs, and cast her-
self from the scaflTold down upon the ground,
or else go mad at once.
Yet there were intervals when the whole
scene, in which she was the most conspicu-
ous object, seemed to vanish from her eyes,
or, at least, glimmered indistinctly before
them, like a mass of imperfectly shaped and
spectral images. Her mind, and especially
her memory, was preternaturally active, and
kept bringing up other scenes than this
roughly hewn street of a little town, on the
edge of the Western wilderness; other faces
than were lowering upon her from beneath
the brims of those steeple-crowned hats.
Reminiscences the most trifling and imma-
terial, passages of infancy and school-days,
sports, childish quarrels, and the little domes-
tic traits of her maiden years, came swarming
back upon her, intermingled with recollec-
tions of whatever was gravest in her subse-
quent life; one picture precisely as vivid as
another; as if all were of similar importance,
or all alike a play. Possibly it was an in-
stinctive device of her spirit, to relieve itself,
by the exhibition of these phantasmagoric
forms, from the cruel weight and hardness
of the reality.
Be that as it might, the scaffold of the
pillory was a point of view that revealed to
Hester Prynne the entire track along which
she had been treading since her happy in-
fancy. Standing on that miserable eminence,
she saw again her native village, in Old Eng-
land, and her paternal home; a decayed house
of gray stone, with a poverty-stricken aspect,
but retaining a half-obliterated shield of arms
over the portal, in token of antique gentility.
She saw her father's face, with its bald brow,
and reverend white beard, that flowed over
the old-fashioned Elizabethan ruff; her
mother's, too, with the look of heedful and
anxious love which it always wore in her
remembrance, and which, even since her
death, had so often laid the impediment of a
gentle remonstrance in her daughter's path-
way. She saw her own face, glowing with
girlish beauty, and illuminating all the inte-
rior of the dusky mirror in which she had
been wont to gaze at it. There she beheld
another countenance, of a man well stricken
in years, a pale, thin, scholar-like visage,
with eyes dim and bleared by the lamplight
that had served them to pore over many pon-
derous books. Yet those same bleared optics
had a strange, penetrating power, when it
was their owner's purpose to read the human
soul. This figure of the study and the clois-
ter, as Hester Prynne's womanly fancy failed
not to recall, was slightly deformed, with the
438
NATHANIEL HAW IHORNK
left slioulilcr a trifle ln<;her than the ri^ht.
Next rose before her, in memory's picture-
gallery, the intricate and narrow tiiorou;^h-
fares, the tall, i;ray houses, the huge cathe-
drals, and the public ediHces, ancient in date
and quaint m architecture, of a Continental
city; where a new life had awaited her, still
in connection with the misshapen scholar; a
new life, but feeding itself on time-worn
materials, like a tuft of green moss on a
crumbhng wall. Lastly, in lieu of these shift-
ing scenes, came back the rude market-place
of the Puritan settlement, with all the towns-
people assembled and leveling their stern
regards at Hester Prynne, — yes, at herself, —
who stood on the scaffold of the pillory, an
infant on her arm, and the letter A, in
scarlet, fantastically embroidered with gold
thread, upon her bosom!
Could it be true? She clutched the child
so fiercely to her breast, that it sent forth a
cry; she turned her eyes downward at the
scarlet letter, and even touched it with her
finger, to assure herself that the infant and
the shame were real. Yes! — these were her
realities, — all else had vanished!
III. THE RECOGNITION
From this intense consciousness of being
the object of severe and universal observa-
tion, the wearer of the scarlet letter was at
length relieved, by discerning, on the out-
skirts of the crowd, a figure which irresistibly
took possession of her thoughts. An Indian,
in his native garb, was standing there; but
the red men were not so infrequent visitors
of the English settlements, that one of them
would have attracted any notice from Hester
Prynne, at such a time; much less would he
have excluded all other objects and ideas
from her mind. By the Indian's side, and
evidently sustaining a companionship with
him, stood a white man, clad in a strange
disarray of civilized and savage costume.
He was small in stature, with a furrowed
visage, which, as yet, could hardly be termed
aged. There was a remarkable intelligence
in his features, as of a person who had so cul-
tivated his mental part that it could not fail
to mold the physical to itself, and become
manifest by unmistakable tokens. Although,
by a seemingly careless arrangement of his
heterogeneous garb, he had endeavored to
conceal or abate the peculiarity, it was suffi-
ciently evident to Hester Prynne, that one
of this man's shoulders rose higher than the
other. Again, at the first instant of perceiv-
ing that thin \ isage, and the slight deformity
of the figure, she pressed her infant to her
bosom with so convulsive a force that the
poor babe uttered another cry of pain. But
the mother did not seem to hear it.
At his arrival in the market-place, and
some time before she saw him, the stranger
had bent his eyes on Hester Prynne. It was
carelessly, at first, like a man chiefly accus-
tomed to look inward, and to whom external
matters are of little value and import, unless
they bear relation to something within his
mind. Very soon, however, his look became
keen and penetrative. A writhing horror
twisted itself across his features, like a snake
gliding swiftly over them, and making one
little pause, with all its wreathed intervolu-
tions in open sight. His face darkened with
some powerful emotion, which, nevertheless,
he so instantaneously controlled by an effort
of his will, that, save at a single moment, its
expression might have passed for calmness.
After a brief space, the convulsion grew
almost imperceptible, and finally subsided
into the depths of his nature. When he
found the eyes of Hester Prynne fastened
on his own, and saw that she appeared to
recognize him, he slowly and calmly raised
his finger, made a gesture with it in the air,
and laid it on his lips.
Then touching the shoulder of a townsman
who stood next to him, he addressed him, in
a formal and courteous manner.
"I pray you, good Sir," said he, "who is
this woman? — and wherefore is she here set
up to public shame?"
"You must needs be a stranger in this
region, friend," answered the townsman,
looking curiously at the questioner and his
savage companion, "else you would surely
have heard of Mistress Hester Prynne, and
her evil doings. She hath raised a great
scandal, I promise you, in godly Master
Dimmesdale's church."
"You say truly," replied the other. "I
am a stranger, and have been a wanderer,
sorely against my will. I have met with
grievous mishaps by sea and land, and have
been long held in bonds among the heathen-
folk, to the southward; and am nov/ brought
hither by this Indian, to be redeemed out of
THE SCARLET LETTER
439
my captivity. \\ ill it please you, therefore,
to tell me of Hester Prynne's, — have I her
name rightly? — of this woman's offenses,
and what has brouji;ht her to yonder scaf-
fold?"
"Truly, friend; and methinks it must
gladden your heart, after your troubles and
sojourn in the wilderness," said the towns-
man, "to find yourself, at length, in a land
where iniquity is searched out, and punished
in the sight of rulers and people; as here in
our godly New England. Yonder woman.
Sir, you must know, was the wife of a certain
learned man, English by birth, but who had
long dwelt in Amsterdam, whence, some
good time agone, he was minded to cross over
and cast in his lot with us of the Massachu-
setts. To this purpose, he sent his wife be-
fore him, remaining himself to look after
some necessary affairs. Marry, good Sir, in
some two years, or less, that the woman has
been a dweller here in Boston, no tidings
have come of this learned gentleman, Master
Prynne; and his young wife, look you, being
left to her own misguidance — "
"Ah! — aha! — I conceive you," said the
stranger, with a bitter smile. "So learned a
man as you speak of should have learned
this too in his books. And who, by your
favor, Sir, may be the father of yonder
babe — it is some three or four months old,
I should judge — which Mistress Prynne is
holding in her arms.^"
"Of a truth, friend, that matter remaineth
a riddle; and the Daniel who shall expound
it is yet a-wanting," answered the towns-
man. "Madam Hester absolutely refuseth
to speak, and the magistrates have laid their
heads together in vain. Peradventure the
guilty one stands looking on at this sad
spectacle, unknown of man, and forgetting
that God sees him."
"The learned man," observed the stranger,
with another smile, "should come himself,
to look into the mystery."
" It behooves him well, if he be still in life,"
responded the townsman, "Now, good Sir,
our Massachusetts magistracy, bethinking
themselves that this woman is youthful and
fair, and doubtless was strongly tempted to
her fall, — and that, moreover, as is most
likely, her husband may be at the bottom of
the sea, — they have not been bold to put in
force the extremity of our righteous law
against her. The penalty thereof is death.
But in their great mercy and tenderness of
heart, they have doomed Mistress Prynne
to stand only a space of three hours on the
platform of the pillory, and then and there-
after, for the remainder of her natural life,
to wear a mark of shame upon her bosom."
"A wise sentence!" remarked the stranger,
gravely bowing his head. "Thus she v^ill
be a living sermon against sin, until the igno-
minious letter be engraved upon her tomb-
stone. It irks me, nevertheless, that the
partner of her iniquity should not, at least,
stand on the scaffold by her side. But he
will be known! — he will be known! — he will
be known!"
He bowed courteously to the communi-
cative townsman, and, whispering a few
words to his Indian attendant, they both
made their way through the crowd.
While this passed, Hester Prynne had
been standing on her pedestal, still with a
fixed gaze towards the stranger; so fixed a
gaze, that, at moments of intense absorption,
all other objects in the visible world seemed
to vanish, leaving only him and her. Such
an interview, perhaps, would have been
more terrible than even to meet him as she
now did, with the hot, midday sun burning
down upon her face, and lighting up its
shame; with the scarlet token of infamy on
her breast; with the sin-born infant in her
arms; with a whole people, drawn forth as
to a festival, staring at the features that
should have been seen only in the quiet gleam
of the fireside, in the happy shadow of a home,
or beneath a matronly veil, at church. Dread-
ful as it was, she was conscious of a shelter in
the presence of these thousand witnesses. It
was better to stand thus, with so many betwixt
him and her, than to greet him, face to face,
they two alone. She fled for refuge, as it
were, to the public exposure, and dreaded
the moment when its protection should be
withdrawn from her. Involved in these
thoughts, she scarcely heard a voice behind
her, until it had repeated her name more
than once, in a loud and solemn tone, audible
to the whole multitude.
"Harken unto me, Hester Prynne!" said
the voice.
It has already been noticed, that directly
over the platform on which Hester Prynne
stood was a kind of bnlcouy, or open gallery,
440
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
appended to the mcetinp;-housc. It was the
place whence proclamations were wont to be
made, amidst an assemblage of the magis-
tracy, with all the ceremonial that attended
such public observances in those days. Here,
to witness the scene which we are describing,
sat Governor Bellingham himself, with four
sergeants about his chair, bearing halberds,
as a guard of honor. He wore a dark feather
in his hat, a border of embroidery on his
cloak, and a black velvet tunic beneath; a
gentleman advanced in years, with a hard
experience written in his wrinkles. He was
not ill fitted to be the head and representa-
tive of a community, which owed its origin
and progress, and its present state of devel-
opment, not to the impulses of youth, but to
the stern and tempered energies of manhood,
and the somber sagacity of age; accomplish-
ing so much, precisely because it imagined
and hoped so little. The other eminent char-
acters, by w^hom the chief ruler was sur-
rounded, were distinguished by a dignity of
mien, belonging to a period when the forms
of authority were felt to possess the sacred-
ness of Divine institutions. They were,
doubtless, good men, just, and sage. But,
out of the whole human family, it would not
have been easy to select the same number of
wise and virtuous persons, who should be less
capable of sitting in judgment on an erring
woman's heart, and disentangling its mesh
of good and evil, than the sages of rigid aspect
towards whom Hester Prynne now turned
her face. She seemed conscious, indeed, that
whatever sympathy she might expect lay in
the larger and warmer heart of the multitude;
for, as she lifted her eyes towards the balcony,
the unhappy woman grew pale and trembled.
The voice which had called her attention
was that of the reverend and famous John
Wilson, the eldest clergyman of Boston, a
great scholar, like most of his contemporaries
in the profession, and withal a man of kind
and genial spirit. This last attribute, however,
had been less carefully developed than his
intellectual gifts, and was, in truth, rather a
matter of shame than self-congratulation
with him. There he stood, with a border of
grizzled locks beneath his skullcap; while his
gray eyes, accustomed to the shaded light of
his study, w^ere winking, like those of Hester's
infant, in the unadulterated sunshine. He
looked like the darkly engraved portraits
which we see prefixed to old volumes of ser-
mons; and had no more right than one of
those portraits would have, to step fortii, as
he now did, and meddle with a question of
human guilt, passion, and anguish.
"Hester Prynne," said the clergyman, *T
have striven with my young brother here,
under whose preaching of the word you have
been privileged to sit," — here Mr. Wilson
laid his hand on the shoulder of a pale young
man beside him, — "I have sought, I say, to
persuade this godly youth, that he should
deal with you, here in the face of Heaven,
and before these wise and upright rulers, and
in hearing of all the people, as touching the
vileness and blackness of your sin. Knowing
your natural temper better than I, he could
the better judge what arguments to use,
whether of tenderness or terror, such as
might prevail over your hardness and obsti-
nacy; insomuch that you should no longer
hide the name of him who tempted you to
this grievous fall. But he opposes to me
(with a young man's oversoftness, albeit wise
beyond his years), that it were wronging the
very nature of woman to force her to lay open
her heart's secrets in such broad daylight, and
in presence of so great a multitude. Truly,
as I sought to convince him, the shame lay
in the commission of the sin, and not in the
showing of it forth. What say you to it, once
again, Brother Dimmesdale? Must it be
thou, or I, that shall deal with this poor
sinner's soul?"
There was a murmur among the dignified
and reverend occupants of the balcony; and
Governor Bellingham gave expression to its
purport, speaking in an authoritative voice,
although tempered with respect towards the
youthful clergyman whom he addressed. J
"Good Master Dimmesdale," said he, »
"the responsibility of this woman's soul lies
greatly with you. It behooves you, there-
fore, to exhort her to repentance, and to con-
fession, as a proof and consequence thereof."
The directness of this appeal drew the eyes
of the whole crowd upon the Reverend Mr.
Dimmesdale; a young clergyman, who had
come from one of the great English univer-
sities, bringing all the learning of the age
into our wild forest-land. His eloquence and
religious fervor had already given the earnest
of high eminence in his profession. He was
a person of very striking aspect, with a white,
THE SCARL?:T LiriTER
441
lofty, and impending brow, large, brown,
melancholy eyes, and a mouth which, unless
when he forcibly compressed it, was apt to
be tremulous, expressing both nervous sensi-
' bility and a vast power of self-restraint. Not-
\ withstanding his high native gifts and
' scholar-like attainments, there was an air
about this young minister, — an apprehen-
sive, a startled, a half-frightened look, — as
of a being who felt himself quite astray and
at a loss in the pathway of human existence,
and could only be at ease in some seclusion
of his own. Therefore, so far as his duties
would permit, he trod in the shadowy by-
paths, and thus kept himself simple and child-
like; coming forth, when occasion w^as, with
a freshness, and fragrance, and dewy purity
of thought, which, as many people said,
affected them like the speech of an angel.
Such was the young man whom the
Reverend Mr. Wilson and the Governor had
introduced so openly to the public notice,
bidding him speak, in the hearing of all men,
to that mystery of a woman's soul, so sacred
even in its pollution. The trying nature of
his position drove the blood from his cheek,
and made his lips tremulous.
*' Speak to the woman, my brother," said
Mr. Wilson. "It is of moment to her soul,
and therefore, as the worshipful Governor
says, momentous to thine own, in v/hose
charge hers is. Exhort her to confess the
truth!"
The Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale bent his
head, in silent prayer, as it seemed, and then
came forward.
"Hester Prynne," said he, leaning over
the balcony and looking down steadfastly
into her eyes, "thou hearest what this good
man says, and seest the accountability under
which I labor. If thou feelest it to be for thy
soul's peace, and that thy earthly punishment
will thereby be made more effectual to salva-
tion, I charge thee to speak out the name of
thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer! Be
not silent from any mistaken pity and tender-
ness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though
he were to step down from a high place, and
stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of
shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a
guilty heart through life. What can thy
silence do for him, except it tempt him — yea,
compel him, as it were — to add hypocrisy to
sin ? Heaven hath granted thee an open igno-
miny, that thereby thou mayest work out an
open triumph over the evil within thee, and
the sorrow without. Take heed how thou
deniest to him — who, perchance, hath not
the courage to grasp it for himself — the
bitter, but wholesome, cup that is now pre-
sented to thy lips!"
The young pastor's voice was tremulously
sweet, rich, deep, and broken. The feeling
that it so evidently manifested, rather than
the direct purport of the words, caused it to
vibrate within all hearts, and brought the
listeners into one accord of sympathy. Even
the poor baby, at Hester's bosom, was
affected by the same influence; for it directed
its hitherto vacant gaze towards Mr. Dim-
mesdale, and held up its little arms, with a
half-pleased, half-plaintive murmur. So
powerful seemed the minister's appeal, that
the people could not believe but that Hester
Prynne would speak out the guilty name;
or else that the guilty one himself, in what-
ever high or lowly place he stood, would be
drawn forth by an inward and inevitable
necessity, and compelled to ascend the scaf-
fold.
Hester shook her head.
"Woman, transgress not beyond the limits
of Heaven's mercy!" cried the Reverend
Mr. Wilson, more harshly than before.
"That little babe hath been gifted with a
voice, to second and confirm the counsel
v/hich thou hast heard. Speak out the name!
That, and thy repentance, may avail to take
the scarlet letter off thy breast."
"Never!" replied Hester Prynne, looking,
not at Mr. Wilson, but into the deep and
troubled eyes of the younger clergyman.
"It is too deeply branded. Ye cannot take
it off. And w^ould that I might endure his
agony, as well as mine!"
"Speak, woman!" said another voice,
coldly and sternly, proceeding from the
crowd about the scaffold. "Speak; and give
your child a father!"
"I will not speak!" answered Hester, turn-
ing pale as death, but responding to this
voice, which she too surely recognized. "And
my child must seek a heavenly Father; she
shall never know an earthly one!"
"She will not speak!" murmured Mr.
Dimmesdale, who, leaning over the balcony,
with his hand upon his heart, had awaited
the result of his appeal. He now drew back,
442
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
with a long respiration. "Wondrous strenj^th
and j;encrosity of a woman's Iicart! She will
not speak!"
Discerninu; the impracticable state of tlie
poor culprit's mind, the elder cleruyman,
who had carefully prepared himself for the
occasion, addressed to the multitude a dis-
course on sin, in all its branches, but with
continual reference to the iu;nominious letter.
So forcibly did he dwell uj^on tiiis symbol, for
the hour or more during which his periods
were rolling over the people's heads, that it
assumed new terrors in their imagination,
and seemed to derive its scarlet hue from the
flames of the infernal pit. Hester Prynne,
meanwhile, kept her place upon the pedestal
of shame, with glazed eyes, and an air of
weary indifference. She had borne, that
morning, all that nature could endure; and
as her temperament was not of the order that
escapes from too intense suffering by a swoon,
her spirit could only shelter itself beneath a
stony crust of insensibility, while the faculties
of animal life remained entire. In this state,
the voice of the preacher thundered remorse-
lessly, but unavailingly, upon her ears. The
infant, during the latter portion of her ordeal,
pierced the air with its wailings and screams;
she strove to hush it, mechanically, but
seemed scarcely to sympathize with its
trouble. With the same hard demeanor, she
was led back to prison, and vanished from
the public gaze within its iron-clamped
portal. It was whispered, by those who
peered after her, that the scarlet letter
threw a lurid gleam along the dark passage-
way of the interior.
IV. THE INTERVIEW
After her return to the prison, Hester
Prynne was found to be in a state of nervous
excitement that demanded constant watch-
fulness, lest she should perpetrate violence
on herself, or do some half-frenzied mischief
to the poor babe. As night approached, it
proving impossible to quell her insubordina-
tion by rebuke or threats of punishment,
Master Brackett, the jailer, thought fit to
introduce a physician. He described him
as a man of skill of all Christian modes of
physical science, and likewise familiar with
whatever the savage people could teach, in
respect to medicinal herbs and roots that
grew in the forest. To say the truth, there
was much need of professional assistance, not
merely for Hester herself, but still more
urgently for the child; who, drawing its sus-
tenance from the maternal bosom, seemed to
have drank in with it all the turmoil, the
anguish and despair, which pervaded the
mother's system. It now writhed in con-
vulsions of pain, and was a forcible type, in
its little frame, of the moral agony which
Hester Prynne had borne throughout the
day.
Closely following the jailer into the dismal
apartment appeared that individual, of singu-
lar aspect, whose presence in the crowd had
been of such deep interest to the wearer of
the scarlet letter. He was lodged in the
prison, not as suspected of any offense, but
as the most convenient and suitable mode
of disposing of him, until the magistrates
should have conferred with the Indian saga-
mores respecting his ransom. His name was
announced as Roger Chillingworth. The
jailer, after ushering him into the room,
remained a moment, marveling at the com-
parative quiet that followed his entrance;
for Hester Prynne had immediately become
as still as death, although the child continued
to moan.
"Prithee, friend, leave me alone with my
patient," said the practitioner. "Trust me,
good jailer, you shall briefly have peace in
your house; and, I promise you. Mistress
Prynne shall hereafter be more amenable to
just authority than you may have found her
heretofore."
"Nay, if your worship can accomplish
that," answered Master Brackett, "I shall
own you for a man of skill indeed! Verily,
the woman hath been like a possessed one;
and there lacks little, that I should take in
hand to drive Satan out of her Vvith stripes.'*
The stranger had entered the room with
the characteristic quietude of the profession
to which he announced himself as belonging.
Nor did his demeanor change, when the with-
drawal of the prison-keeper left him face to
face with the woman, whose absorbed notice
of him, in the crowd, had intimated so close
a relation between himself and her. His first
care was given to the child; whose cries, in-
deed, as she lay writhing on the trundle-bed,
made it of peremptory necessity to postpone
all other business to the task of soothing her.
He examined the infant carefully, and then
THE SCARLET LETTER
44.3
proceeded to unclasp a leathern case, which
he took from beneath his dress. It appeared
to contain medical preparations, one of which
he mingled with a cup of water.
"My old studies in alchemy," observed he,
"and my sojourn, for above a year past,
among a people well versed in the kindly
properties of simples, have made a better
physician of me than many that claim the
medical degree. Here, woman! The child is
yours, — she is none of mine, — neither will she
recognize my voice or aspect as a father's.
Administer this draught, therefore, with thine
own hand."
Hester repelled the offered medicine, at the
same time gazing with strongly marked ap-
prehension into his face.
"Wouldst thou avenge thyself on the inno-
cent babe.'"' whispered she.
"Foolish woman!" responded- the physi-
cian, half coldly, half soothingly. "What
should ail me, to harm this misbegotten and
miserable babe? The medicine is potent for
good; and were it my child, — yea, mine own,
as well as thine! — I could do no better for it."
As she still hesitated, being, in fact, in no
reasonable state of mind, he took the infant
in his arms, and himself administered the
draught. It soon proved its efficacy, and
redeemed the leech's pledge. The moans of
the little patient subsided; its convulsive
tossings gradually ceased; and, in a few
moments, as is the custom of young children
after relief from pain, it sank into a profound
and dewy slumber. The physician, as he had
a fair right to be termed, next bestowed his
attention on the mother. With calm and
intent scrutiny, he felt her pulse, looked into
her eyes, — a gaze that made her heart shrink
and shudder, because so familiar, and yet so
strange and cold, — and, finally, satisfied with
his investigation, proceeded to mingle an-
other draught.
"I know not Lethe nor Nepenthe," re-
marked he; "but I have learned many new
secrets in the wilderness, and here is one of
them, — a recipe that an Indian taught me,
in requital of some lessons of my own, that
were as old as Paracelsus. Drink it! It may
be less soothing than a sinless conscience.
That I cannot give thee. But it will calm
the swell and heaving of thy passion, like oil
thrown on the waves of a tempestuous sea."
He presented the cup to Hester, who
received it with a slow, earnest look into his
face; not precisely a look of fear, yet full of
doubt and (piestioning, as to what his pur-
poses might be. She looked also at her
slumbering child.
"I have thought of death," said she, —
"have wished for it, — would even have
prayed for it, were it fit that such as I should
pray for anything. Yet, if death be in this
cup, I bid thee think again, ere thou behold-
est me quaff it. See! It is even now at my
ips.
"Drink, then," replied he, still with the
same cold composure. " Dost thou know
me so little, Hester Prynne.'' Are my pur-
poses wont to be so shallow.'' Even if I
imagine a scheme of vengeance, what could
I do better for my object than to let thee
live, — than to give thee medicines against
all harm and peril of life, — so that this burn-
ing shame may still blaze upon thy bosom?"
As he spoke, he laid his long forefinger on
the scarlet letter, which forthwith seemed to
scorch into Hester's breast, as if it had been
red-hot. He noticed her involuntary ges-
ture, and smiled. "Live, therefore, and bear
about thy doom with thee, in the eyes of men
and women, — in the eyes of him whom thou
didst call thy husband, — in the eyes of yon-
der child! And, that thou mayest live, take
off this draught."
Without further expostulation or delay,
Hester Prynne drained the cup, and, at the
motion of the man of skill, seated herself on
the bed where the child was sleeping; while
he drew the only chair which the room
afforded, and took his own seat beside her.
She could not but tremble at these prepara-
tions; for she felt that — having now done all
that humanity, or principle, or, if so it were,
a refined cruelty, impelled him to do, for
the relief of physical suffering — he was next
to treat with her as the man whom she had
most deeply and irreparably injured.
"Hester," said he, "I ask not wherefore,
nor how, thou hast fallen into the pit, or say,
rather, thou hast ascended to the pedestal of
infamy, on which I found thee. The reason
is not far to seek. It was my folly, and thy
weakness. I, — a man of thought, — the book-
worm of great libraries, — a man already in
decay, having given my best years to feed
the hungry dream of knowledge, — what had
I to do with youth and beauty like thine
444
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
own! Misshapen from my birth-hour, how
could I dckide myself with the idea that in-
tellectual gifts mij^ht veil physical deformity
in a young girl's fantasy! Men call me wise.
If sages were ever wise in their own behoof,
I might have foreseen all this. I might have
known that, as I came out of the vast and
dismal forest, and entered this settlement of
Christian men, the very first object to meet
my eyes would be thyself, Hester Prynne,
standing up, a statue of ignominy, before
the people. Nay, from the moment when
we came down the old church steps together,
a married pair, I might have beheld the bale-
fire of that scarlet letter blazing at the end
of our path!"
"Thou knowest," said Hester, — for, de-
pressed as she was, she could not endure this
last quiet stab at the token of her shame, —
"thou knowest that I was frank with thee.
I felt no love, nor feigned any."
"True," replied he. "It was my folly!
I have said it. But up to that epoch of my
life, I had lived in vain. The world had been
so cheerless! My heart was a habitation
large enough for many guests, but lonely and
chill, and without a household fire. I longed
to kindle one ! It seemed not so wild a dream,
— old as I was, and somber as I was, and mis-
shapen as I w^as, — that the simple bliss,
which is scattered far and w4de for all man-
kind to gather up, might yet be mine. And
so, Hester, I drew thee into my heart, into
its innermost chamber, and sought to warm
thee by the warmth which thy presence made
there!"
"I have greatly wTonged thee," murmured
Hester.
"We have WTonged each other," answered
he. "Mine was the first wrong, w^hen I be-
trayed thy budding youth into a false and
unnatural relation with my decay. Therefore,
as a man who has not thought and philoso-
phized in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot no
evil against thee. Between thee and me, the
scale hangs fairly balanced. But, Hester,
the man lives who has wronged us both! Who
is he,''"
"Ask me not!" replied Hester Prynne,
looking firmly into his face. "That thou
shalt never know!"
"Never, sayest thou?" rejoined he, with
a smile of dark and self-relying intelligence.
"Never know him! Believe me, Hester,
there are few things, — whether in the out-
ward world, or, to a certain depth, in the
invisible sphere of thought, — few things hid-
den from the man who devotes himself ear-
nestly and unreservedly to the solution of a
mystery. Thou mayest cover up thy secret
from the prying multitude. Thou mayest
conceal it, too, from the ministers and magis-
trates, even as thou didst this day, when
they sought to wrench the name out of thy
heart, and give thee a partner on thy pedes-
tal. But, as for me, I come to the inquest
with other senses than they possess. I shall
seek this man, as I have sought truth in
books; as I have sought gold in alchemy.
There is a sympathy that will make me con-
scious of him. I shall see him tremble. I
shall feel myself shudder, suddenly and un-
awares. Sooner or later, he must needs be
mine!
The eyes of the wrinkled scholar glowed
so intensely upon her, that Hester Prynne
clasped her hands over her heart, dreading
lest he should read the secret there at once.
"Thou wilt not reveal his name.'' Not the
less he is mine," resumed he, with a look of
confidence, as if destiny were at one with
him. " He bears no letter of infamy wTought
into his garment, as thou dost; but I shall
read it on his heart. Yet fear not for him!
Think not that I shall interfere with Heaven's
own method of retribution, or, to my own
loss, betray him to the gripe of human law.
Neither do thou imagine that I shall con-
trive aught against his life; no, nor against
his fame, if, as I judge, he be a man of fair
repute. Let him live! Let him hide himself
in outward honor, if he may! Not the less
he shall be m.ine!"
"Thy acts are like mercy," said Hester,
bewildered and appalled. "But thy words
interpret thee as a terror!"
"One thing, thou that wast my w^fe, I
would enjoin upon thee," continued the
scholar. "Thou hast kept the secret of thy
paramour. Keep, likewise, mine! There are
none in this land that know me. Breathe not,
to any human soul, that thou didst ever call
me husband! Here, on this wild outskirt of
the earth, I shall pitch my tent; for, elsewhere
a wanderer, and isolated from human inter-
ests, I find here a woman, a man, a child,
amongst whom and myself there exist the
closest ligaments. No matter whether of
THE SCARLET LEFFER
445
love or hate; no matter whether of right or
wrong! Thou and thine, Hester Prynne,
belong to me. iVIy home is where thou art,
and where he is. But betray me not!"
"Wherefore dost thou desire it?" inquired
Hester, shrinking, she hardly knew why,
from this secret bond. "Why not announce
thyself openly, and cast me off at once?"
"It may be," he replied, "because I will
not encounter the dishonor that besmirches
the husband of a faithless woman. It may be
for other reasons. Enough, it is my purpose
to live and die unknown. Let, therefore, thy
husband be to the world as one already dead,
and of whom no tidings shall ever come.
Recognize me not, by word, by sign, by
look! Breathe not the secret, above all, to
the man thou wottest of. Shouldest thou
fail me in this, beware! His fame, his posi-
tion, his life, will be in my hands. Beware!"
"I will keep thy secret, as I have his," said
Hester.
"Swear it!" rejoined he.
And she took the oath.
"And now, Mistress Prynne," said old
Roger Chillingworth, as he was hereafter to
be named, "I leave thee alone; alone w^ith
thy infant, and the scarlet letter! How is it,
Hester? Doth thy sentence bind thee to
wear the token in thy sleep? Art thou not
afraid of nightmares and hideous dreams?"
"Why dost thou smile so at me? "inquired
Hester, troubled at the expression of his eyes.
"Art thou like the Black Man that haunts
the forest round about us? Hast thou en-
ticed me into a bond that will prove the ruin
of my soul?"
"Not thy soul," he answered, with another
smile. "No, not thine!"
V. HESTER AT HER NEEDLE
Hester Prynne's term of confinement
was now at an end. Her prison-door was
thrown open, and she came forth into the
sunshine, whicii, falling on all alike, seemed,
to her sick and morbid heart, as if meant for
no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet
letter on her breast. Perhaps there was a
more real torture in her first unattended foot-
steps from the threshold of the prison, than
even in the procession and spectacle that
have been described, where she was made
the common infamy, at which all mankind
was summoned to point its finger. Then,
she was supported by an unnatural tension
of the nerves, and by all the combative
energy of her character, which enabled her
to convert the scene into a kind of lurid
triumph. It was, moreover, a separate and
insulated event, to occur but once in her life-
time, and to meet which, therefore, reckless
of economy, she might call up the vital
strength that would have sufficed for many
quiet years. The very law that condemned
her — a giant of stern features, but with vigor
to support, as well as to annihilate, in his
iron arm — had held her up, through the ter-
rible ordeal of her ignominy. But now, with
this unattended walk from her prison-door,
began the daily custom; and she must either
sustain and carry it forward by the ordinary
resources of her nature, or sink beneath it.
She could no longer borrow from the future
to help her through the present grief. To-
morrow would bring its own trial with it; so
would the next day, and so would the next;
each its own trial, and yet the very same that
was now so unutterably grievous to be borne.
The days of the far-off future would toil
onward, still with the same burden for her
to take up, and bear along with her, but never
to fling down; for the accumulating days, and
added years, would pile up their misery upon
the heap of shame. Throughout them all,
giving up her individuality, she would become
the general symbol at which the preacher
and moralist might point, and in which they
might vivify and embody their images of
woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the
young and pure would be taught to look at
her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her
breast, — at her, the child of honorable par-
ents,— at her, the mother of a babe, that
would thereafter be a woman, — at her, who
had once been innocent, — as the figure, the
body, the reality of sin. And over her grave,
the infamy that she must carry thither would
be her only monument.
It may seem marvelous, that, with the
world before her, — kept by no restrictive
clause of her condemnation within the limits
of the Puritan settlement, so remote and so
obscure, — free to return to her birthplace, or
to any other European land, and there hide
her character and identity under a new
exterior, as completely as if emerging into
another state of being, — and having also the
passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open
446
NATHANIEL HAWIHORNE
to her, where the wildness of her nature
might assimilate itself with a people whose
customs and life were alien from the law that
had condemned her, — it may seem marvelous,
that this woman should still call that place
her home, where, and where only, she must
needs be the type of shame. But there is a
fatality, a feeling; so irresistible and inevi-
table that it has the force of doom, which
almost invariably compels human beings to
linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot
where some great and marked event has given
the color to their lifetime; and still the more
irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens
it. Her sin, her ignominy, were the roots
which she had struck into the soil. It was as
if a new birth, with stronger assimilations
than the first, had converted the forest-land,
still so uncongenial to every other pilgrim
and wanderer, into Hester Prynne's wild and
dreary, but life-long home. All other scenes
of earth — even that village of rural England,
where happy infancy and stainless maiden-
hood seemed yet to be in her mother's keep-
ing, like garments put off long ago — w^ere
foreign to her, in comparison. The chain
that bound her here was of iron links, and
galling to her inmost soul, but could never
be broken.
It might be, too, — doubtless it was so,
although she hid the secret from herself, and
grew pale whenever it struggled out of her
heart, like a serpent from its hole, — it might
be that another feeling kept her within the
scene and pathway that had been so fatal.
There dwelt, there trod the feet of one with
whom she deemed herself connected in a
union, that, unrecognized on earth, would
bring them together before the bar of final
judgment, and make that their marriage-altar,
for a joint futurity of endless retribution. Over
and over again, the tempter of souls had thrust
this idea upon Hester's contemplation, and
laughed at the passionate and desperate joy
with which she seized, and then strove to
cast It from her. She barely looked the idea
in the face, and hastened to bar it in its
dungeon. What she compelled herself to
believe — what, finally, she reasoned upon, as
her motive for continuing a resident of New
England — was half a truth, and half a self-
delusion. Here, she said to herself, had been
the scene of her guilt, and here should be the
scene of her earthly punishment; and so,
perchance, the torture of her daily shame
would at length purge her soul, and work out
another purity than that which she had lost;
more saint-like, because the result of martyr-
dom.
1 lester Prynne, therefore, did not flee.
On the outskirts of the town, within the verge
of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to
any other habitation, there was a small
thatched cottage. It had been built by an
earlier settler, and abandoned, because the
soil about it was too sterile for cultivation,
while its comparative remoteness put it out
of the sphere of that social activity which
already marked the habits of the emigrants.
It stood on the shore, looking across a basin
of the sea at the forest-covered hills, towards
the west. A clump of scrubby trees, such as
alone grew on the peninsula, did not so much
conceal the cottage from view, as seem to
denote that here was some object which
would fain have been, or at least ought to be,
concealed. In this little, lonesome dwelling,
with some slender means that she possessed,
and by the license of the magistrates, who
still kept an inquisitorial watch over her,
Hester established herself, with her infant
child. A mystic shadow of suspicion imme-
diately attached itself to the spot. Chil-
dren, too young to comprehend wherefore
this woman should be shut out from the
sphere of human charities, would creep nigh
enough to behold her plying her needle at the
cottage-window, or standing in the doorway,
or laboring in her little garden, or coming
forth along the pathway that led townward;
and, discerning the scarlet letter on her
breast, would scamper off with a strange,
contagious fear.
Lonely as was Hester's situation, and with-
out a friend on earth who dared to show him-
self, she, however, incurred no risk of want.
She possessed an art that sufficed, even in a
land that afforded comparatively little scope
for its exercise, to supply food for her thriving
infant and herself. It was the art — then, as
now, almost the only one within a woman's
grasp — of needlework. She bore on her
breast, in the curiously embroidered letter,
a specimen of her delicate and imaginative
skill, of which the dames of a court might
gladly have availed themselves, to add the
richer and more spiritual adornment of
human ingenuity to their fabrics of silk and
THE SCARLK r LK'l'l l^R
447
gold. Here, indeed, in the sable simplicity
that j^enerally ciiaracterized the Puritanic
modes of dress, there miittle Pearl!" cried he after a
moment's pause; then, suppressing his voice,
— "Hester! Hester Prynne! Are you there?"
"Yes; it is Hester Prynne!" she replied,
in a tone of surprise; and the minister heard
her footsteps approaching from the sidewalk,
along which she had been passing. "It is I
and my little Pearl."
"Whence come you, Hester?" asked the
minister. "What sent you hither?"
"I have been watching at a death-bed,"
answered Hester Prynne; — "at Governor
Winthrop's death-bed, and have taken his
measure for a robe, and am now going home-
ward to my dwelling. "
"Come up hither, Hester, thou and little
Pearl," said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale.
"Ye have both been here before, but I was
not with you. Come up hither once again,
and we will stand all three together!"
She silently ascended the steps, and stood
on the platform, holding little Pearl by the
hand. The minister felt for the child's other
hand, and took it. The moment that he did
so, there came what seemed a tumultuous
rush of new life, other life than his own, pour-
ing like a torrent into his heart, and hurrying
through all his veins, as if the mother and
the child were communicating their vital
warmth to his half-torpid system. The three
formed an electric chain.
"Minister!" whispered little Pearl.
"What wouldst thou say, child?" asked
Mr. Dimmesdale.
"Wilt thou stand here with mother and me,
to-morrow noontide?" inquired Pearl.
"Nay; not so, my little Pearl," answered
the minister; for, with the new energy of the
moment, all the dread of public exposure,
that had so long been the anguish of his life,
had returned upon him; and he was already
trembling at the conjunction in which — with
a strange joy, nevertheless — he now found
himself. "Not so, my child. I shall, indeed,
stand with thy mother and thee one other
day, but not to-morrow."
Pearl laughed, and attempted to pull away
her hand. But the minister held it fast.
"A moment longer, my child!" said he.
"But wilt thou promise," asked Pearl, "to
take my hand, and mother's hand, to-morrow
noontide?"
"Not then. Pearl," said the minister, "but
another time."
"And w^hat other time?" persisted the
child.
"At the great judgment day," whispered
the minister, — and, strangely enough, the
sense that he was a professional teacher of
the truth impelled him to answer the child so.
"Then, and there, before the judgment-seat,
thy mother and thou and I must stand to-
gether. But the daylight of this world shall
not see our meeting!"
Pearl laughed again.
But before Mr. Dimmesdale had done
speaking, a light gleamed far and wide over
all the muffled sky. It w'as doubtless caused
by one of those meteors, which the night-
watcher may so often observe burning out to
waste, in the vacant regions of the atmos-
phere. So powerful was its radiance, that
it thoroughly illuminated the dense medium
of cloud betwixt the sky and earth. The
great vault brightened, like the dome of an
immense lamp. It showed the familiar scene
of the street, with the distinctness of mid-day,
but also with the awfulness that is always
imparted to familiar objects by an unaccus-
tomed light. The wooden houses, with their
jutting stories and quaint gable-peaks; the
door-steps and thresholds, with the early
grass springing up about them; the garden-
plots, black with freshly turned earth; the
wheel-track, little worn, and, even in the
market-place, margined with green on either
side; — all were visible, but with a singularity
of aspect that seemed to give another moral
interpretation to the things of this world
than they had ever borne before. And there
stood the minister, with his hand over his
heart; and Hester Prynne, with the embroi-
dered letter glimmering on her bosom; and
little Pearl, herself a symbol, and the con-
necting link between those two. They stood
in the noon of that strange and solemn
splendor, as if it were the light that is to re-
veal all secrets, and the daybreak that shall
unite all who belong to one another.
There was witchcraft in little Pearl's eyes,
and her face, as she glanced upward at the
minister, wore that naughty smile which
made its expression frequently so elfish. She
withdrew her hand from Mr. Dimmesdale's,
and pointed across the street. But he clasped
both his hands over his breast, and cast his
eyes towards the zenith.
Nothing was more common, in those days,
THE SCARLET LETTER
477
than to interpret all meteoric appearances,
and other natural phenomena, that occurred
with less regularity than the rise and set of
sun and moon, as so many revelations from a
supernatural source. Thus, a blazmg spear,
a sword of flame, a bow, or a sheaf of arrows,
seen in the midnight sky, prefigured Indian
warfare. Pestilence was known to have been
foreboded by a shower of crimson light. We
doubt whether any marked event, for good
or evil, ever befell New England, from its
settlement down to Revolutionary times, of
which the inhabitants had not been previ-
ously warned by some spectacle of this
nature. Not seldom, it had been seen by
multitudes. Oftener, however, its credi-
bility rested on the faith of some lonely eye-
witness, who beheld the wonder through the
colored, magnifying, and distorting medium
of his imagination, and shaped it more
distinctly in his afterthought. It was,
indeed, a majestic idea, that the destiny of
nations should be revealed, in these awful
hieroglyphics, on the cope of heaven. A
scroll so wide might not be deemed too ex-
pansive for Providence to write a people's
doom upon. The belief was a favorite one
with our forefathers, as betokening that their
infant commonwealth was under a celestial
guardianship of peculiar intimacy and
strictness. But what shall we say, when an
individual discovers a revelation addressed
to himself alone, on the same vast sheet of
record! In such a case, it could only be
the symptom of a highly disordered mental
state, when a man, rendered morbidly self-
contemplative by long, intense, and secret
pain, had extended his egotism over the
whole expanse of nature, until the firma-
ment itself should appear no more than a
fitting page for his soul's history and fate!
We impute it, therefore, solely to the
disease in his own eye and heart, that the
minister, looking upward to the zenith,
beheld there the appearance of an immense
letter, — the letter A, — marked out in lines of
dull red light. Not but the meteor may have
shown itself at that point, burning duskily
through a veil of cloud; but with no such
shape as his guilty imagination gave it; or,
at least, with so little definiteness, that
another's guilt might have seen another
symbol in it.
There was a singular circumstance that
characterized Mr. Dimmesdale's psycho-
logical state, at this moment. All the time
that he gazed upward to the zenith, he was,
nevertheless, perfectly aware that little
Pearl was pointing her finger towards old
Roger Chillingworth, who stood at no great
distance from the scaffold. The minister
appeared to see him, with the same glance
that discerned the miraculous letter. To his
features, as to all other objects, the meteoric
light imparted a new expression; or it might
well be that the physician was not careful
then, as at a'l other times, to hide the
malevolence with which he looked upon his
victim. Certainly, if the meteor kindled up
the sky, and disclosed the earth, with an
awfulness that admonished Hester Prynne
and the clergyman of the day of judgment,
then might Roger Chillingworth have passed
with them for the arch-fiend, standing there
with a smile and scowl, to claim his own.
So vivid was the expression, or so intense the
minister's perception of it, that it seemed
still to remain painted on the darkness, after
the meteor had vanished, with an effect as if
the street and all things else were at once
annihilated.
"Who is that man, Hester?" gasped Mr.
Dimmesdale, overcome with terror. "I
shiver at him! Dost thou know the man? I
hate him, Hester!"
She remembered her oath, and was silent.
*'I tell thee, my soul shivers at him!"
muttered the minister again. "Who is he?
Who is he? Canst thou do nothing for me?
I have a nameless horror of the man!"
"Minister," said little Pearl, "I can tell
thee who he is!"
"Quickly, then, child!" said the minister,
bending his ear close to her lips. "Quickly! —
and as low as thou canst whisper."
Pearl mumbled something into his ear,
that sounded, indeed, like human language,
but was only such gibberish as children may
be heard amusing themselves with, by the
hour together. At all events, if it involved
any secret information in regard to old
Roger Chillingworth, it was in a tongue
unknown to the erudite clergyman, and did
but increase the bewilderment of his mind.
The elfish child then laughed aloud.
"Dost thou mock me now?" said the
minister.
"Thou wast not bold! — thou wast not
47^^
N/vniAN:
HAW iiiorn:
true!" -a'^swcrcd the cliilcl. " 1 hou woiiklst
not promise to take my hand, and mother's
hand, to-morrow noontide!"
"Worthy Sir," answered the physician,
who had now advanced to the foot of the
phittorm. " Pious Master Dunmesdale, can
this be you? Well, well, indeed! We men
of study, whose heads are in our books, have
need to be straitly looked after! We dream
in our waking moments, and walk in our
sleep. Come, good Sir, and my dear friend,
I pray you, let me lead you home!"
"How knewest thou that I was here?"
asked the minister, fearfully.
"Verily, and in good faith," answered
Roger Chillingworth, "I know nothing of
the matter. I had spent the better part of
the night at the bedside of the worshipful
Governor Winthrop, doing what my poor
skill might to give him ease. He going home
to a better world, I, likewise, was on my way
homeward, when this strange light shone
out. Come with me, I beseech you. Rever-
end Sir; else you will be poorly able to do
Sabbath duty to-morrow. Aha! see now,
how they trouble the brain, — these books! —
these books! You should study less, good
Sir, and take a little pastime; or these
night whimseys will grow upon you."
"I will go home with you," said Mr.
Dimmesdale.
With a chilldespondency, like one awaking,
all nerveless, from an ugly dream, he yielded
himself to the physician and was led away.
The next day, however, being the Sabbath,
he preached a discourse which was held to
be the richest and most powerful, and the
most replete with heavenly influences, that
had ever proceeded from his lips. Souls, it
is said more souls than one, were brought to
the truth by the efl&cacy of that sermon, and
vowed within themselves to cherish a holy
gratitude towards Mr. Dimmesdale through-
out the long hereafter. But, as he came
down the pulpit steps, the gray-bearded
sexton met him, holding up a black glove,
which the minister recognized as his own.
"It was found," said the sexton, 'this
morning, on the scaffold where evil-doers are
set up to public shame. Satan dropped it
there, I take it, intending a scurrilous jest
against your reverence. But, indeed, he was
blind and foolish, as he ever and always is.
A pure hand needs no glove to cover it!"
"Thank you, my good friend," said the
minister, gravely, but startled at heart; for,
so confused was his remembrance, that he
had almost brought himself to look at the
events of the past night as visionary. "Yes,
it seems to be my glove, indeed!"
"And, since Satan saw fit to steal it, your
reverence must needs handle him without
gloves, henceforward," remarked the old
sexton, grimly smiling. " But did your
reverence hear of the portent tliat was seen
last night. ^ — a great red letter in the sky, —
the letter A, which we interpret to stand for
Angel. For, as our good Governor Win-
throp was made an angel this past night, it
was doubtless held fit that there should be
some notice thereof!"
"No," answered the minister, "I had not
heard of it."
XIII. ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER
In her late singular interview with Mr.
Dimmesdale, Hester Prynne was shocked
at the condition to which she found the
clergyman reduced. His nerve seemed ab-
solutely destroyed. His moral force was
abased into more than childish weakness. It
groveled helpless on the ground, even while
his intellectual faculties retained their
pristine strength, or had perhaps acquired a
morbid energy, which disease only could
have given them. With her knowledge of
a train of circumstances hidden from all
others, she could readily infer that, besides
the legitimate action of his own conscience, a
terrible machinery had been brought to bear,
and was still operating, on Mr. Dimmes-
dale's well-being and repose. Knowing what
this poor, fallen man had once been, her
whole soul was moved by the shuddering
terror with which he had appealed to her, —
the outcast woman, — for support against his
instinctively discovered enemy. She de-
cided, moreover, that he had a right to her
utmost aid. Little accustomed, in her long
seclusion from society, to measure her ideas
of right and wrong by any standard external
to herself, Hester saw — or seemed to see —
that there lay a responsibility upon her, in
reference to the clergyman, which she owed
to no other, nor to the whole world besides.
The links that united her to the rest of
human kind — links of flowers, or silk, or
gold, or whatever the material — had all been
['UK SCARLET LPmKR
479
broken. Here was the iron link of mutual
crime, which neither he nor she could break.
Like all other ties, it brought along with it
its obligations.
Hester Prynne did not now occupy-
precisely the same position in which we be-
held her during the earlier periods of her
ignominy. Years had come and gone.
Pearl was now seven years old. Her mother,
with the scarlet letter on her breast, glitter-
ing in its fantastic embroidery, had long
been a familiar object to the townspeople.
As is apt to be the case when a person stands
out in any prominence before the com-
munity, and, at the same time, interferes
neither with public nor individual interests
and convenience, a species of general regard
had ultimately grown up in reference to
Hester Prynne. It is to the credit of human
nature that, except where its selfishness is
brought into play, it loves more readily
than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and
quiet process, will even be transformed to
love, unless the change be impeded by a
continually new irritation of the original
feeling of hostility. In this matter of Hester
Prynne, there was neither irritation nor irk-
someness. She never battled with the public,
but submitted uncomplainingly to its worst
usage; she made no claim upon it, in requital
for what she suffered; she did not weigh
upon its sympathies. Then, also, the blame-
less purity of her life during all these years
in which she had been set apart to infamy,
was reckoned largely in her favor. With
nothing now to lose, in the sight of mankind,
and with no hope, and seemingly no wish, of
gaining anything, it could only be a genuine
regard for virtue that had brought back the
poor wanderer to its paths.
It was perceived, too, that while Hester
never put forward even the humblest title
to share in the world's privileges, — further
than to breathe the common air, and earn
daily bread for little Pearl and herself by the
faithful labor of her hands, — she was quick
to acknowledge her sisterhood with the race
of man, whenever benefits were to be con-
ferred. None so ready as she to give of her
little substance to every demand of poverty;
even though the bitter-hearted pauper threw
back a gibe in requital of the food brought
regularly to his door, or the garments
wrought for him by the fingers that could
have embroidered a monarch's robe. None
so self-devoted as Hester, when pestilence
stalked tlirough the town. In all seasons of
calamity, indeed, whether general or of
individuals, the outcast of society at once
found her place. She came, not as a guest,
but as a rightful inmate, into the household
that was darkened by trouble; as if its
gloomy twilight were a medium in which she
was entitled to hold intercourse with her
fellow-creatures. There glimmered the em-
broidered letter, with comfort in its un-
eartiily ray. Elsewhere the token of sin,
It was the taper of the sick-chamber. It had
even thrown its gleam, in the sufferer's hard
extremity, across the verge of time. It had
shown him where to set his foot, while the
light of earth was fast becoming dim, and
ere the light of futurity could reach him. In
such emergencies, Hester's nature showed
itself warm and rich — a well-spring of human
tenderness, unfailing to every real demand,
and inexhaustible by the largest. Her
breast, with its badge of shame, was but the
softer pillow for the head that needed one.
She was self-ordained a Sister of Mercy; or,
we may rather say, the world's heavy hand
had so ordained her, when neither the world
nor she looked forward to this result. The
letter was the symbol of her calling. Such
helpfulness was found in her, — so much
power to do, and power to sympathize, —
that many people refused to interpret the
scarlet A by its original signification. They
said that it meant Able; so strong was
Hester Prynne, with a woman's strength.
It was only the darkened house that could
contain her. When sunshine came again, she
was not there. Her shadow had faded across
the threshold. The helpful inmate had de-
parted, without one backward glance to
gather up the meed of gratitude, if any were
in the hearts of those whom she had served so
zealously. Meeting them in the street, she
never raised her head to receive their greet-
ing. If they were resolute to accost her, she
laid her finger on the scarlet letter, and
passed on. This might be pride, but was so
like humility, that it produced all the soften-
ing influence of the latter quality on the
public mind. The public is despotic in its
temper; it is capable of denying common
justice, when too strenuously demanded as a
right; but quite as frequently it awards
48o
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
more than justice, when the appeal is made,
as despots love to have it made, entirely to
its generosity. Interpreting Hester Prynne's
deportment as an appeal of this nature, so-
ciety was inclined to show its former victim a
more benign countenance than she cared to
be favored with, or perchance, than she
deserved.
The rulers, and the wise and learned men
of the community, were longer in acknowl-
edging the influence of Hester's good quali-
ties than the people. Ihe prejudices which
they shared in common with the latter were
fortified in themselves by an iron frame-
work of reasoning, that made it a far tougher
labor to expel them. Day by day, never-
theless, their sour and rigid wrinkles were
relaxing into something which, in the due
course of years, might grow to be an expres-
sion of almost benevolence. Thus it was
with the men of rank, on whom their eminent
position imposed the guardianship of the
public morals. Individuals in private life,
meanwhile, had quite forgiven Hester
Prynne for her frailty; nay, more, they had
begun to look upon the scarlet letter as the
token, not of that one sin for which she had
borne so long and dreary a penance, but of
her many good deeds since. '*Do you see
that woman with the embroidered badge?"
they would say to strangers. "It is our
Hester, — the town's own Hester, who is so
kind to the poor, so helpful to the sick, so
comfortable to the afiiicted!" Then, it is
true, the propensity of human nature to tell
the very worst of itself, when embodied in
the person of another, would constrain them
to whisper the black scandal of bygone years.
It was none the less a fact, however, that, in
the eyes of the very men who spoke thus,
the scarlet letter had the effect of the cross
on a nun's bosom. It imparted to the wearer
a kind of sacredness, which enabled her to
walk securely amid all peril. Had she fallen
among thieves it would have kept her safe.
It was reported, and believed by many, that
an Indian had drawn his arrow against the
badge, and that the missile struck it, but
fell harmless to the ground.
The effect of the symbol — or, rather, of the
position in respect to society that was indi-
cated by it — on the mind of Hester Prynne
herself, was powerful and peculiar. All the
light and graceful foliage of her character had
been withered up by this red-hot brand, and
had long ago fallen away, leavmg a bare and
harsh outline, which might have been re-
pulsive, had she possessed friends or com-
panions to be repelled by it. Even the
attractiveness of her person had undergone a
similar change. It might be partly owing to
the studied austerity of her dress, and partly
to the lack of demonstration in her manners.
It was a sad transformation, too, that her
rich and luxuriant hair had either been cut
off, or was so completely hidden by a cap,
that not a shining lock of it ever once gushed
into the sunshine. It was due in part to all
these causes, but still more to something
else, that there seemed to be no longer any-
thing in Hester's face for Love to dwell upon;
nothing in Hester's form, though majestic
and statue-like, that Passion would ever
dream of clasping in its embrace; nothing
in Hester's bosom to make it ever again the
pillow of Affection. Some attribute had de-
parted from her, the permanence of which
had been essential to keep her a woman.
Such is frequently the fate, and such the
stern development, of the feminine character
and person, when the woman has en-
countered, and lived through, an experience
of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness,
she will die. If she survive, the tenderness
will either be crushed out of her, or — and
the outward semblance is the same — crushed
so deeply into her heart that it can never
show itself more. The latter is perhaps the
truest theory. She who has once been
woman, and ceased to be so, might at any
moment become a woman again if there w^ere
only the magic touch to effect the trans-
figuration. We shall see whether Hester
Prynne were ever afterwards so touched, and
so transfigured.
Much of the marble coldness of Hester's
impression was to be attributed to the cir-
cumstance that her life had turned, in a
great measure, from passion and feeling, to
thought. Standing alone in the world, —
alone, as to any dependence on society, and
with little Pearl to be guided and pro-
tected,— alone, and hopeless of retrieving
her position, even had she not scorned to
consider it desirable, — she cast away the
fragments of a broken chain. The world's
law was no law for her mind. It was an age
in which the human intellect, newly emanci-
THE SCARLET LETTER
481
pated, had taken a more active and a wider
range than for many centuries before. Men
of the sword had overthrown nobles and
kings. Men bolder than these had over-
thrown and rearranged — not actually, but
within the sphere of theory, which was their
most real abode — the whole system of ancient
prejudice, wherewith was linked much of
ancient principle. Hester Prynne imbibed
this spirit. She assumed a freedom of specu-
lation, then common enough on the other
side of the Atlantic, but which our fore-
fathers, had they knov/n it, would have held
to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatized
by the scarlet letter. In her lonesome cot-
tage by the sea-shore, thoughts visited her,
such as dared to enter no other dwelling in
New England — shadowy guests, that would
have been as perilous as demons to their
entertainer, could they have been seen so
much as knocking at her door.
It is remarkable that persons who specu-
late the most boldly often conform with the
most perfect quietude to the external regu-
lations of society. The thought suffices
them, without investing itself in the flesh
and blood of action. So it seemed to be with
Hester. Yet, had little Pearl never come to
her from the spiritual world, it might have
been far otherwise. Then, she might have
come down to us in history, hand in hand
with Ann Hutchinson, as the foundress of a
religious sect. She might, in one of her
phases, have been a prophetess. She might,
and not improbably would, have suffered
death from the stern tribunals of the period,
for attempting to undermine the foundations
of the Puritan establishment. But, in the
education of her child, the mother's en-
thusiasm of thought had something to wreak
itself upon. Providence, in the person of
this little girl, had assigned to Hester's
charge the germ and blossom of woman-
hood, to be cherished and developed amid a
host of difficulties. Everything was against
her. The world was hostile. The child's
own nature had something wrong in it, which
continually betokened that she had been
born amiss, — the effluence of her mother's
lawless passion, — and often impelled Hester
to ask, in bitterness of heart, whether it were
for ill or good that the poor little creature
had been born at all.
Indeed, the same dark question often rose
into her mind, with reference to the whole
race of womanhood. Was existence worth
accepting, even to the happiest among them.''
As concerned her own individual existence,
she had long ago decided in the negative,
and dismissed the point as settled. A tend-
ency to speculation, though it may keep
woman quiet, as it does man, yet makes her
sad. She discerns, it may be, such a hope-
less task before her. As a first step, the
whole system of society is to be torn down,
and built up anew. Then, the very nature
of the opposite sex, or its long hereditary
habit, which has become like nature, is to be
essentially modified, before woman can be
allowed to assume what seems a fair and
suitable position. Finally, all other diffi-
culties being obviated, woman cannot take
advantage of these preliminary reforms, until
she herself shall have undergone a still
mightier change; in which, perhaps, the
ethereal essence, wherein she has her truest
life, will be found to have evaporated. A
woman never overcomes these problems by
any exercise of thought. They are not to be
solved, or only in one way. If her heart
chance to come uppermost, they vanish.
Thus, Hester Prynne, whose heart had lost
its regular and healthy throb, wandered
without a clew in the dark labyrinth of
mind; now turned aside by an insurmount-
able precipice; now starting back from a
deep chasm. There was wild and ghastly
scenery all around her, and a home and
comfort nowhere. At times, a fearful doubt
strove to possess her soul, whether it were
not better to send Pearl at once to heaven,
and go herself to such futurity as Eternal
Justice should provide.
The scarlet letter had not done its office.
Now, however, her interview with the
Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the night of
his vigil, had given her a new theme of re-
flection, and held up to her an object that
appeared worthy of any exertion and sacrifice
for its attainment. She had witnessed the
intense misery beneath which the minister
struggled, or, to speak more accurately, had
ceased to struggle. She saw that he stood
on the verge of lunacy, if he had not already
stepped across it. It was impossible to
doubt that, whatever painful efficacy there
might be in the secret sting of remorse, a
deadlier venom had been infused into it by
482
nathanip:l hawthorne
the hand that profFtrt'd rtlief. A secret
enemy had been continually by his side,
under the semblance of a friend and helper,
and had a\ailed himself of the opportunities
thus afforded for tampering with the delicate
springs of Mr. Dimmesdale's nature. Hester
could not but ask herself, whether there had
not originally been a defect of truth, courage,
and loyalty, on her own part, in allowing the
minister to be thrown into a position where
so much evil was to be foreboded, and noth-
ing auspicious to be hoped. Her only justifi-
cation lay in the fact that she had been able
to discern no method of rescuing him from a
blacker ruin than had overwhelmed herself,
except by acquiescing in Roger Chilling-
worth's scheme of disguise. Under that
impulse she had made her choice, and had
chosen, as it now appeared, the more
WTetched alternative of the two. She de-
termined to redeem her error, so far as it
might yet be possible. Strengthened by
years of hard and solemn trial, she felt her-
self no longer so inadequate to cope with
Roger Chillingworth as on that night, abased
by sin, and half maddened by the ignominy
that was still new, when they had talked
together in the prison-chamber. She had
climbed her way, since then, to a higher
point. The old man, on the other hand, had
brought himself nearer to her level, or per-
haps below it, by the revenge which he had
stooped for.
In fine, Hester Prynne resolved to meet
her former husband, and do what might be
in her power for the rescue of the victim on
whom he had so evidently set his grip. The
occasion was not long to seek. One after-
noon, walking with Pearl in a retired part
of the peninsula, she beheld the old physician,
with a basket on one arm, and a staff in the
other hand, stooping along the ground, m
quest of roots and herbs to concoct his
medicines withal.
XIV. HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN
Hester bade little Pearl run down to the
margin of the water, and play with the shells
and tangled seaweed, until she should have
talked awhile with yonder gatherer of herbs.
So the child flew away like a bird, and, making
bare her small white feet, went pattering
along the moist margin of the sea. Here and
there she came to a full stop, and peeped
curiously into a pool, left by the retiring tide
as a mirror for Pearl to see her face in. Forth
peeped at her out of the pool, with dark,
glistening curls around her head, and an elf-
smile in her eyes, the image of a little maid,
whom Pearl, having no other playmate, in-
vited to take her hand, and run a race with
her. But the visionary little maid, on her
part, beckoned likewise, as if to say, — "This
is a better place! Come thou into the pool!"
And Pearl, stepping in, mid-leg deep, beheld
her own white feet at the bottom; while, out
of a still lower depth, came the gleam of a
kind of fragmentary smile, floating to and
fro in the agitated water.
Meanwhile, her mother had accosted the
physician,
"I would speak a word with you," said
she, — "a word that concerns us much."
"Aha! and is it Mistress Hester that has
a word for old Roger Chillingworth?" an-
swered he, raising himself from his stooping
posture. "With all my heart! Why, Mis-
tress, I hear good tidings of you on all hands!
No longer ago than yester-eve, a magistrate,
a wise and godly man, was discoursing of
your affairs, Mistress Hester, and whispered
me that there had been question concerning
you in the council. It was debated whether
or no, with safety to the common weal, yon-
der scarlet letter might be taken off your
bosom. On my life, Hester, I made my
entreaty to the worshipful magistrate that
it might be done forthwith!"
"It lies not in the pleasure of the magis-
trates to take off this badge," calmly replied
Hester. "Were I worthy to be quit of it, it
would fall away of its own nature, or be
transformed into something that should
speak a different purport."
"Nay, then, wear it, if it suit you better,"
rejoined he. "A woman must needs follow
her own fancy, touching the adornment of her
person. The letter is gayly embroidered, and
shows right bravely on your bosom!"
All this while, Hester had been looking
steadily at the old man, and was shocked,
as well as w^onder-smitten, to discern what a
change had been wrought upon him within
the past seven years. It was not so much that
he had grown older; for though the traces of
advancing life were visible, he wore his age
well, and seemed to retain a wiry vigor and
alertness. But the former aspect of an intel-
THE SCARLET LETTER
483
lectual and studious man, calm and quiet,
which was what she best remembered in hini,
had altogether vanished, and been succeeded
by an eager, searching, almost fierce, yet
carefully guarded look. It seemed to be his
wish and purpose to mask this expression
with a smile; but the latter played him false,
and flickered over his visage so derisively,
that the spectator could see his blackness all
the better for it. Ever and anon, too, there
came a glare of red light out of his eyes; as
if the old man's soul were on fire, and kept
on smoldering duskily within his breast,
until, by some casual puflF of passion, it was
blown into a momentary flame. This he
repressed, as speedily as possible, and strove
to look as if nothing of the kind had hap-
pened.
In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a
striking evidence of man's faculty of trans-
forming himself into a devil, if he will only,
for a reasonable space of time, undertake a
devil's oflice. This unhappy person had
effected such a transformation, by devoting
himself, for seven years, to the constant
analysis of a heart full of torture, and deriv-
ing his enjoyment thence, and adding fuel
to those fiery tortures which he analyzed and
gloated over.
The scarlet letter burned on Hester
Prynne's bosom. Here was another ruin,
the responsibility of which came partly home
to her.
*'What see you in my face," asked the
physician, "that you look at it so earnestly?"
"Something that would make me weep,
if there were any tears bitter enough for it,"
answered she. "But let it pass! It is of
yonder miserable man that I would speak."
"And what of him?" cried Roger Chil-
lingworth eagerly, as if he loved the topic,
and were glad of an opportunity to discuss
it with the only person of whom he could
make a confidant. "Not to hide the truth,
Mistress Hester, my thoughts happen just
now to be busy with the gentleman. So
speak freely; and I will make answer."
"When we last spake together," said
Hester, "now seven years ago, it was your
pleasure to extort a promise of secrecy, as
touching the former relation betwixt your-
self and me. As the life and good fame of
yonder man were in your hands, there
seemed no choice to me save to be silent, in
accordance with your behest. Yet it was
not without heavy misgivings that I thus
bound myself; for, having cast off all duty
towards other human beings, there remained
a duty towards him; and something whis-
pered me that I was betraying it, in pledging
myself to keep your counsel. Since that day,
no man is so near to him as you. You tread
behind his every footstep. You are beside
him, sleeping and waking. You search his
thoughts. You burrow and rankle in his
heart! Your clutch is on his life, and you
cause him to die daily a living death; and still
he knows you not. In permitting this, I
have surely acted a false part by the only
man to whom the power was left me to be
true!"
"What choice had you?" asked Roger
Chillingworth. "My finger, pointed at this
man, would have hurled him from his pulpit
mto a dungeon, — thence, peradventure, to
the gallows!"
"It had been better so!" said Hester
Prynne.
"What evil have I done the man?" asked
Roger Chillingworth again. "I tell thee,
Hester Prynne, the richest fee that ever
physician earned from monarch could not
have bought such care as I have wasted on
this miserable priest! But for my aid, his
life would have burned away in torments,
within the first two years after the perpetra-
tion of his crime and thine. For, Hester, his
spirit lacked the strength that could have
borne up, as thine has, beneath a burden like
thy scarlet letter. O, I could reveal a goodly
secret! But enough! What art can do, I
have exhausted on him. That he now
breathes, and creeps about on earth, is owing
all to me!"
"Better he had died at once!" said Hester
Prynne.
" Yea, woman, thou sayest truly!" cried old
Roger Chillingworth, letting the lurid fire of
his heart blaze out before her eyes. "Better
had he died at once! Never did mortal suffer
what this man has suffered. And all, all, in
the sight of his worst enemy! He has been
conscious of me. He has felt an influence
dwelling always upon him lijke a curse. He
knew, by some spiritual sense, — for the
Creator never made another being so sensi-
tive as this, — he knew that no friendly hand
was pulling at his heart-strings, and that an
484
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
eye was lookinc; curiously into him, winch
sought only evil, and found it. But he knew
not that the eye and hand were mine! With
the superstition common to his brotherhood,
he fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be
tortured with frightful dreams and desperate
thoughts, the sting of remorse, and despair
of pardon; as a foretaste of what awaits him
beyond the grave. But it was the constant
shadow of my presence! — the closest pro-
pinquity of the man whom he had most vilely
wronged! — and who had grown to exist only
by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge!
Yea, indeed! — he did not err! — there was a
fiend at his elbow! A mortal man, with once
a human heart, has become a fiend for his
especial torment!"
The unfortunate physician, while uttering
these words, lifted his hands with a look of
horror, as if he had beheld some frightful
shape, which he could not recognize, usurp-
ing the place of his own image in a glass. It
was one of those moments — which sometimes
occur only at the interval of years — when a
man's moral aspect is faithfully revealed to
his mind's eye. Not improbably, he had
never before viewed himself as he did now.
"Hast thou not tortured him enough?"
said Hester, noticing the old man's look.
"Has he not paid thee all?"
"No! — no! He has but increased the
debt!" answered the physician; and as he
proceeded, his manner lost its fiercer char-
acteristics, and subsided into gloom. "Dost
thou remember me, Hester, as I was nine
years agone? Even then, I was in the autumn
of my days, nor was it the early autumn. But
all my life had been made up of earnest, stu-
dious, thoughtful, quiet years, bestowed
faithfully for the increase of mine own
knowledge, and faithfully, too, though this
latter object was but casual to the other, — ■
faithfully for the advancement of human
welfare. No life had been more peaceful and
innocent than mine; few lives so rich with
benefits conferred. Dost thou remember me?
Was I not, though you might deem me cold,
nevertheless a man thoughtful for others,
craving little for himself, — kind, true, just,
and of constant, if not warm affections?
Was I not all this?"
"All this, and more," said Hester.
"And what am I now?" demanded he,
looking into her face, and permitting the
whole evil within him to be written on his
features. "I have already told thee what I
am! A fiend! Who made me so?"
"It was myself!" cried Hester, shuddering.
" It was I, not less than he. Why hast thou
not avenged thyself on me?"
"I have left thee to the scarlet letter,"
replied Roger Chillingworth. "If that have
not avenged me, I can do no more!"
He laid his finger on it, with a smile.
"It has avenged thee!" answered Hester
Prynne.
"I judged no less," said the physician.
"And now, what wouldst thou with me
touching this man?"
"I must reveal the secret," answered
Hester firmly. "He must discern thee in
thy true character. What may be the result,
I know not. But this long debt of confidence,
due from me to him, whose bane and ruin I
have been, shall at length be paid. So far as
concerns the overthrow or preservation of
his fair fame and his earthly state, and per-
chance his life, he is in thy hands. Nor do I,
— whom the scarlet letter has disciplined to
truth, though it be the truth of red-hot iron,
entering into the soul, — nor do I perceive
such advantage in his living any longer a life
of ghastly emptiness, that I shall stoop to
implore thy mercy. Do with him as thou
wilt! There is no good for him, — no good
for me, — no good for thee! There is no good
for little Pearl! There is no path to guide us
out of this dismal maze!"
"Woman, I could wellnigh pity thee!"
said Roger Chillingworth, unable to restrain
a thrill of admiration too; for there was a
quality almost majestic in the despair which
she expressed. "Thou hadst great elements.
Peradventure, hadst thou met earlier with a
better love than mine, this evil had not been.
I pity thee, for the good that has been wasted
in thy nature!"
"And I thee," answered Hester Prynne,
"for the hatred that has transformed a wise
and just man to a fiend! Wilt thou yet purge
it out of thee, and be once more human? If
not for his sake, then doubly for thine own!
Forgive, and leave his further retribution to
the Power that claims it! I said, but now,
that there could be no good event for him,
or thee, or me, who are here wandering to-
gether in this gloomy maze of evil, and stum-
bling, at every step, over the guilt where-
THE SCARLET LETTER
485
with we have strewn our path. It is not so!
1 here might be good for thee, and thee alone,
since thou hast been deeply wronged, and
hast it at thy will to pardon. Wilt thou give
up that only privilege.^ Wilt thou reject
that priceless benefit?"
*' Peace, Hester, peace!" replied the old
man, with gloomy sternness. "It is not
granted me to pardon. I have no such
pbwer as thou tellest me of. My old faith,
long forgotten, comes back to me, and
explains all that we do, and all we suffer.
By thy first step awry thou didst plant the
germ of evil; but since that moment, it has
all been a dark necessity. Ye that have
wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of
typical illusion; neither am I fiend-like, who
have snatched a fiend's office from his hands.
It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom
as it may! Now go thy ways, and deal as
thou wilt with yonder man."
He waved his hand, and betook himself
again to his employment of gathering herbs.
XV. HESTER AND PEARL
So Roger Chillingworth — a deformed old
figure, with a face that haunted men's mem-
ories longer than they liked — took leave of
Hester Prynne, and went stooping away
along the earth. He gathered here and there
an herb, or grubbed up a root, and put it into
the basket on his arm. His gray beard
almost touched the ground, as he crept
onward. Hester gazed after him a little
while, looking with a half-fantastic curiosity
to see whether the tender grass of early
spring would not be blighted beneath him,
and show the wavering track of his footsteps,
sere and brown, across its cheerful verdure.
She wondered what sort of herbs they were,
which the old man was so sedulous to gather.
Would not the earth, quickened to an evil
purpose by the sympathy of his eye, greet him
with poisonous shrubs, of species hitherto
unknown, that would start up under his
fingers.? Or might it suffice him that every
wholesome growth should be converted into
something deleterious and malignant at his
touch.'' Did the sun, which shone so brightly
everywhere else, really fall upon him? Or
was there, as it rather seemed, a circle of
ominous shadow moving along with his
deformity, whichever way he turned him-
self? And whither was he now going.?
Would he not suddenly sink into the earth,
leaving a barren and blasted spot, where, in
due course of time, would be seen deadly
nightshade, dogwood, henbane, and what-
ever else of vegetable wickedness the climate
could produce, all flourishing with hideous
luxuriance? Or would he spread bat's wings
and flee away, looking so much the uglier,
the higher he rose towards heaven?
"Be it sin or no," said Hester Prynne bit-
terly, as she still gazed after him, "I hate the
man!
She upbraided herself forthe sentiment, but
could not overcome or lessen it. Attempt-
ing to do so, she thought of those long-past
days, in a distant land, when he used to
emerge at eventide from the seclusion of his
study, and sit down in the firelight of their
home, and in the light of her nuptial smile.
He needed to bask himself in that smile, he
said, in order that the chill of so many lonely
hours among his books might be taken off
the scholar's heart. Such scenes had once
appeared not otherwise than happy; but now,
as viewed through the dismal medium of her
subsequent life, they classed themselves
among her ugliest remembrances. She mar-
veled how such scenes could have been!
She marveled how she could ever have been
wrought upon to marry him! She deemed
it her crime most to be repented of, that she
had ever endured, and reciprocated*, the luke-
warm grasp of his hand, and had suffered the
smile of her lips and eyes to mingle and melt
into his own. And it seemed a fouler offense
committed by Roger Chillingworth, than
any which had since been done him, that, in
the time when her heart knew no better, he
had persuaded her to fancy herself happy by
his side.
"Yes, I hate him!" repeated Hester, more
bitterly than before. "He betrayed me!
He has done me worse wrong than I did
him!"
Let men tremble to win the hand of
woman, unless they win along with it the
utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be
their miserable fortune, as it was Roger
Chillingworth's, when some mightier touch
than their own may have awakened all her
sensibilities, to be reproached even for the
calm content, the marble image of happiness,
which they will have imposed upon her as the
warm reality. But Hester ought long ago to
4^6
NATHANTFX HAWTHORNE
have done with this injustice. What did it
betoken? Mad seven long years, under the
torture of the scarlet letter, inflicted so nuich
of misery, and wrouj^ht out no repentance?
The emotions of that brief space, while
she stood gazing after the crooked figure of
old Roger Chillingworth, threw a dark light
on Hester's state of mind, revealing much
that she might not otherwise have acknowl-
edged to herself.
He being gone, she summoned back her
child.
"Pearl! Little Pearl! Where are you ? "
Pearl, whose activity of spirit never flagged,
had been at no loss for amusement while her
mother talked with the old gatherer of herbs.
At first, as already told, she had flirted fanci-
fully with her own image in a pool of water,
beckoning the phantom forth, and — as it
declined to venture^seeking a passage for
herself into its sphere of impalpable earth
and unattainable sky. Soon finding, how-
ever, that either she or the image was unreal,
she turned elsewhere for better pastime. She
made little boats out of birch-bark, and
freighted them with snail-shells, and sent out
more ventures on the mighty deep than any
merchant in New England; but the larger
part of them foundered near the shore. She
seized a live horseshoe by the tail, and made
prize of several five-fingers, and laid out a
jelly-fish to melt in the warm sun. Ihen she
took up the white foam, that streaked the
line of the advancing tide, and threw it upon
the breeze, scampering after it, with winged
footsteps, to catch the great snow-flakes ere
they fell. Perceiving a flock of beach-birds,
that fed and fluttered along the shore, the
naughty child picked up her apron full of
pebbles, and, creeping from rock to rock after
these small sea-fowl, displayed remarkable
dexterity in pelting them. One little gray
bird, with a white breast, Pearl was almost
sure, had been hit by a pebble, and fluttered
away with a broken wing. But then the elf-
child sighed, and gave up her sport; because
it grieved her to have done harm to a little
being that was as wild as the sea-breeze, or
as wild as Pearl herself.
Her final employment was to gather sea-
weed, of various kinds, and make herself a
scarf, or mantle, and a head-dress, and thus
assume the aspect of a little mermaid. She
inherited her mother's gift for devising drap-
ery and costume. As the last t(^uch to her
mermaid's garb, Pearl took some eel-grass,
and imitated, as best she could, on her own
bosom, the decoration with which she was
so familiar on her mother's. A letter, — the
letter A, — but freshly green, instead of scar-
let! The child bent her chin upon her breast,
and contemplated this device with strange
interest; even as if the one only thing for
which she had been sent into the world was
to make out its hidden import.
*T wonder if mother will ask me what it
means!" thought Pearl.
Just then, she heard her mother's voice,
and flitting along as lightly as one of the little
sea-birds, appeared before Hester Prynne,
dancing, laughing, and pointing her finger
to the ornament upon her bosom.
"My little Pearl," said Hester, after a
moment's silence, "the green letter, and on
thy childish bosom, has no purport. But
dost thou know, my child, what this letter
means which thy mother is doomed to
wear :
"Yes, mother," said the child. "It is the
great letter A. Thou hast taught me in the
horn-book."
Hester looked steadily into her little face;
but, though there was that singular expres-
sion which she had so often remarked in her
black eyes, she could not satisfy herself
whether Pearl really attached any meaning
to the symbol. She felt a morbid desire to
ascertain the point.
" Dost thou know, child, wherefore thy
mother wears this letter?"
"Truly do H" answered Pearl, looking
brightly into her mother's face. "It is for
the same reason that the minister keeps his
hand over his heart!"
"And what reason is that?" asked Hester,
half smiling at the absurd incongruity of the
child's observation; but, on second thoughts,
turning pale. "What has the letter to do
with any heart, save mine?"
"Nay, mother, I have told all I know,"
said Pearl, more seriously than she was wont
to speak. "Ask yonder old man whom thou
hast been talking with! It may be he can
tell. But in good earnest now, mother dear,
what does this scarlet letter mean.^ — and
why dost thou wear it on thy bosom — and
why does the minister keep his hand over his
heart?"
THE SCARLET LE'HER
487
She took her mother's hand in both her
own, and gazed into her eyes with an earnest-
ness that was seldom seen in her wild and
capricious character. The thought occurred
to Hester that the child might really be
seeking to approach her with childlike con-
hdence, and doing what she could and as
intelligently as she knew how, to establish a
meeting-point of sympathy. It showed
Pearl in an unwonted aspect. Heretofore,
the mother, while loving her child with the
intensity of a sole affection, had schooled her-
self to hope for little other return than the
waywardness of an April breeze; which
spends its time in airy sport, and has its
gusts of inexplicable passion, and is petulant
in its best of moods, and chills oftener than
caresses you, when you take it to your bosom;
in requital of which misdemeanors, it will
sometimes, of its own vague purpose, kiss
your cheek with a kind of doubtful tender-
ness, and play gently with your hair, and
then be gone about its other idle business,
leaving a dreamy pleasure at your heart.
And this, moreover, was a mother's estimate
of the child's disposition. Any other observer
might have seen few but unamiable traits,
and have given them a far darker coloring.
But now the idea came strongly into Hester's
mind, that 'Pearl, with her remarkable pre-
cocity and acuteness, might already have
approached the age when she could be made
a friend, and intrusted with as much of her
mother's sorrows as could be imparted with-
out irreverence either to the parent or the
child. In the little chaos of Pearl's character
there might be seen emerging — and could
have been, from the very first — the steadfast
principles of an unflinching courage, — an
uncontrollable will, a sturdy pride, which
might be disciplined into self-respect, — and
a bitter scorn of many things, which, when
examined, might be found to have the taint
of falsehood in them. She possessed aflPec-
tions, too, though hitherto acrid and dis-
agreeable, as are the richest flavors of unripe
fruit. With all these sterling attributes,
thought Hester, the evil which she inherited
from her mother must be great indeed, if a
noble woman do not grow out of this elfish
child.
Pearl's inevitable tendency to hover about
the enigma of the scarlet letter seemed an
innate quality of her being. From the earli-
est epoch of her conscious life, she had entered
upon this as her appointed mission. Hester
had often fancied that IVovidence had a
design of justice and retribution, in endowing
the child with this marked propensity; but
never, until now, had she bethought herself
to ask, whether, linked with that design,
there might not likewise be a purpose of
mercy and beneficence. If little Pearl were
entertained with faith and trust, as a spirit
messenger no less than an earthly child,
might it not be her errand to soothe away
the sorrow that lay cold in her mother's
heart, and converted it into a tombP^and
to help her to overcome the passion, once so
wild, and even yet neither dead nor asleep,
but only imprisoned within the same tomb-
like heart?
Such were some of the thoughts that now
stirred in Hester's mind, with as much
vivacity of impression as if they had actually
been whispered into her ear. And there was
little Pearl, all this while, holding her
mother's hand in both her own, and turning
her face upward, while she put these search-
ing questions, once, and again, and still a
third time.
"What does the letter mean, mother? —
and why dost thou wear it? — and why does
the minister keep his hand over his heart?"
"What shall I say?" thought Hester to
herself. "No! If this be the price of the
child's sympathy, I cannot pay it."
Then she spoke aloud.
"Silly Pearl," said she, "what questions
are these? There are many things in this
world that a child must not ask about. What
know I of the minister's heart? And as for
the scarlet letter, I wear it for the sake of its
gold-thread."
In all the seven bygone years, Hester
Prynne had never before been false to the
symbol on her bosom. It may be that it
was the talisman of a stern and severe, but
yet a guardian spirit, who now forsook her;
as recognizing that, in spite of his strict
watch over her heart, some new evil had
crept into it, or some old one had never been
expelled. As for little Pearl, the earnestness
soon passed out of her face.
But the child did not see fit to let the
matter drop. Two or three times, as her
mother and she went homeward, and as
often at supper-time, and while Hester was
488
NATHAMKL HAWTHORNE
putting her to bed, and once after she seemed
to be fairly asleep, Pearl looked up, with
mischief gleaming in her black eyes.
"Mother," said she, "what does the scar-
let letter mean?"
And the next morning, the first indication
the child gave of being awake was by popping
up her head from the pillow, and making that
other inquiry, which she had so unaccount-
ably connected with her investigations about
the scarlet letter: —
"Mother! — Mother I — Why does the min-
ister keep his hand over his heart?"
"Hold thy tongue, naughty child!" an-
swered her mother, with an asperity that she
had never permitted to herself before. "Do
not tease me, else I shall shut thee mto the
dark closet!"
XVI. A FOREST WALK
Hester Prynne remained constant in her
resolve to make known to Mr. Dimmesdale,
at whatever risk of present pain or ulterior
consequences, the true character of the man
who had crept into his intimacy. For sev-
eral days, however, she vainly sought an
opportunity of addressing him in some of the
meditative walks which she knew him to be in
the habit of taking, along the shores of the
peninsula, or on the wooded hills of the
neighboring country. I here would have
been no scandal, indeed, nor peril to the
holy whiteness of the clergyman's good fame,
had she visited him in his own study, where
many a penitent, ere now, had confessed sins
of perhaps as deep a dye as the one betokened
by the scarlet letter. But, partly that she
dreaded the secret or undisguised interference
of old Roger Chillingworth, and partly that
her conscious heart imputed suspicion where
none could have been felt, and partly that
both the minister and she would need the
whole wide world to breathe in, while they
talked together, — for all these reasons,
Hester never thought of meeting him in any
narrower privacy than beneath the open sky.
At last, while attending in a sick-chamber,
whither the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale had
been summoned to make a prayer, she learnt
that he had gone, the day before, to visit the
Apostle Eliot, among his Indian converts.
He would probably return, by a certain hour,
in the afternoon of the morrow. Betimes,
therefore, the next day, Hester took little
Pearl, — who was necessarily the companion
of all her mother's expeditions, however in-
convenient her presence, — and set forth.
The road, after the two wayfarers had
crossed from the peninsula to the mainland,
was no other than a footpath. It straggled
onward into the mystery of the primeval
forest. This hemmed it in so narrowly, and
stood so black and dense on either side, and
disclosed such imperfect glimpses of the sky
above, that, to Hester's mind, it imaged not
amiss the moral wilderness in which she had
so long been wandering. I he day was chill
and somber. Overhead w^as a gray expanse
of cloud, slightly stirred, however, by a
breeze; so that a gleam of flickering sunshine
might now and then be seen at its solitary
play along the path. This flitting cheerful-
ness was always at the farther extremity of
some long vista through the forest. The
sportive sunlight — feebly sportive, at best,
in the predominant pensiveness of the day
and scene — withdrew itself as they came
nigh, and left the spots where it had danced
the drearier, because they had hoped to find
them bright.
"Mother," said little Pearl, "the sunshine
does not love you. It runs away and hides
itself, because it is afraid of something on
your bosom. Now, see! There it is, playing,
a good way oflf. Stand you here, and let me
run and catch it. I am but a child. It will
not flee from me; for I wear nothing on my
bosom yet!"
"Nor ever will, my child, I hope," said
Hester.
"And why not, mother.'" asked Pearl,
stopping short, just at the beginning of her
race. "Will it not come of its own accord,
when I am a woman grown:"
"Run away, child," answered her mother,
"and catch the sunshine! It will soon be
gone."
Pearl set forth, at a great pace, and, as
Hester smiled to perceive, did actually catch
the sunshine, and stood laughmg in the midst
of it', all brightened by its splendor, and
scintillating with the vivacity excited by
rapid motion. The light lingered about the
lonely child, as if glad of such a playmate,
until her mother had drawn almost nigh
enough to step into the magic circle too.
"It will go now," said Pearl, shaking her
head.
THE SCARLET LETTER
489
"See!" answered Hester, smiling. ''Now I
can stretch out mv hand, and grasp some
of it."
As she attempted to do so, the sunshine
vanished; or, to judge from the bright
e.xpression that was dancing on Pearl's feat-
ures, her mother could have fancied that the
child had absorbed it into herself, and would
give it forth again, with a gleam about her
path, as they should plunge into some gloom-
ier shade. There was no other attribute that
so much impressed her with a sense of new
and untransmitted vigor in Pearl's nature,
as this never-failing vivacity of spirits; she
had not the disease of sadness, which almost
all children, in these latter days, inherit,
with the scrofula, from the troubles of their
ancestors. Perhaps this too was a disease,
and but the reflex of the wild energy with
which Hester had fought against her sorrows,
before Pearl's birth. It was certainly a
doubtful charm, imparting a hard, metallic
luster to the child's character. She wanted —
what some people want throughout life — a
grief that should deeply touch her, and thus
humanize and make her capable of sym-
pathy. But there was time enough yet for
little Pearl.
"Come, my child!" said Hester, looking
about her from the spot where Pearl had
stood still in the sunshine. "We will sit
down a little way within the wood, and rest
ourselves."
"I am not aweary, mother," replied the
little girl. "But you may sit down, if you
will tell me a story meanwhile."
"A story, child!" said- Hester; "and about
what?"
"O, a story about the Black Man," an-
swered Pearl, taking hold of her mother's
gown, and looking up, half earnestly, half
mischievously, into her face. "How he
haunts this forest, and carries a book with
him, — a big, heavy book, with iron clasps;
and how this ugly Black Man offers his book
and an iron pen to everybody that meets
him here among the trees; and they are to
write their names with their own blood.
And then he sets his mark on their bosoms!
Didst thou ever meet the Black Man,
mother?"
"And who told you this story. Pearl?"
asked her mother, recognizing a common
superstition of the period.
"It was the old dame in the chimney-
corner, at the house where you watched last
night," said the child. "But she fancied me
asleep while she was talking of it. She said
that a thousand and a thousand people had
met him here, and had written in his book,
and have his mark on them. And that ugly-
tempered lady, old Mistress Hibbins, was
one. And, mother, the old dame said that
this scarlet letter was the Black Man's mark
on thee, and that it glows like a red flame
when thou meetest him at midnight, here in
the dark wood. Is it true, mother? And
dost thou go to meet him in the night-
time?"
"Didst thou ever awake, and find thy
mother gone?" asked Hester.
"Not that I remember," said the child.
"If thou fearest to leave me in our cottage,
thou mightest take me along with thee. I
would very gladly go! But, mother, tell me
now! Is there such a Black Man? And
didst thou ever meet him? And is this his
r
"Wilt thou let me be at peace, if I once
tell thee?" asked her mother.
"Yes, if thou tellest me all," answered
Pearl.
"Once in my life I met the Black Man!"
said her mother. "This scarlet letter is his
mark!"
Thus conversing, they entered sufficiently
deep into the wood to secure themselves from
the observation of any casual passenger along
the forest track. Here they sat down on a
luxuriant heap of moss which, at some epoch
of the preceding century, had been a gigantic
pine, with its roots and trunk in the dark-
some shade, and its head aloft in the upper
atmosphere. It was a little dell where they
had seated themselves, with a leaf-strewn
bank rising gently on either side, and a brook
flowing through the midst, over a bed of
fallen and drowned leaves. The trees im-
pending over it had flung down great
branches, from time to time, which choked
up the current and compelled it to form
eddies and black depths at some points;
while, in its swifter and livelier passages,
there appeared a channel-way of pebbles, and
brown, sparkling sand. Letting the eyes
follow along the course of the stream, they
could catch the reflected light from its water,
at some short distance within the forest, but
490
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
soon lost all traces of it aniul the bewikUr-
nient of tree-trunks and underbrush, and
here and there a huge rock covered over with
gray lichens. All these giant trees and
bowlders of granite seemed intent on making
a mystery of the course of this small brook;
fearing, perhaps, tiiat, with its never-ceasing
loquacity, it should whisper tales out of the
heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or
mirror its revelations on the smooth surface
of a pool. Continually, indeed, as it stole
onward, the streamlet kept up a babble, kind,
quiet, soothing, but melancholy, like the
voice of a young child that was spending its
infancy without playfulness, and knew not
how to be merry among sad acquaintance
and events of somber hue.
"O brook! O foolish and tiresome little
brook!" cried Pearl, after listening awhile to
its talk. "Why art thou so sad? Pluck up a
spirit, and do not be all the time sighing and
murmuring!"
But the brook, in the course of its little
lifetime among the forest-trees, had gone
through so solemn an experience that it
could not help talking about it, and seemed
to have nothing else to say. Pearl resembled
the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life
gushed from a wellspring as mysterious, and
had flowed through scenes shadowed as
heavily with gloom. Rut, unlike the little
stream, she danced and sparkled, and prattled
airily along her course.
*'What does this sad little brook say,
mother?" inquired she.
"If thou hadst a sorrow of thine own, the
brook might tell thee of it," answered her
mother, "even as it is telling me of mine!
But now. Pearl, I hear a footstep along the
path, and the noise of one putting aside the
branches. I would have thee betake thyself
to play, and leave me to speak with him that
comes yonder."
"Is it the Black Man?" asked Pearl.
"Wilt thou go and play, child?" repeated
her mother. " But do not stray far into the
wood. And take heed that thou come at
my first call."
"Yes, mother," answered Pearl. "But if
it be the Black Man, wilt thou not let me
stay a moment, and look at him, with his
big book under his arm?"
"Go, silly child!" said her mother, im-
patiently. "It is no I^lack Man! Thou
canst see him now, through the trees. It is
the minister:"
"And so it is!" said the child. "And,
mother, he has his hand over his heart! Is
it because, when the minister wrote his name
in the book, the Black Man set his mark in
that place? But why does he not wear it
outside his bosom, as thou dost, mother?"
"Go now, child, and thou shalt tease me
as thou wilt another time," cried Hester
Prynne. " But do not stray far. Keep where
thou canst hear the babble of the brook."
The child went singing away, following up
the current of * the brook, and striving to
mingle a more lightsome cadence with its
melancholy voice. But the little stream
would not be comforted, and still kept telling
its unintelligible secret of some very mourn-
ful mystery that had happened — or making
a prophetic lamentation about something
that was yet to happen — within the verge of
the dismal forest. So Pearl, who had enough
of shadow in her own little life, chose to break
off all acquaintance with this repining brook.
She set herself, therefore, to gathering violets
and wood-anemones, and some scarlet colum-
bines that she found growing in the crevices
of a high rock.
When her elf-child had departed, Hester
Prynne made a step or two towards the track
that led through the forest, but still remained
under the deep shadow of the trees. She
beheld the minister advancing along the
path, entirely alone, and leaning on a staff
which he had cut by the wayside. He looked
haggard and feeble, and betrayed a nerveless
despondency in his air, which had never so
remarkably characterized him in his walks
about the settlement, nor in any other situa-
tion where he deemed himself liable to notice.
Here it was woefully visible, in the intense
seclusion of the forest, which of itself would
have been a heavy trial to the spirits. There
was a listlessness in his gait; as if he saw no
reason for taking one step farther, nor felt
any desire to do so, but would have been
glad, could he be glad of anything, to fling
himself down at the root of the nearest
tree, and lie there passive, forevermore. The
leaves might bestrew him, and the soil gradu-
ally accumulate and form a little hillock over
his frame, no matter whether there were life
in it or no. Death was too definite an object
to be wished for, or avoided.
THE SCARLET LETTER
491
To Hester's eye, the Reverend Mr.
Dimmesdale exhibited no symptom of posi-
tive and vivacious suffering, except that, as
Httle Pearl had remarked, he kept his hand
over his heart.
XVII. THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER
Slow^ly as the minister walked, he had
almost gone by, before Hester Prynne could
gather voice enough to attract his observa-
tion. At length, she succeeded.
''Arthur Dimmesdale!" she said, faintly
at first; then louder, but hoai*sely. "Arthur
Dimmesdale!"
"Who speaks.^" answered the minister.
Gathering himself quickly up, he stood
more erect, like a man taken by surprise in a
mood to which he was reluctant to have wit-
nesses. Throwing his eyes anxiously in the
direction of the voice, he indistinctly beheld
a form under the trees, clad m garments so
somber and so little relieved from the gray
twilight into which the clouded sky and the
heavy foliage had darkened the noontide,
that he knew not whether it were a woman
or a shadow. It may be that his pathway
through life was haunted thus, by a specter
that had stolen out from among his thoughts.
He made a step nigher, and discovered the
scarlet letter.
"Hester! Hester Prynne!" said he. "Is
it thou? Art thou in life.?"
"Even so!" she answered. "In such life
as has been mine these seven years past!
And thou, Arthur Dimmesdale, dost thou
yet live?"
It was no wonder that they thus ques-
tioned one another's actual and bodily exist-
ence, and even doubted of their own. So
strangely did they meet, in the dim wood,
that it was like the first encounter, in the
world beyond the grave, of two spirits who
had been intimately connected in their former
life, but now stood coldly shuddering, in
mutual dread; as not yet familiar with their
state, nor wonted to the companionship of
disembodied beings. Each a ghost, and awe-
stricken at the other ghost! They were awe-
stricken likewise at themselves; because the
crisis flung back to them their consciousness,
and revealed to each heart its history and
experience, as life never does, except at such
breathless epochs. The soul beheld its
features in the mirror of the passing moment.
It was with fear, and tremulously, and, as
it were, by a slow, reluctant necessity, that
Arthur Dimmesdale put forth his hand, chill
as death, and touched the chill hand of
Hester Prynne. The grasp, cold as it was,
took away what was dreariest in the inter-
view. They now felt themselves, at least,
inhabitants of the same sphere.
Without a word more spoken, — neither he
nor she assuming the guidance, but with an
unexpressed consent, — they glided back into
the shadow of the woods whence Hester had
emerged, and sat down on the heap of moss
where she and Pearl had before been sitting.
When they found voice to speak, it was, at
first, only to utter remarks and inquiries such
as any two acquaintances might have made,
about the gloomy sky, the threatening storm,
and, next, the health of each. Thus they
went onward, not boldly, but step by step,
into the themes that were brooding deepest
in their hearts. So long estranged by fate
and circumstances, they needed something
slight and casual to run before, and throw
open the doors of intercourse, so that their
real thoughts might be led across the
threshold.
After a while, the minister fixed his eyes
on Hester Prynne's.
"Hester," said he, "hast thou found
peace .^
She smiled drearily, looking down upon
her bosom.
"Hast thou?" she asked.
"None! — nothing but despair!" he an-
swered. "What else could I look for, being
what I am, and leading such a life as mine?
Were I an atheist, — a man devoid of con-
science,— a wretch with coarse and brutal
instincts, — I might have found peace, long
ere now. Nay, I never should have lost it!
But, as matters stand with my soul, what-
ever of good capacity there originally was
in me, all of God's gifts that were the choicest
have become the ministers of spiritual tor-
ment. Hester, I am most miserable!"
"The people reverence thee," said Hester.
"And surely thou workest good among them!
Doth this bring thee no comfort?"
"More misery, Hester! — only the more
misery!" answered the clergyman, with a
bitter smile. "As concerns the good which
I may appear to do, I have no faith in ir.
It must needs be a delusion. What can a
49-
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
ruined soul, like mine, effect towards the re-
demption of other souls? — -or a polluted soul
towards their purification? And as for the
people's reverence, would that it were turned
to scorn and hatred! Canst thou deem it,
Hester, a consolation, that I must stand up
in my pulpit, and meet so many eyes turned
upward to my face, as if the light of heaven
were beaming from it! — must see my flock
hungry for the truth, and listening to my
words as if a tongue of Pentecost were speak-
ing!— and then look inward, and discern the
black reality of what they idolize? I have
laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at
the contrast between what I seem and what
I am! And Satan laughs at it!"
"You wrong yourself in this," said Hester
gently. "You have deeply and sorely re-
pented. Your sin is left behind you, in the
days long past. Your present life is not less
holy, in very truth, than it seems in people's
eyes. Is there no reality in the penitence
thus sealed and witnessed by good works?
And wherefore should it not bring you
peace :
"No, Hester, no!" replied the clergyman.
"There is no substance in it! It is cold and
dead, and can do nothing for me! Of pen-
ance, I have had enough! Of penitence,
there has been none! Else, I should long
ago have thrown off these garments of mock
holiness, and have shown myself to man-
kind as they will see meat the judgment-
seat. Happy are you, Hester, that wear the
scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mine
burns in secret! Thou little knowest what a
relief it is, after the torment of a seven years'
cheat, to look mto an eye that recognizes me
for what I am! Had I one friend, — or were
it my worst enemy! — to whom, when sick-
ened with the praises of all other men, I
could daily betake myself, and be known as
the vilest of all sinners, methinks my soul
might keep itself alive thereby. Even thus
much of truth would save me! But, now, it is
all falsehood! — all emptiness! — all death!"
Hester Prynne looked into his face, but
hesitated to speak. Yet, uttering his long-
restrained emotions so vehemently as he
did, his words here offered her the very point
of circumstances in which to interpose what
she came to say. She conquered her fears,
and spoke.
"Such a friend as thou hast even now
wished for," said she, "with wiiom to weep
over thy sin, thou hast in me, the partner of
it!" — Again she hesitated, but brought out
the words with an effort. — "Thou hast long
had such an enemy, and dwellest with him,
under the same roof!"
The minister started to his feet, gasping
for breath, and clutching at his heart, as if
he would have torn it out of his bosom.
"Ha! What sayest thou!" cried he.
"An enemy! And under mine own roof!
What mean you?"
Hester Prynne was now fully sensible of
the deep injury for which she wms responsible
to this unhappy man, in permitting him to lie
for so many years, or, indeed, for a single
moment, at the mercy of one whose pur-
poses could not be other than malevolent.
The very contiguity of his enemy, beneath
whatever mask the latter might conceal him-
self, was enough to disturb the magnetic
sphere of a being so sensitive as Arthur
Dimmesdale. There had been a period
when Hester was less alive to this considera-
tion; or, perhaps, in the misanthropy of her
own trouble, she left the minister to bear
what she might picture to herself as a more
tolerable doom. But of late, since the night
of his vigil, all her sympathies towards him
had been both softened and invigorated. She
now read his heart more accurately. She
doubted not that the continual presence of
Roger Chillingworth, — the secret poison of
his malignity, infecting all the air about
him, — and his authorized interference, as a
physician, with the minister's physical and
spiritual infirmities, — that these bad oppor-
tunities had been turned to a cruel purpose.
By means of them, the sufferer's conscience
had been kept in an irritated state, the tend-
ency of which was, not to cure by wholesome
pain, but to disorganize and corrupt his
spiritual being. Its result, on earth, could
hardly fail to be insanity, and hereafter,
that eternal alienation from the Good and
True, — of which madness is perhaps the
earthly type.
Such was the ruin to which she had
brought the man, once, — nay, w^hy should we
not speak it? — still so passionately loved!
Hester felt that the sacrifice of the clergy-
man's good name, and death itself, as she
had already told Roger Chillingworth,
would have been infinitely preferable to the
THE SCARLET LETTER
493
alternative which she had taken upon her-
self to choose. And now, rather than have
had this grievous wrong to confess, she
would gladly have lain down on the forest-
leaves, and died there, at Arthur Dimmes-
dale's feet.
"O Arthur," cried she, ** forgive me! In
all things else, I have striven to be true!
Truth was the one virtue which I might have
held fast, and did hold fast, through all ex-
tremity; save when thy good, — thy life, —
thy fame, — were put in question! Then I
consented to a deception. But a lie is never
good, even though death threaten on the
other side! Dost thou not see what I would
say? That old man! — the physician! — he
whom they call Roger Chillingworth! — he
was my husband!"
The minister looked at her, for an instant,
with all that violence of passion, which —
intermixed, in more shapes than one, with
his higher, purer, softer qualities — was, in
fact, the portion of him which the Devil
claimed, and through which he sought to win
the rest. Never was there a blacker or a
fiercer frown than Hester now encountered.
For the brief space that it lasted, it was a
dark transfiguration. But his character had
been so much enfeebled by suffering, that
even its lower energies were incapable of
more than a temporary struggle. He sank
down on the ground, and buried his face in
his hands.
"I might have known it," murmured he.
**I did know it! Was not the secret told me,
in the natural recoil of my heart, at the first
sight of him, and as often as I have seen him
since! Why did I not understand.? O Hester
Prynne, thou little, little knowest all the
horror of this thing! And the shame! — the
indelicacy! — the horrible ugliness of this
exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the
very eye that would gloat over it! Woman,
w^oman, thou art accountable for this! I
cannot forgive thee!"
"Thou shalt forgive me!" cried Hester,
flinging herself on the fallen leaves beside
him. **Let God punish! Thou shalt
forgive!"
With sudden and desperate tenderness,
she threw her arms around him, and pressed
his head against her bosom; little caring
though his cheek rested on the scarlet letter.
He would have released himself, but strove
in vam to do so. Hester would not set him
free, lest he should look her sternly in the
face. All the world had frowned on her, —
for seven long years had it frowned upon
this lonely woman, — and still she bore it all,
nor ever once turned away her firm, sad
eyes. Heaven, likewise, had frowned upon
her, and she had not died. But the frown of
this pale, weak, sinful, and sorrow-stricken
man was what Hester could not bear and live!
"Wilt thou yet forgive me!" she repeated,
over and over again. "Wilt thou not frown?
Wilt thou forgive?"
"I do forgive you, Hester," replied the
minister, at length, with a deep utterance,
out of an abyss of sadness, but no anger. "I
freely forgive you now. May God forgive us
both! We are not, Hester, the worst sinners
in the world. There is one worse than even
the polluted priest! That old man's revenge
has been blacker than my sin. He has
violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a
human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never
did so!"
"Never, never!" whispered she. "What
we did had a consecration of its own. We
felt it so! We said so to each other! Hast
thou forgotten it?"
"Hush, Hester!" said Arthur Dimmesdale,
rising from the ground. "No; I have not
forgotten!"
They sat down again, side by side, and
hand clasped in hand, on the mossy trunk of
the fallen tree. Life had never brought them
a gloomier hour; it was the point whither
their pathway had so long been tending, and
darkening ever, as it stole along; — and yet
it enclosed a charm that made them linger
upon it, and claim another, and another, and,
after all, another moment. The forest was
obscure around them, and creaked with a
blast that was passing through it. The
boughs were tossing heavily above their
heads; while one solemn old tree groaned
dolefully to another, as if telling the sad
story of the pair that sat beneath, or con-
strained to forebode evil to come.
And yet they lingered. How dreary looked
the forest-track that led backward to the
settlement, where Hester Prynne must take
up again the burden of her ignominy, and
the minister the hollow mockery of his good
name! So they lingered an instant longer.
No golden light had ever been so precious as
404
NATHANIKL HAWTHORNE
the jilodm of this dark forest. Here, seen
only hy his eyes, the scnrlet letter need not
burn into the bosom of the fallen woman!
Here, seen only by her eyes, Arthur Dimmes-
dale, false to Ciod and man, mic;ht be, for
one moment, true!
He started at a thought that suddenly
occurred to him.
"Hester," cried he, "here is a new horror!
Roger Chillingworth knows your purpose to
reveal his true character. Will he continue,
then, to keep our secret? What will now be
the course of his revenge.'"
"There is a strange secrecy in his nature,"
replied Hester thoughtfully; "and it has
grown upon him by the hidden practices of
his revenge. I deem it not likely that he will
betray the secret. He will doubtless seek
other means of satiating his dark passion."
"And I! — how am I to live longer, breath-
ing the same air with this deadly enemy.'"
exclaimed Arthur Dimmesdale, shrinking
within himself, and pressing his hand
nervously against his heart, — a gesture that
had grown involuntary with him. "Think
for me, Hester! Thou art strong. Resolve
for me!"
"Thou must dwell no longer with this
man," said Hester, slowly and firmly. "Thy
heart must be no longer under his evil eye!"
"It were far worse than death!" replied
the minister. "But how to avoid it? What
choice remains to me? Shall I lie down again
on these withered leaves, where I cast my-
self when thou didst tell me what he was?
Must I sink down there, and die at once?"
"Alas, what a ruin has befallen thee!"
said Hester, with the tears gushing into her
eyes. "Wilt thou die for very weakness?
There is no other cause!"
"The judgment of God is on me,"
answered the conscience-stricken priest. "It
is too mighty for me to struggle with!"
"Heaven would show mercy," rejoined
Hester, "hadst thou but the strength to take
advantage of it."
"Be thou strong for me!" answered he.
"Advise me what to do."
"Is the world, then, so narrow?" ex-
claimed Hester Prynne, fixing her deep eyes
on the minister's, and instinctively exercising
a magnetic power over a spirit so shattered
and subdued that it could hardly hold itself
erect. "Doth the universe lie within the
compass of yonder town, which only a little
time ago was but a leaf-strewn desert, as
lonely as this around us? Whither leads
yonder forest-track? Backward to the
settlement, thou sayest! Yes; but onward,
too. Deeper it goes, and deeper, into the
wilderness, less plainly to be seen at every
step; until, some few miles hence, the
yellow leaves will show no vestige of the
white man's tread. There thou art free!
So brief a journey would bring thee from a
world where thou hast been most wretched,
to one where thou mayest still be happy. Is
there not shade enough in all this boundless
forest to hide thy heart from the gaze of
Roger Chillingworth?"
"Yes, Hester; but only under the fallen
leaves!" replied the minister, with a sad
smile.
"Then there is the broad pathway of the
sea!" comtinued Hester. "It brought thee
hither. If thou so choose, it will bear thee
back again. In our native land, whether in
some remote rural village or in vast London,
— or, surely, in Germany, in France, in
pleasant Italy, — thou wouldst be beyond his
power and knowledge! And what hast thou
to do with all these iron men, and their
opinions? They have kept thy better part in
bondage too long already!"
"It cannot be!" answered the minister,
listening as if he were called upon to realize
a dream. "I am powerless to go! Wretched
and sinful as I am, I have had no other
thought than to drag on my earthly existence
in the sphere where Providence hath placed
me. Lost as my own soul is, I would still do
what I may for other human souls! I dare
not quit my post, though an unfaithful
sentinel, whose sure reward is death and
dishonor, when his dreary watch shall come
to an end!"
"Thou art crushed under this seven years'
weight of misery," replied Hester, fervently
resolved to buoy him up with her own
energy. "But thou shalt leave it all behind
thee! It shall not cumber thy steps, as thou
treadest along the forest-path; neither shalt
thou freight the ship with it, if thou prefer to
cross the sea. Leave this wreck and ruin
here where it hath happened. Meddle no
more with it! Begin all anew! Hast thou
exhausted possibility in the failure of this
one trial? Not so! The future is yet full of
THE SCARLET LETTER
495
trial and success. There is happiness to be
enjoyed! 1 here is ^ood to be done! Ex-
change this false hfe of thine for a true one.
Be, if thy spirit summon thee to such a
mission, the teacher and apostle of the red
men. Or, — as is more thy nature, — be a
scholar and a sage among the wisest and
most renowned of the cultivated world.
Preach! Write! Act! Do anything, save
to lie down and die! Give up this name of
Arthur Dimmesdale, and make thyself
another, and a high one, such as thou canst
wear without fear or shame. Why shouldst
thou tarry so much as one other day in the
torments that have so gnawed into thy life! —
that have made thee feeble to will and to
do! — that will leave thee powerless even to
repent! Up, and away!"
*'0h, Hester!" cried Arthur Dimmesdale,
in whose eyes a fitful light, kindled by her
enthusiasm, flashed up and died away,
"thou tellest of running a race to a man
whose knees are tottering beneath him! I
must die here! There is not the strength or
courage left me to venture into the wide,
strange, difficult world, alone!"
It was the last expression of the de-
spondency of a broken spirit. He lacked
energy to grasp the better fortune that
seemed within his reach.
He repeated the word.
"Alone, Hester!"
"Thou shalt not go alone!" answered she,
in a deep whisper.
Then, all was spoken!
XVIII. A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE
Arthur Dimmesdale gazed into Hester's
face with a look in which hope and joy shone
out, indeed, but with fear betwixt them, and
a kind of horror at her boldness, who had
spoken what he vaguely hinted at, but dared
not speak.
But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native
courage and activity, and for so long a period
not merely estranged, but outlawed, from
society, had habituated herself to such
latitude of speculation as was altogether
foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered,
without rule or guidance, in a moral wilder-
ness; as vast, as intricate and shadowy, as
the untamed forest, amid the gloom of which
they were now holding a colloquy that was
to decide their fate. Her intellect and heart
had their home, as it were, in desert places,
where she roamed as freely as the wild
Indian in his woods. Eor years past she had
looked from this estranged point of view at
human institutions, and whatever priests or
legislators had established; criticizing all
with hardly more reverence than the Indian
would feel for the clerical band, the judicial
robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or
the church. The tendency of her fate and
fortunes had been to set her free. The scarlet
letter was her passport into regions where
other women dared not tread. Shame,
Despair, Solitude! These had been her
teachers, — stern and wild ones, — and they
had made her strong, but taught her much
amiss.
The minister, on the other hand, had never
gone through an experience calculated to
lead him beyond the scope of generally
received laws; although, in a single instance,
he had so fearfully transgressed one of the
most sacred of them. But this had been a
sin of passion, not of principle, nor even
purpose. Since that wretched epoch, he had
watched, with morbid zeal and minuteness,
not his acts, — for those it was easy to ar-
range,— but each breath of emotion, and his
every thought. At the head of the social
system, as the clergymen of that day stood,
he was only the more trammeled by its regu-
lations, its principles, and even its prejudices.
As a priest, the framework of his order inevi-
tably hemmed him in. As a man who had
once sinned, but who kept his conscience all
alive and painfully sensitive by the fretting
of an unhealed wound, he might have been
supposed safer within the line of virtue than
if he had never sinned at all.
Thus, we seem to see that, as regarded
Hester Prynne, the whole seven years of out-
law and ignominy had been little other than
a preparation for this very hour. But
Arthur Dimmesdale! Were such a man
once more to fall, what plea could be urged
in extenuation of his crime? None; unless
it avail him somewhat, that he was broken
down by long and exquisite suffering; that
his mind was darkened and confused by the
very remorse which harrowed it; that be-
tween fleeing as an avowed criminal and
remaining as a hypocrite, conscience might
find it hard to strike the balance; that it was
human to avoid the peril of death and
4q6
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
infamy, nnd the inscrutahle machinations of
an enemy; that, finally, to this poor jMl^rim
on his dreary and desert path, faint, sick,
miserable, there appeared a glimpse of
human affection and sympathy, a new life,
and a true one, in exchange for the heavy
doom which he was now expiating. And be
the stern and sad truth spoken, that the
breach which guilt has once made into the
human soul is never, in this mortal state,
repaired. It may be watched and guarded;
so that the enemy shall not force his way
again into the citadel, and might even, in
his subsequent assaults, select some other
avenue, in preference to that where he had
formerly succeeded. But there is still the
ruined wall, and, near it, the stealthy tread
of the foe that would win over again his
unforgotten triumph.
The struggle, if it were one, need not be
described. Let it suffice that the clergyman
resolved to flee, and not alone.
"If, in all these past seven years," thought
he, **I could recall one instant of peace or
hope, I would yet endure, for the sake of that
earnest of Heaven's mercy. But now, —
since I am irrevocably doomed, — wherefore
should I not snatch the solace allowed to the
condemned culprit before his execution?
Or, if this be the path to a better life, as
Hester would persuade me, I surely give up
no fairer prospect by pursuing it! Neither
can I any longer live without her com-
panionship; so powerful is she to sustain, —
so tender to soothe! O Thou to whom I dare
not lift mine eyes, wilt Thou yet pardon
me!
"Thou wilt go!" said Hester calmly, as
he met her glance.
The decision once made, a glow of strange
enjoyment threw its flickering brightness
over the trouble of his breast. It was the
exhilarating effect — upon a prisoner just
escaped from the dungeon of his own heart —
of breathing the wild, free atmosphere of an
unredeemed, unchristianized, lawless region.
His spirit rose, as it were with a bound, and
attained a nearer prospect of the sky, than
throughout all the misery which had kept
him groveling on the earth. Of a deeply
religious temperament, there was inevitably
a tinge of the devotional in his mood.
"Do I feel joy again?" cried he, wonder-
ing at himself. "Methought the germ of it
was dead in me! () Hester, thou art my
better angel! I seem to have flung myself — ■
sick, sin-stained, and sorrow-blackened —
down upon these forest-leaves, and to have
risen up all made anew, and with new powers
to glorify Him that hath been merciful!
This is already the better life! Why did we
not find it sooner?"
"Let us not look back," answered Hester
Prynne. "The past is gone! Wherefore
should we linger upon it now? See! With
this symbol, I undo it all, and make it as it
had never been!"
So speaking, she undid the clasp that
fastened the scarlet letter, and, taking it
from her bosom., threw it to a distance
among the withered leaves. 1 he mystic
token alighted on the hither verge of the
stream. W^ith a hand's breadth farther
flight it would have fallen into the water,
and have given the little brook another woe
to carry onward, besides the unintelligible
tale which it still kept murmuring about.
But there lay the embroidered letter, glitter-
ing like a lost jewel, which some ill-fated
wanderer might pick up, and thenceforth
be haunted by strange phantoms of guilt,
sinkings of the heart, and unaccountable
misfortune.
The stigma gone, Hester heaved a long,
deep sigh, in which the burden of shame and
anguish departed from her spirit. O ex-
quisite relief! She had not known the weight
until she felt the freedom! By another im-
pulse, she took oflf the formal cap that con-
fined her hair; and down it fell upon her
shoulders, dark and rich, with at once a
shadow and a light in its abundance, and
imparting the charm of softness to her
features. There played around her mouth,
and beamed out of her eyes, a radiant and
tender smile, that seemed gushing from the
very heart of womanhood. A crimson flush
was glowing on her cheek, that had been
long so pale. Her sex, her youth, and the
whole richness of her beauty, came back from
what men call the irrevocable past, and
clustered themselves, with her maiden hope,
and a happiness before unknown, within
the magic circle of this hour. And, as if the
gloom of the earth and sky had been but the
eflfluence of these two mortal hearts, it van-
ished with their sorrow. All at once, as with
a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the
THE SCARLET LETFER
497
sunshine, pourinp; a very flood into the
obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf-
transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold,
and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the
solemn trees. The objects that had made a
shadow hitherto, embodied the brightness
now. The course of the little brook might
be traced by its merry gleam afar into the
wood's heart of mystery, which had become
a mystery of joy.
Such was the sympathy of Nature — that
wild, heathen Nature of the forest, never
subjugated by human law, nor illumined by
higher truth — with the bliss of these two
spirits! Love, whether newly born, or
aroused from a death-like slumber, must
always create a sunshine, filling the heart so
full of radiance that it overflows upon the
outward world. Had the forest still kept its
gloom, it would have been bright in Hester's
eyes, and bright in Arthur Dimmesdale's!
Hester looked at him with the thrill of
another joy.
"Thou must know Pearl!" said she. "Our
little Pearl! Thou hast seen her, — yes, I
know it! — but thou wilt see her now with
other eyes. She is a strange child! I hardly
comprehend her! But thou wilt love her
dearly, as I do, and wilt advise me how to
deal with her."
"Dost thou think the child will be glad to
know me?" asked the minister, somewhat
uneasily. " I have long shrunk from children,
because they often show a distrust, — a back-
wardness to be familiar with me. I have
even been afraid of little Pearl!"
"A.h, that was sad!" answered the mother.
"But she will love thee dearly, and thou her.
She is not far off. I will call her! Pearl!
Pearl!"
"I see the child," observed the minister.
"Yonder she is, standing in a streak of sun-
shine, a good way off, on the other side of the
brook. So thou thinkest the child will love
me?"
Hester smiled, and again called to Pearl,
who was visible, at some distance, as the
minister had described her, like a bright-
appareled vision, in a sunbeam, which fell
down upon her through an arch of boughs.
The ray quivered to and fro, making her
figure dim or distinct, — now like a real child,
now like a child's spirit, — as the splendor
went and came again. She heard her
mother's voice, and approached slowly
through the forest.
Pearl had not found the hour pass weari-
somely, while her mother sat talking with
the clergyman. The great black forest —
stern as it showed itself to those who brought
the guilt and troubles of the world into its
bosom — became the playmate of the lonely
infant, as well as it knew how. Somber as
it was, it put on the kindest of its moods to
welcome her. It offered her the partridge-
berries, the growth of the preceding autumn,
but ripening only in the spring, and now red
as drops of blood upon the withered leaves.
These Pearl gathered, and was pleased with
their wild flavor. The small denizens of the
wilderness hardly took pains to move out
of her path. A partridge, indeed, with a
brood of ten behind her, ran forward
threateningly, but soon repented of her
fierceness, and clucked to her young ones not
to be afraid. A pigeon, alone on a low
branch, allowed Pearl to come beneath, and
uttered a sound as much of greeting as alarm.
A squirrel, from the lofty depths of his
domestic tree, chattered either in anger or
merriment, — for a squirrel is such a choleric
and humorous little personage, that it is hard
to distinguish between his moods, — so he
chattered at the child, and flung down a nut
upon her head. It was a last year's nut, and
already gnawed by his sharp tooth. A fox,
startled from his sleep by her light footstep
on the leaves, looked inquisitively at Pearl,
as doubting whether it were better to steal
off, or renew his nap on the same spot. A
wolf, it is said, — but here the tale has surely
lapsed into the improbable, — came up, and
smelt of Pearl's robe, and oflTered his savage
head to be patted by her hand. The truth
seems to be, however, that the mother-forest,
and these wild things which it nourished, all
recognized a kindred wildness in the human
child.
And she was gentler here than in the
grassy margined streets of the settlement, or
in her mother's cottage. The flowers ap-
peared to know it; and one and another
whispered as she passed, "Adorn thyself
with me, thou beautiful child, adorn thyself
with me!" — and, to please them. Pearl
gathered the violets, and anemones, and col-
umbines, and some twigs of the freshest
green, which the old trees held down before
498
NA'IHANIEL HAWTHORN
her eyes. \\ ith these slie decorated her hair
and her yoiinj:; waist, and became a nynipli-
child, or an infant dryad, or whatever else
was in closest sympathy with the antique
W'Ood. In such guise had Pearl adorned her-
self, when she heard her mother's voice, and
came slowly back.
Slowly; for she saw the clergyman.
XIX. THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE
"Thou wilt love her dearly," repeated
Hester Prynne, as she and the minister sat
watching little Pearl. "Dost thou not think
her beautiful.' And see with what natural
skill she has made those simple flowers adorn
her! Had she gathered pearls, and diamonds,
and rubies, in the wood, they could not have
become her better. She is a splendid child!
But I know whose brow she has!"
" Dost thou know, Hester," said Arthur
Dimmesdale, with an unquiet smile, "that
this dear child, tripping about always at thy
side, hath caused me many an alarm?
Methought — O Hester, what a thought is
that, and how terrible to dread it! — that my
own features were partly repeated in her
face, and so strikingly that the world might
see them! But she is mostly thme!"
"No, no! Not mostly!" answered the
mother, with a tender smile. "A little
longer, and thou needest not to be afraid to
trace whose child she is. But how strangely
beautiful she looks, w^ith those wild-flowers
in her hair! It is as if one of the fairies,
whom we left in our dear old England, had
decked her out to meet us."
It was with a feeling which neither of them
had ever before experienced, that they sat
and watched Pearl's slow advance. In her
was visible the tie that united them. She
had been offered to the world, these seven
years past, as the living hieroglyphic, in
which was revealed the secret they so darkly
sought to hide, — all written in this sym-
bol,— all plainly manifest, — had there been
a prophet or magician skilled to read the
character of flame! And Pearl was the
oneness of their being. Be the foregone evil
what it might, how could they doubt that
their earthly lives and future destinies were
conjoined, when they beheld at once the
material union, and the spiritual idea, in
whom they met, and were to dwell im-
mortally together? Thoughts like these —
and perhaps otiier thoughts, which they did
not acknowledge or define — threw an awe
about the child, as she came onward.
"Let her see nothing strange — no passion
nor eagerness — in thy way of accosting her,"
whispered Hester. "Our Pearl is a fitful and
fantastic little elf, sometimes. Especially,
she is seldom tolerant of emotion, when siie
does not fully comprehend the why and
wherefore. But the child hath strong
affections! She loves me, and will love
thee!"
"Thou canst not think," said the minisier,
glancing aside at Hester Prynne, "how my
heart dreads this interview, and yearns for
it! But, in truth, as I already told thee,
children are not readily won to be familiar
with me. They will not climb my knee, nor
prattle in my ear, nor answer to my smile;
but stand apart, and eye me strangely. Even
little babes, when I take them in my arms,
weep bitterly. Yet Pearl, twice in her little
lifetime, hath been kind to me! The first
time, — thou knowest it well! The last was
when thou ledst her with thee to the house of
yonder stern old Governor."
"And thou didst plead so bravely in her
behalf and mine!" answered the mother,
"I remember it; and so shall little Pearl.
Eear nothing! She may be strange and shy
at first, but will soon learn to love thee!"
By this time Pearl had reached the margin
of the brook, and stood on the farther side,
gazing silently at Hester and the clergyman,
who still sat together on the mossy tree-
trunk, waiting to receive her. Just where
she had paused, the brook chanced to form
a pool, so smooth and quiet that it reflected
a perfect image of her little figure, with all
the brilliant picturesqueness of her beauty,
in its adornment of flowers and wreathed
foliage, but more refined and spiritualized
than the reality. This image, so nearly
identical with the living Pearl, seemed to
communicate somewhat of its own shadowy
and intangible quality to the child herself.
It was strange, the way in which Pearl stood,
looking so steadfastly at them through the
dim medium of the forest-gloom; herself,
meanwhile, all glorified with a ray of sun-
shine, that was attracted thitherward as by
a certain sympathy. In the brook beneath
stood another child, — another and the
same, — with likewise its ray of golden light.
THE SCARLET LETTER
499
Hester felt herself, in some indistinct and
tantalizing manner, estranged from Pearl;
as if the child, in her lonely ramble through
the forest, had strayed out of the sphere in
which she and her mother dwelt together,
and was now vainly seeking to return to it.
There was both truth and error in the im-
pression; the child and mother were
estranged, but through Hester's fault, not
Pearl's. Since the latter rambled from her
side, another inmate had been admitted
within the circle of the mother's feelings, and
so modified the aspect of them all, that Pearl,
the returning wanderer, could not find her
wonted place; and hardly knew where she
was.
"I have a strange fancy," observed the
sensitive minister, "that this brook is the
boundary between two worlds, and that
thou canst never meet thy Pearl again. Or
is she an elfish spirit, who, as the legends of
our childhood taught us, is forbidden to cross
a running stream? Pray hasten her; for this
delay has already imparted a tremor to my
nerves."
"Come, dearest child!" said Hester, en-
couragingly, and stretching out both her
arms. "How slow thou art! When hast
thou been so sluggish before nqw.^' Here
is a friend of mine, who must be thy friend
also. Thou wilt have twice as much love,
henceforward, as thy mother alone could
give thee! Leap across the brook, and
come to us. Thou canst leap like a young
deer!"
Pearl, without responding in any manner
to these honey-sweet expressions, remained
on the other side of the brook. Now she
fixed her bright, wild eyes on her mother,
now on the minister, and now included them
both in the same glance; as if to detect and
explain to herself the relation which they
bore to one another. For some unaccount-
able reason, as Arthur Dimmesdale felt the
child's eye upon himself, his hand — with
that gesture so habitual as to have become
involuntary — stole over his heart. At
length, assuming a singular air of authority,
Pearl stretched out her hand, with the small
forefinger extended, and pointing evidently
towards her mother's breast. And beneath,
in the mirror of the brook, there was the
flower-girdled and sunny image of little
Pearl, pointing her smal' forefinger too.
" Ihou strange child, why dost thou not
come to me.'"' exclaimed Hester.
Pearl still pointed with her forefinger
and a frown gathered on her brow; the more
impressive from the childish, the almost
baby-like aspect of the features that con-
veyed it. As her mother still kept beckoning
to her, and arraying her face in a holiday
suit of unaccustomed smiles, the child
stamped her foot with a yet more imperious
look and gesture. In the brook, again, was
the fantastic beauty of the image, with its
reflected frown, its pointed finger, and
imperious gesture, giving emphasis to the
aspect of little Pearl.
"Hasten, Pearl; or I shall be angry with
thee!" cried Hester Prynne, who, however
inured to such behavior on the elf-child's
part at other seasons, was naturally anxious
for a more seemly deportment now. "Leap
across the brook, naughty child, and run
hither! Else I must come to thee!"
But Pearl, not a whit startled at her
mother's threats, any more than mollified
by her entreaties, now suddenly burst into a
fit of passion, gesticulating violently, and
throwing her small figure into the most
extravagant contortions. She accompanied
this wild outbreak with piercing shrieks,
which the woods reverberated on all sides;
so that, alone as she was in her childish and
unreasonable wrath, it seemed as if a hidden
multitude were lending her their sympathy
and encouragement. Seen in the brook,
once more, was the shadowy wrath of Pearl's
image, crowned and girdled with flowers, but
stamping its foot, wildly gesticulating, and,
in the midst of all, still pointing its small
forefinger at Hester's bosom!
"I see what ails the child," whispered
Hester to the clergyman, and turning pale
in spite of a strong eff'ort to conceal her
trouble and annoyance. "Children will not
abide any, the slightest, change in the
accustomed aspect of things that are daily
before their eyes. Pearl misses something
which she has always seen me wear!"
"I pray you," answered the minister, "if
thou hast any means of pacifying the child,
do it forthwith! Save it were the cankered
wrath of an old witch, like Mistress Hib-
bins," added he, attempting to smile, "I
know nothing that I would not sooner en-
counter than this passion in a child. In
;oo
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
Pearl's vounc; beauty, as in the wrinkled
witch, it has a preternatural effect. Pacify
her, if thou lovest me!"
Hester turned again towards Pearl, with
a crimson blush upon her cheek, a conscious
glance aside at the clergyman, and then a
heavy sigh; while, even before she had
time to speak, the blush yielded to a deadly
pallor.
"Pearl," said she sadly, "look down at
thy feet! Ihere! — before thee! — on the
hither side of the brook!"
The child turned her eyes to the point
indicated; and there lay the scarlet letter,
so close upon the margin of the stream that
the gold embroidery was reflected in it.
"Bring it hither!" said Hester.
"Come thou and take it up!" answered
Pearl.
"Was ever such a child!" observed Hes-
ter, aside to the minister, "Oh, I have much
to tell thee about her! But, in very truth,
she is right as regards this hateful token. I
must bear its torture yet a little longer, —
only a few days longer, — until we shall have
left this region, and look back hither as to a
land which we have dreamed of. The forest
cannot hide it! The mid-ocean shall take it
from my hand, and swallow it up forever!"
With these words she advanced to the
margin of the brook, took up the scarlet
letter, and fastened it again into her bosom.
Hopefully, but a moment ago, as Hester
had spoken of drowning it in the deep sea,
there was a sense of inevitable doom upon
her, as she thus received back this deadly
symbol from the hand of fate. She had
flung it into infinite space! — she had drawn
an hour's free breath! — and here again was
the scarlet misery, glittering on the old spot!
So it ever is, whether thus typified or no,
that an evil deed invests itself with the
character of doom. Hester next gathered up
the heavy tresses of her hair, and confined
them beneath her cap. As if there were a
withering spell in the sad letter, her beauty,
the warmth and richness of her womanhood,
departed, like fading sunshine; and a gray
shadow^ seemed to fall across her.
When the dreary change was wrought,
she extended her hand to Pearl.
" Dost thou know thy mother now, child ^ "
asked she, reproachfully, but with a subdued
tone. "Wilt thou come across the brook,
and own thy mother, "now that she has her
shame upon her, — now that she is sad?"
"Yes; now I will!" answered the child,
bounding across the brook, and clasping
Hester in her arms. "Now thou art my
mother indeed! And I am thy little Pearl!"
In a mood of tenderness that was not usual
with her, she drew down her mother's head,
and kissed her brow and both her cheeks.
But then — by a kind of necessity that
always impelled this child to alloy whatever
comfort she might chance to give with a
throb of anguish — Pearl put up her mouth,
and kissed the scarlet letter too!
"That was not kind!" said Hester.
"When thou hast shown me a little love,
thou mockest me!"
"Why doth the minister sit yonder.^"'
asked Pearl.
"He waits to welcome thee," replied her
mother. "Come thou, and entreat his
blessing! He loves thee, my little Pearl,
and loves thy mother too. Wilt thou not
love him? Come! he longs to greet thee!"
"Doth he love us?" said Pearl, looking
up, with acute intelligence, into her mother's
face. "Will he go back with us, hand in
hand, we three together, into the town?"
"Not now, my dear child," answered
Hester. "But in days to come he will walk
hand in hand with us. We will have a
home and fireside of our own; and thou
shalt sit upon his knee; and he will teach
thee many things, and love thee dearly.
Thou wilt love him; wilt thou not?"
"And will he always keep his hand over
his heart?" inquired Pearl.
"Foolish child, what a question is that!"
exclaimed her mother. "Come and ask his
blessing!"
But, whether influenced by the jealousy
that seems instinctive with every petted
child towards a dangerous rival, or from
whatever caprice of her freakish nature.
Pearl would show no favor to the clergyman.
It was only by an exertion of force that her
mother brought her up to him, hanging back,
and manifesting her reluctance 'by odd
grimaces; of which, ever since her baby-
hood, she had possessed a singular variety,
and could transform her mobile physiognomy
into a series of different aspects, with a new
mischief in them, each and all. The minis-
ter— painfully embarrassed, but hoping that
THE SCARLET LETTER
501
a kiss mi^lit prove a talisman to admit him
into tlie child's kindlier regards — bent
forward, and impressed one on her brow.
Hereupon, Pearl broke away from her
mother, and, running to the brook, stooped
over it, and bathed her forehead, until the
unwelcome kiss was quite washed off, and
diffused through a long lapse of the gliding
water. She then remained apart, silently
watching Hester and the clergyman; while
they talked together, and made such arrange-
ments as were suggested by their new
position, and the purposes soon to be fulfilled.
And now this fateful interview had come
to a close. The dell was to be left a solitude
among its dark, old trees, which, with their
multitudinous tongues, would whisper long
of what had passed there, and no mortal be
the wiser. And the melancholy brook would
add this other tale to the mystery with
which its little heart was already over-
burdened, and whereof it still kept up a
murmuring babble, with not a whit more
cheerfulness of tone than for ages hereto-
fore.
XX. THE MINISTER IN A MAZE
As the minister departed, in advance of
Hester Prynne and little Pearl, he threw a
backward glance, half expecting that he
should discover only some faintly traced
features or outline of the mother and the
child, slowly fading into the twilight of the
woods. So great a vicissitude in his life could
not at once be received as real. But there
was Hester, clad in her gray robe, still stand-
ing beside the tree-trunk, which some blast
had overthrown a long antiquity ago, and
which time had ever since been covering
with moss, so that these two fated ones,
w^ith earth's heaviest burden on them, might
there sit down together, and find a single
hour's rest and solace. And there was Pearl,
too, lightly dancing from the margin of the
brook, — now that the intrusive third person
was gone, — and taking her old place by her
mother's side. So the minister had not
fallen asleep and dreamed!
In order to free his mind from this indis-
tinctness and duplicity of impression, which
vexed it with a strange disquietude, he re-
called and more thoroughly defined the plans
which Hester and himself had sketched for
their departure. It had been determined
between them that the Old World, with its
crowds and cities, offered them a more
eligible shelter and concealment than the
wilds of New England, or all America, with
its alternatives of an Indian wigwam, or
the few settlements of Europeans scattered
thinly along the seaboard. Not to speak of
the clergyman's health, so inadequate to sus-
tain the hardships of a forest life, his native
gifts, his culture, and his entire develop-
ment, would secure him a home only in the
midst of civilization and refinement; the
higher the state, the more delicately adapted
to it the man. In furtherance of this choice,
it so happened that a ship lay in the harbor;
one of those questionable cruisers, frequent
at that day, which, without being abso-
lutely outlaws of the deep, yet roamed over
its surface with a remarkable irresponsi-
bility of character. This vessel had recently
arrived from the Spanish Main, and, within
three days' time, would sail for Bristol.
Hester Prynne — whose vocation, as a self-
enlisted Sister of Charity, had brought her
acquainted with the captain and crew —
could take upon herself to secure the passage
of two individuals and a child, with all the
secrecy which circumstances rendered more
than desirable.
The minister had inquired of Hester, with
no little interest, the precise time at which
the vessel might be expected to depart. It
would probably be on the fourth day from
the present. "That is most fortunate!" he
had then said to himself. Now, why the
Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale considered it so
very fortunate, we hesitate to reveal. Never-
theless,— to hold nothing back from the
reader, — it was because, on the third day
from the present, he was to preach the
Election Sermon; and, as such an occasion
formed an honorable epoch in the life of a
New England clergyman, he could not have
chanced upon a more suitable mode and time
of terminating his professional career. "At
least, they shall say of me," thought this
exemplary man, "that I leave no public
duty unperformed, nor ill performed!" Sad,
indeed, that an introspection so profound
and acute as this poor minister's should be
so miserably deceived! We have had, and
may still have, worse things to tell of him;
but none, we apprehend, so pitiably weak;
no evidence, at once so slight and irrefra-
NATHANIKL HAW IHORXE
f^able, of a subtle disease, that had loiifi since
begun to eat into the real substance of his
character. No man, for any considerable
period, can wear one face to himself, and
another to the multitude, without finally
getting bewildered as to which may be the
true.
1 he excitement of Mr. Dimmesdale's feel-
ings, as he returned from his interview with
Hester, lent him unaccustomed physical
energy, and hurried him townward at a rapid
pace. The pathway among the woods
seemed wilder, more uncouth with its rude
natural obstacles, and less trodden by the
foot of man, than he remembered it on his
outward journey. Hut he leaped across the
plashy places, thrust himself through the
clinging underbrush, climbed the ascent,
plunged into the hollow, and overcame, in
short, all the difficulties of the track, with
an unweariable activity that astonished him.
He could not but recall how feebly, and with
what frequent pauses for breath, he had
toiled over the same ground, only two days
before. As he drew near the town, he took
an impression of change from the series of
familiar objects that presented themselves.
It seemed not yesterday, not one, nor two,
but many days, or even years ago, since he
had quitted them. There, indeed, was each
former trace of the street, as he remembered
it, and all the peculiarities of the houses,
with the due multitude of gable-peaks, and a
weathercock at every point where his
memory suggested one. Not the less, how-
ever, came this importunately obtrusive
sense of change. The same was true as re-
garded the acquaintances whom he met,
and all the well-known shapes of human
life, about the little town. They looked
neither older nor younger now; the beards
of the aged were no whiter, nor could the
creeping babe of yesterday walk on his feet
to-day; it was impossible to describe in what
respect they differed from the individuals
on whom he had so recently bestowed a
parting glance; and yet the minister's deep-
est sense seemed to inform him of their
mutability. A similar impression struck him
most remarkably, as he passed under the
walls of his own church. The edifice had so
very strange, and yet so familiar, an aspect,
that Mr. Dimmesdale's mind vibrated be-
tween two ideas; either that he had seen it
only in a dream hitherto, or that he was
merely dreaming about it now.
This phenomenon, in the various shapes
which it assumed, indicated no external
change, but so sudden and important a
change in the spectator of the familiar scene,
that the intervening space of a single day
had operated on his consciousness like the
lapse of years. The minister's own will, and
Hester's will, and the fate that grew between
them, had wrought this transformation. It
was the same town as heretofore; but the
same minister returned not from the forest.
He might have said to the friends who greeted
him, — "I am not the man for whom you
take me! I left him yonder in the forest,
withdrawn into a secret dell, by a mossy
tree-trunk, and near a melancholy brook!
Go, seek your minister, and see if his emaci-
ated figure, his thin cheek, his white, heavy,
pain-wrinkled brow, be not flung down there,
like a cast-off garment!" His friends, no
doubt, would still have insisted with him,
— "Thou art thyself the man!" — but the
error would have been their own, not his.
Before Mr. Dimmesdale reached home,
his inner man gave him other evidences of a
revolution in the sphere of thought and feel-
ing. In truth, nothing short of a total change
of dynasty and moral code, in that interior
kingdom, was adequate to account for the
impulses now communicated to the unfor-
tunate and startled minister. At every
step he was incited to do some strange, wild,
wicked thing or other, with a sense that it
would be at once involuntary and intentional;
in spite of himself, yet growing out of a pro-
founder self than that which opposed the
impulse. For instance, he m(?t one of his
own deacons. 1 he good old man addressed
him wMth the paternal affection and patriar-
chal privilege, which his venerable age, his
upright and holy character, and his station
in the Church, entitled him to use; and,
conjoined with this, the deep, almost wor-
shiping respect, which the minister's pro-
fessional and private claims alike demanded.
Never was there a more beautiful example
of how the majesty of age and wisdom may
comport with the obeisance and respect
enjoined upon it, as from a lower social rank,
and inferior order of endowment, towards
a higher. Now, during a conversation of
some two or three moments between the
THE SCARLET LEITER
503
Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale and this excel-
lent and hoary-bearded deacon, it was only
by the most careful self-control that the for-
mer could refram from uttering certain blas-
phemous suggestions that rose into his mind,
respecting the communK)n supper. He ab-
solutely trembled and turned pale as ashes,
lest his tongue should wag itself, in utterance
of these horrible matters, and plead his own
consent for so doing, without his having
fairly given it. And, even with this terror in
his heart, he could hardly avoid laughing, to
imagine how the sanctified old patriarchal
deacon would have been petrified by his
minister's impiety!
Again, another incident of the same nature.
Hurrying along the street, the Reverend
Mr. Dimmesdale encountered the eldest
female member of his church; a most pious
and exemplary old dame; poor, widowed,
lonely, and with a heart as full of reminis-
cences about her dead husband and children,
and her dead friends of long ago, as a burial-
ground is full of storied gravestones. Yet all
this, which would else have been such heavy
sorrow, was made almost a solemn joy to her
devout old soul, by religious consolations and
the truths of Scripture, wherewith she had
fed herself continually for more than thirty
years. And, since Mr. Dimmesdale had
taken her in charge, the good grandam's
chief earthly comfort — which, unless it had
been likewise a heavenly comfort, could have
been none at all — was to meet her pastor,
whether casually or of set purpose, and be
refreshed with a word of warm, fragrant,
heaven-breathing Gospel truth, from his be-
loved lips, into her dulled but rapturously
attentive ear. But, on this occasion, up to
the moment of putting his lips to the old
woman's ear, Mr. Dimmesdale, as the great
enemy of souls would have it, could recall no
text of Scripture, nor aught else, except a
brief, pithy, and, as it then appeared to him,
unanswerable argument against the immor-
tality of the human soul. The instillment
thereof into her mind would probably have
caused this aged sister to drop down dead, at
once, as by the effect of an intensely poison-
ous infusion. What he really did whisper, the
minister could never afterwards recollect.
There was, perhaps, a fortunate disorder in
his utterance, which failed to impart any
distmct idea to the good widow's comprehen-
sion, or which Providence interpreted after a
method of its own. Assuredly, as the
minister looked back, he beheld an expression
of divine gratitude and ecstasy that seemed
like the shine of the celestial city on her
face, so wrinkled and ashy pale.
Again, a third instance. After parting
from the old church-member, he met the
youngest sister of them all. It was a maiden
newly won — and won by the Reverend Mr.
Dimmesdale's own sermon, on the Sabbath
after his vigil — to barter the transitory pleas-
ures of the world for the heavenly hope,
that was to assume brighter substance as
life grew dark around her, and which would
gild the utter gloom with final glory. She
was fair and pure as a lily that had bloomed
in Paradise. 7he minister knew well that
he was himself enshrined within the stainless
sanctity of her heart, which hung its snowy
curtains about his image, imparting to re-
ligion the warmth of love, and to love a re-
ligious purity. Satan, that afternoon, had
surely led the poor young girl away from her
mother's side, and thrown her into the path-
way of this sorely tempted, or — shall we not
rather say.^* — this lost and desperate man. As
she drew nigh, the arch fiend whispered him
to condense into small compass and drop
into her tender Bosom a germ of evil that
would be sure to blossom darkly soon, and
bear black fruit betimes. Such was his sense
of power over this virgin soul, trusting him
as she did, that the minister felt potent to
blight all the field of innocence with but one
wicked look, and develop all its opposite
with but a word. So — with a mightier
struggle than he had yet sustained — he
held his Geneva cloak before his face, and
hurried onward, making no sign of recog-
nition, and leaving the young sister to digest
his rudeness as she might. She ransacked
her conscience, — which was full of harmless
little matters, like her pocket or her work-bag,
— and took herself to task, poor thing! for a
thousand imaginary faults; and went about
her household duties with swollen eyelids
the next morning.
Before the minister had tome to celebrate
his victory over this last temptation, he was
conscious of another impulse, more ludicrous,
and almost as horrible. It was, — we blush
to tell it, — it was to stop short in the road
and teach some very wicked words to a
504
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
knot of little Puritan children who were play-
ing there, and had but just begun to talk.
Denying himself this freak, as unworthy of
his cloth, he met a drunken seaman, one of
the ship's crew from the Spanish Main.
And here, since he had so valiantly forborne
all other wickedness, poor Mr. Dimmesdale
longed, at least, to shake hands with the
tarry blackguard, and recreate himself with a
few improper jests, such as dissolute sailors
so abound with, and a volley of good, round,
solid, satisfactory, and heaven-defying oaths!
It was not so much a better principle as
partly his natural good taste, and still more
his buckramed habit of clerical decorum, that
carried him safely through the latter crisis.
"What is it that haunts and tempts me
thus?" cried the minister to himself, at
length, pausing in the street, and striking his
hand against his forehead. "Am I mad? or
am I given over utterly to the fiend? Did I
make a contract with him in the forest, and
sign it with my blood ? And does he now sum-
mon me to its fulfillment, by suggesting the
performance of every wickedness which his
most foul imagination can conceive?"
At the moment when the Reverend Mr.
Dimmesdale thus communed with himself,
and struck his forehead with his hand, old
Mistress Hibbins, the reputed witch-lady, is
said to have been passing by. She made a
very grand appearance; having on a high
head-dress, a rich gown of velvet, and a ruff
done up with the famous yellow starch, of
which Ann Turner, her especial friend, had
taught her the secret, before this last good
lady had been hanged for Sir Thomas Over-
bury's murder. Whether the witch had read
the minister's thoughts or no, she came to a
full stop, looked shrewdly into his face, smiled
craftily, and — though little given to con-
verse with clergymen — began a conversation.
"So, reverend Sir, you have made a visit
into the forest," observed the witch-lady,
nodding her high head-dress at him. "The
next time, I pray you to allow me only a fair
warning, and I shall be proud to bear you
company. Without taking overmuch upon
myself, my good word will go far towards
gaining any strange gentleman a fair recep-
tion from yonder potentate you wot of!"
"I profess, madam," answered the clergy-
man with a graveobeisance, such as the lady's
rank demanded, and his own good-breeding
made imperative, — "I profess, on my con-
science and character, that I am utterly be-
wildered as touchmg the purport of your
words! I went not mto the forest to seek a
potentate; neither do I, at any future time,
design a visit thither, with a view to gain-
ing the favor of such a personage. My
one sufl'icient object was to greet that pious
friend of mine, the Apostle Eliot, and rejoice
with him over the many precious souls he
hath won from heathendom!"
"Ha, ha, ha!" cackled the old witch-lady,
still nodding her high head-dress at the min-
ister. "Well, well, we must needs talk thus
in the daytime! You carry it off like an old
hand! But at midnight, and in the forest,
we shall have other talk together!"
She passed on with her aged stateliness,
but often turning back her head and smiling
at him, like one wilhng to recognize a secret
intimacy of connection.
"Have I then sold myself," thought the
minister, "to the fiend whom, if men say
true, this yellow-starched and velveted old
hag has chosen for her prince and master!"
The wretched minister! He had made a
bargain very like it! Tempted by a dream of
happiness, he had yielded himself, with de-
liberate choice, as he had never done before,
to what he knew was deadly sin. And the
infectious poison of that sin had been thus
rapidly diffused throughout his moral system.
It had stupefied all blessed impulses, and
awakened into vivid life the whole brother-
hood of bad ones. Scorn, bitterness, unpro-
voked malignity, gratuitous desire of ill,
ridicule of whatever was good and holy, all
awoke, to tempt, even while they frightened
him. And his encounter with old Mistress
Hibbins, if it were a real incident, did but
show his sympathy and fellowship with
wicked mortals, and the world of perverted
spirits.
He had, by this time, reached his dwelling
on the edge of the burial-ground, and, hasten-
ing up the stairs, took refuge in his study.
The minister was glad to have reached this
shelter, without first betraying himself to
the world by any of those strange and wicked
eccentricities to which he had been contin-
ually impelled while passing through the
streets. He entered the accustomed room,
and looked around him on its books, its win-
dows, its fireplace, and the tapestried com-
THE SCARLET LETTER
SOS
fort of the walls, with the same perception of
strangeness that had haunted him throughout
his walk from the forest-dell into the town,
and thitherward. Here he had studied and
written; here, gone through fast and vigil,
and come forth half alive; here, striven to
pray; here, borne a hundred thousand agonies!
There was the Bible, in its rich old Hebrew,
with Moses and the Prophets speaking to
him, and God's voice through all! There,
on the table, with the inky pen beside it,
was an unfinished sermon, with a sentence
broken in the midst, where his thoughts had
ceased to gush out upon the page, two days
before. He knew that it was himself, the
thin and white-cheeked minister, who had
done and suffered these things, and written
thus far into the Election Sermon! But he
seemed to stand apart, and eye this former
self with scornful, pitying, but half-envious
curiosity. That self was gone. Another
man had returned out of the forest; a wiser
one; with a knowledge of hidden mysteries
which the simplicity of the former never
could have reached. A bitter kind of knowl-
edge that!
While occupied with these reflections, a
knock came at the door of the study, and the
minister said, "Come in!" — not wholly de-
void of an idea that he might behold an evil
spirit. And so he did! It was old Roger Chil-
lingworth that entered. The minister stood,
white and speechless, with one hand on the
Hebrew Scriptures, and the other spread
upon his breast.
"Welcome home, reverend Sir," said the
physician. "And how found you that godly
man, the Apostle Eliot? But methinks, dear
Sir, you look pale; as if the travel through the
wilderness had been too sore for you. Will
not my aid be requisite to put you in heart
and strength to preach your Election Ser-
mon :
"Nay, I think not so," rejoined the Rev-
erend Mr. Dimmesdale. "My journey, and
the sight of the holy Apostle yonder, and the
free air which I have breathed, have done me
good, after so long confinement in my study.
I think to need no more of your drugs, my
kind physician, good though they be, and
administered by a friendly hand."
All this time, Roger Chillingworth was
looking at the minister with the grave and
intent regard of a physician towards his
patient. But, in spite of this outward show,
the latter was almost convinced of the old
man's knowledge, or, at least, his confident
suspicion, with respect to his own interview
with Hester Prynne. The physician knew
then, that, in the minister's regard, he was
no longer a trusted friend, but his bitterest
enemy. So much being known, it would
appear natural that a part of it should be
expressed. It is singular, however, how long
a time often passes before words embody
things; and with what security two persons,
who choose to avoid a certain subject, may
approach its very verge, and retire without
disturbing it. Thus, the minister felt no
apprehension that Roger Chillingworth
would touch, in express words, upon the real
position which they sustained towards one
another. Yet did the physician, in his dark
way, creep frightfully near the secret.
"Were it not better," said he, "that you
use my poor skill to-night.'' Verily, dear
Sir, we must take pains to make you strong
and vigorous for this occasion of the Election
discourse. The people look for great things
from you; apprehending that another year
may come about, and find their pastor gone. "
"Yea, to another world," replied the
minister, with pious resignation. "Heaven
grant it be a better one; for, in good sooth, I
hardly think to tarry with my flock through
the flitting seasons of another year! But,
touching your medicine, kind Sir, in my pres-
ent frame of body I need it not."
"I joy to hear it," answered the physician.
"It may be that my remedies, so long admin-
istered in vain, begin now to take due effect.
Happy man were I, and well deserving of
New England's gratitude, could I achieve
this cure!"
"I thank you from my heart, most watch-
ful friend," said the Reverend Mr. Dimmes-
dale, with a solemn smile. "I thank you,
and can but requite your good deeds with
my prayers."
"A good man's prayers are golden recom-
pense!" rejoined old Roger Chillingworth,
as he took his leave. "Yea, they are the cur-
rent gold coin of the New Jerusalem, with the
King's own mint-mark on them!"
Left alone, the minister summoned a serv-
ant of the house, and requested food, which,
being set before him, he ate with ravenous
appetite. Then, flinging the already written
5o6
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
pages of the Election Sermon into the tire,
he forthwitli began another, which he wrote
with such an impulsive flow of thought and
emotion that he fancied himself inspired;
and only wondered that Heaven should see ht
to transmit the grand and solemn music of
its oracles through so foul an organ-pipe as
he. However, leaving that mystery to solve
itself, or go unsolved forever, he drove his
task onward, with earnest haste and ecstasy.
Thus the night fled away, as if it were a
winged steed, and he careering on it; morn-
ing came, and peeped, blushing, through the
curtains; and at last sunrise threw a golden
beam into the study and laid it right across
the minister's bedazzled eyes. There he was,
with the pen still between his fingers, and a
vast, immeasurable tract of written space
behind him!
XXI. THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY
Betimes in the morning of the day on
which the new Governor was to receive his
office at the hands of the people, Hester
Prynne and little Pearl came into the market-
place. It was already thronged with the
craftsmen and other plebeian inhabitants of
the town, in considerable numbers; among
whom, likewise, were many rough figures,
whose attire of deer-skins marked them as
belonging to some of the forest settlements,
which surrounded the little metropolis of
the colony.
On this public holiday, as on all other
occasions, for seven years past, Hester was
clad in a garment of coarse gray cloth. Not
more by its hue than by some indescribable
peculiarity in its fashion, it had the eflPect of
making her fade personally out of sight and
outline; while, again, the scarlet letter
brought herbackfrom this twilight in distinct-
ness, and revealed her under the moral aspect
of its own illumination. Her face, so long
familiar to the tow^nspeople, showed the mar-
ble quietude which they were accustomed to
behold there. It was like a mask; or, rather,
like the frozen calmness of a dead woman's
features; owing this dreary resemblance to
the fact that Hester was actually dead, in
respect to any claim of sympathy, and had
departed out of the world with which she
still seemed to mingle.
It might be, on this one day, that there
was an expression unseen before, nor, indeed,
vivid enough to be detected now; unless
some preternaturally gifted observer should
have first read the heart, and have afterwards
sought a corresponding development in the
countenance and mien. Such a spiritual
seer might have conceived that, after sus-
taining the gaze of the multitude through
seven miserable years as a necessity, a ,
penance, and something which it was a |
stern religion to endure, she now, for one
last time more, encountered it freely and vol-
untarily, in order to convert what had so
long been agony into a kind of triumph.
"Look your last on the scarlet letter and its
wearer!" — the people's victim and life-long
bond-slave, as they fancied her, might say to
them. "Yet a little while, and she will be
beyond your reach! A few hours longer, and
the deep, mysterious ocean will quench and
hide forever the symbol which ye have caused
to burn upon her bosom!" Nor were it an
inconsistency too improbable to be assigned
to human nature, should we suppose a feeling
of regret in Hester's mind, at the moment
when she was about to w in her freedom from
the pain which had been thus deeply incor-
porated with her being. Might there not
be an irresistible desire to quaff a last, long,
breathless draught of the cup of wormwood
and aloes, with which nearly all her years of
womanhood had been perpetually flavored?
The wine of life, henceforth to be presented
to her lips, must be indeed rich, delicious, and
exhilarating, in its chased and golden beaker;
or else leave an inevitable and weary languor,
after the lees of bitterness wherewith she had
been drugged, as with a cordial of intensest
potency.
Pearl was decked out with airy gayety.
It would have been impossible to guess that
this bright and sunny apparition owed its
existence to the shape of gloomy gray; or
that a fancy, at once so gorgeous and so deli-
cate as must have been recjuisite to contrive
the child's apparel, was the same that had
achieved a task perhaps more difficult, in
imparting so distinct a peculiarity to Hester's
simple robe. The dress, so proper was it to
little Pearl, seemed an effluence, or inevitable
development and outward manifestation of
her character, no more to be separated from
her than the many-hued brilliancy from a
butterfly's wing, or the painted glory from
the leaf of a bright flower. As with these, so
THE SCARLET LETTER
507
\Mtii the child; her ^arb was all of one idea
with her nature. On this eventful day,
moreover, there was a certain singular in-
quietude and excitement m her mood, re-
sembling; nothing so much as the shimmer of
a diamond, that sparkles and flashes with the
varied throbbini>;s of the breast on which it is
displayed. Children have always a sym-
pathy in the agitations of those connected
with them; always, especially, a sense of
any trouble or impending revolution, of
whatever kind, in domestic circumstances;
and therefore Pearl, who was the gem on her
mother's unquiet bosom, betrayed, by the
very dance of her spirits, the emotions which
none could detect in the marble passiveness
of Hester's brow.
This eflfervescence made her flit with a
birdlike movement, rather than walk by her
mother's side. She broke continually into
shouts of a wild, inarticulate, and sometimes
piercing music. When they reached the
market-place, she became still more restless,
on perceiving the stir and bustle that enliv-
ened the spot; for it was usually more like
the broad and lonesome green before a village
meeting-house, than the center of a town's
busmess.
"Why, what is this, mother.^"' cried she.
"Wherefore have all the people left their
work to-day.^ Is it a play-day for the whole
world.'' See, there is the blacksmith! He
has washed his sooty face, and put on his
Sabbath-day clothes, and looks as if he would
gladly be merry, if any kind body would
only teach him how! And there is Master
Brackett, the old jailer, nodding and smiling
at me. Why does he do so, mother.''"
"He remembers thee a little babe, my
child," answered Hester.
"He should not nod and smile at me, for
all that, — the black, grim, ugly-eyed old
man!" said Pearl. "He may nod at thee, if
he will; for thou art clad in gray, and wearest
the scarlet letter. But see, mother, how
many faces of strange people, and Indians
among them, and sailors! What have they all
come to do, here in the market-place.'"'
"They wait to see the procession pass,"
said Hester. "For the Governor and the
magistrates are to go by, and the ministers,
and all the great people and good people,
with the music and the soldiers marching
before them."
"And will the minister be there.'"' asked
Pearl. "And will he hold out both his
hands to me, as when thou ledst me to him
from the brookside.?"
"He will be there, child," answered her
mother. " But he will not greet thee to-day;
nor must thou greet him."
"What a strange, sad man is he!" said the
child, as if speaking partly to herself. "In
the dark night-time he calls us to him, and
holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood
with him on the scafl^old yonder. And in the
deep forest, where only the old trees can hear
and the strip of sky see it, he talks with thee,
sitting on a heap of moss! And he kisses my
forehead, too, so that the little brook would
hardly wash it off! But here, in the sunny
day, and among all the people, he knows us
not; nor must we know him! A strange, sad
man is he, with his hand always over his
heart!"
"Be quiet. Pearl! Thou understandest
not these things," said her mother. "Think
not now of the minister, but look about thee,
and see how cheery is everybody's face to-day.
The children have come from their schools,
and the grown people from their workshops
and their fields, on purpose to be happy. For
to-day a new man is beginning to rule over
them; and so — as has been the custom of
mankind ever since a nation was first gath-
ered— they make merry and rejoice; as if a
good and golden year were at length to pass
over the poor old world!"
It was as Hester said, in regard to the un-
wonted jollity that brightened the faces of
the people. Into this festal season of the
year — as it already was, and continued to be
during the greater part of two centuries —
the Puritans compressed whatever mirth and
public joy they deemed allowable to human
infirmity; thereby so far dispelling the cus-
tomary cloud that, for the space of a single
holiday, they appeared scarcely more grave
than most other communities at a period of
general affliction.
But we perhaps exaggerate the gray or
sable tinge, which undoubtedly characterized
the mood and manners of the age. The
persons now in the market-place of Boston
had not been born to an inheritance of
Puritanic gloom. They were native English-
men, whose fathers had lived in the sunny
richness of the Elizabethan epoch; a time
5o8
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
when the life of Enj;lancl, viewed as one
great mass, would appear to have been as
stately, magnificent, and joyous as the
world has ever witnessed. Had they fol-
lowed their hereditary taste, the New F^np;-
land settlers would have illustrated all events
of public importance by bonfires, banquets,
pageantries, and processions. Nor would it
have been impracticable, in the observance
of majestic ceremonies, to combine mirthful
recreation with solemnity, and give, as it were,
a grotesque and brilliant embroidery to the
great robe of state, which a nation, at such
festivals, puts on. There was some shadow of
an attempt of this kind in the mode of cele-
brating the day on which the political year
of the colony commenced. The dim reflec-
tion of a remembered splendor, a colorless
and manifold diluted repetition of what they
had beheld in proud old London, — we will
not say at a royal coronation, but at a Lord
Mayor's show, — might be traced in the cus-
toms which our forefathers instituted, with
reference to the annual installation of
magistrates. The fathers and founders of the
commonwealth — the statesman, the priest,
and the soldier — deemed it a duty then to
assume the outward state and majesty,
which, in accordance with antique style, was
looked upon as the proper garb of public or
social eminence. All came forth, to move in
procession before the people's eye, and thus
impart a needed dignity to the simple frame-
work of a government so newly constructed.
Then, too, the people were countenanced,
if not encouraged, in relaxing the severe and
close application to their various modes of
rugged industry, which, at all other times,
seemed of the same piece and material with
their religion. Here, it is true, were none of
the appliances which popular merriment
would so readily have found in the England
of Elizabeth's time, or that of James, — no
rude shows of a theatrical kind; no minstrel,
with his harp and legendary ballad, nor glee-
man, with an ape dancing to his music; no
juggler, with his tricks of mimic witchcraft; no
Merry Andrew, to stir up the multitude with
jests, perhaps hundreds of years old, but
still effective, by their appeals to the very
broadest sources of mirthful sympathy. All
such professors of the several branches of
jocularity would have been sternly repressed,
not only by the rigid discipline of law, but
by the general sentiment which gives law its
vitality. Not the less, however, the great,
honest face of the people smiled, grimly, per-
haps, but widely too. Nor were sports want-
ing, such as the colonists had witnessed, and
shared in long ago at the country fairs and
on the village-greens of England; and which it
was thought well to keep alive on this new soil,
for the sake of the courage and manliness that
were essential in them. Wrestling-matches,
in the different fashions of Cornwall and
Devonshire, were seen here and there about
the market-place; in one corner, there
was a friendly bout at quarterstaff; and —
what attracted most interest of all — on the
platform of the pillory, already so noted in
our pages, two masters of defense were com-
mencing an exhibition with the buckler and
broadsword. But, much to the disappoint-
ment of the crowd, this latter business was
broken off by the interposition of the town
beadle, who had no idea of permitting the
majesty of the law to be violated by such an
abuse of one of its consecrated places.
It may not be too much to affirm, on the
whole (the people being then in the first
stages of joyless deportment, and the ofl?"spring
of sires who had known how to be merry, in
their day), that they would compare favor-
ably, in point of holiday keeping, with their
descendants, even at so long an interval as
ourselves. Their immediate posterity, the
generation next to the early emigrants, wore
the blackest shade of Puritanism, and so
darkened the national visage with it that all
the subsequent years have not sufficed to
clear it up. We have yet to learn again the
forgotten art of gayety.
The picture of human life in the market-
place, though its general tint was the sad
gray, brown, or black of the English emi-
grants, was yet enlivened by some diversity
of hue. A party of Indians — in their savage
finery of curiously embroidered deer-skin
robes, wampum-belts, red and yellow ocher,
and feathers, and armed with the bow and
arrow and stone-headed spear — stood apart,
with countenances of inflexible gravity,
beyond what even the Puritan aspect could
attain. Nor, wild as were these painted
barbarians, were they the wildest feature
of the scene. This distinction could more
justly be claimed by some mariners, — a part
of the crew of the vessel from the Spanish
THE SCARLET LETTER
S09
Main, — who had come ashore to see the
humors of P.lection Day. They were rou^h-
looking desperadoes, with sun-blackened
faces and an immensity of beard; their wide,
short trousers were confined about the waist
by belts, often clasped with a rough plate of
gold, and sustaining always a long knife, and,
in some instances, a sword. From beneath
their broad-brimmed hats of palm-leaf
gleamed eyes which, even in good-nature and
merriment, had a kind of animal ferocity.
They transgressed, without fear or scruple,
the rules of behavior that were binding on
all others; smoking tobacco under the
beadle's very nose, although each whiff
would have cost a townsman a shilling; and
First published in 1849. There are several con-
temporary reports to the effect that this is the last
poem which Poe wrote. Though other claims have
been made, it is practically certain that this poem was
written in memory of Virginia Clemm, Poe's wife.
And neither the angels in heaven above 30
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from, the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee: —
For the moon never beams without bringing
me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feei the bright
eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the
side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my
bride.
In her sepulcher there by the sea, 40
In her tomb by the side of the sea.
THE ASSIGNATION^
Stay for me there! I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
Henry King, Bishop of
Chichester: The Exequy.
Ill-fated and mysterious man! — bewil-
dered in the brilliancy of thine own imagina-
tion, and fallen in the flames of thine own
youth! Again in fancy I behold thee! Once
more thy form hath risen before me! — not —
oh, not as thou art — in the cold valley and
shadow — but as thou shouldst be — squan-
dering away a life of magnificent meditation
in that city of dim visions, thine own Venice
— which is a star-beloved Elysium of the sea,
and the wide windows of whose Palladian
palaces look do^yn with a deep and bitter
meaning upon the secrets of her silent waters.
Yes! I repeat it — as thou shouldst be.
There are surely other worlds than this —
other thoughts than the thoughts of the mul-
titude— other speculations than the specu-
lations of the sophist. Who then shall call
thy conduct into question.'' who blame thee
for thy visionary hours, or denounce those
occupations as a wasting away of life, w'hich
were but the overflowings of thine everlast-
ing energies?
It was at Venice, beneath the covered
archway there called the Ponte di Sospiri,
that I met for the third or fourth time the
person of whom I speak. It is with a con-
2 First published in Godey's Lady's Book, January,
1834. Poe carefully revised his tales upon their re-
publication, as he did his poems.
534
ED(k\R ALLAN POE
fused recollection that I bring to niind the
circumstances of that meeting. \'et 1 re-
member— ah! how should 1 forget? — the deep
midnight, the Bridge of Sighs, the beauty
of woman, and the Genius of Romance that
stalked up and down the narrow canal.
It was a night of unusual bloom. 1 he
great clock of the Piazza had sounded the
fifth hour of the Italian evening. 1 he square
of the Campanile lay silent and deserted, and
the lights in the old Ducal Palace were dying
fast away. I was returning home from the
Piazzetta, by way of the Grand Canal. But
as my gondola arrived opposite the mouth of
the canal San Marco, a female voice from its
recesses broke suddenly upon the night, in
one wild, hysterical, and long-continued
shriek. Startled at the sound, I sprang upon
my feet; while the gondolier, letting slip his
single oar, lost it in the pitchy darkness be-
yond a chance of recovery, and we were con-
sequently left to the guidance of the current
which here sets from the greater into the
smaller channel. Like some huge and sable-
feathered condor, we were slowly drifting
down towards the Bridge of Sighs, when a
thousand flambeaux flashing from the win-
dows, and down the staircases of the Ducal
Palace, turned all at once that deep gloom
into a livid and preternatural day.
A child, slipping from the arms of its own
mother, had fallen from an upper window of
the lofty structure into the deep and dim
canal. The quiet waters had closed placidly
over their victim; and, although my own
gondola was the only one in sight, many a
stout swimmer, already in the stream, was
seeking in vain upon the surface the treasure
which was to be found, alas! only within the
abyss. Upon the broad black marble flag-
stones at the entrance of the palace, and a
few steps above the water, stood a figure
which none who then saw can have ever since
forgotten. It was the Marchesa Aphrodite
— the adoration of all Venice — the gayest
of the gay — the most lovely where all were
beautiful — but still the young wife of the
old and intriguing Mentoni, and the mother
of that fair child, her first and only one, who
now, deep beneath the murky water, was
thinking in bitterness of heart upon her
sweet caresses, and exhausting its little life in
struggles to call upon her name.
She stood alone. Her small, bare and
silvery feet gleamed in the black mirror of
marble beneath her. Her hair, not as yet
more than half loosened for the night from its
ball-room array, clustered, amid a shower
of diamonds, round and round her classical
head, in curls like those of the young hya-
cinth. A snowy-white and gauze-like dra-
pery seemed to be nearly the sole covering to
her delicate form; but the midsummer and
midnight air was hot, sullen, and still, and no
motion in the statue-like form itself stirred
even the folds of that raiment of very vapor
which hung around it as the heavy marble
hangs around the Niobe. Yet, strange to
say, her large lustrous eyes were not turned
downwards upon that grave wherein her
brightest hope lay buried — but riveted in a
widely difl^erent direction! The prison of the
Old Republic is, I think, the stateliest build-
ing in all Venice — but how could that lady
gaze so fixedly upon it, when beneath her lay
stifling her only child? Yon dark, gloomy
niche, too, yawns right opposite her chamber
window — what, then, could there be in its
shadows, in its architecture, in its ivy-
wreathed and solemn cornices, that the
Marchesa di Mentoni had not wondered at
a thousand times before? Nonsense! — Who
does not remember that, at such a time as
this, the eye, like a shattered mirror, multi-
plies the images of its sorrow, and sees in
innumerable far-off places the woe which is
close at hand?
Many steps above the Marchesa, and
within the arch of the water-gate, stood, in
full dress, the satyr-like figure of Mentoni
himself. He was occasionally occupied in
thrumming a guitar, and seemed ennuye to
the very death as at intervals he gave direc-
tions for the recovery of his child. Stupefied
and aghast, I had myself no power to move
from the upright position I had assumed
upon first hearing the shriek, and must have
presented to the eyes of the agitated group
a spectral and ominous appearance, as with
pale countenarvce and rigid limbs I floated
down among them in that funereal gondola.
All efforts proved in vain. Many of the
most energetic in the search were relaxing
their exertions, and yielding to a gloomy sor-
row. There seemed but little hope for the
child (how much less then for the mother!);
but now, from the interior of that dark niche
which has been already mentioned as form-
THE ASSIGNATION
535
ing a part of the Old Republican prison, and
as frontinp; the lattice of the Marchesa, a
figure muffled in a cloak stepped out within
reach of the light, and, pausing a moment
upon the verge of the giddy descent, plunged
headlong into the canal. As in an instant
afterwards he stood, with the still living and
breathing child within his grasp, upon the
marble flagstones by the side of the Mar-
chesa, his cloak, heavy with the drenching
water, became unfastened, and, falling in
folds about his feet, discovered to the wonder-
stricken spectators the graceful person of a
very young man, with the sound of whose
name the greater part of Europe was then
ringing.
No word spoke the deliverer. But the
Marchesa! She will now receive her child —
she will press it to her heart — she will cling
to its little form, and smother it with her
caresses. Alas! another s arms have taken
it from the stranger — another's arms have
taken it away and borne it afar off, unnoticed,
into the palace! And the Marchesa! Her
lip — her beautiful lip trembles; tears are
gathering in her eyes — those eyes which, like
Pliny's acanthus, are ''soft and almost
liquid." Yes, tears are gathering in those
eyes — and see! the entire woman thrills
throughout the soul, and the statue has
started into life! The pallor of the marble
countenance, the swelling of the marble
bosom, the very purity of the marble feet,
we behold suddenly flushed over with a tide
of ungovernable crimson; and a slight shud-
der quivers about her delicate frame, as a
gentle air at Napoli about the rich silver
lilies in the grass.
Why should that lady blush? To this
demand there is no answer — except that,
having left, in the eager haste and terror of
a mother's heart, the privacy of her own
boudoir, she has neglected to enthrall her
tiny feet in their slippers, and utterly for-
gotten to throw over her Venetian shoulders
that drapery which is their due. What other
possible reason could there have been for her
so blushing.^ — for the glance of those wild
appealing eyes-f* for the unusual tumult of
that throbbing bosom? for the convulsive
pressure of that trembling hand — that hand
which fell, as Mentoni turned into the palace,
accidentally upon the hand of the stranger.**
What reason could there have been for the
low— the singularly low tone of those un-
meaning words which the lady uttered
hurriedly in bidding him adieu? " I hou
hast conquered," she said, or the murmurs
of the water deceived me; "thou hast con-
quered— one hour after sunrise — we shall
meet — so let it be!"
The tumult had subsided, the lights had
died away within the palace, and the stranger,
whom I now recognized, stood alone upon
the flags. He shook with inconceivable
agitation, and his eye glanced around in
search of a gondola. I could not do less than
offer him the service of my ow^n; and he
accepted the civility. Having obtained an
oar at the water-gate, we proceeded together
to his residence, while he rapidly recovered
his self-possession, and spoke of our former
slight acquaintance in terms of great appa-
rent cordiality.
There are some subjects upon which I take
pleasure in being minute. The person of the
stranger — let me call him by this title, who
to all the world was still a stranger — the
person of the stranger is one of these sub-
jects. In height he might have been below
rather than above the medium size; although
there were moments of intense passion when
his frame actually expanded and belied the
assertion. The light, almost slender, sym-
metry of his figure promised more of that
ready activity which he evinced at the
Bridge of Sighs, than of that Herculean
strength which he has been known to wield
without an effort, upon occasions of more
dangerous emergency. With the mouth and
chin of a deity — singular, wild, full, liquid
eyes, whose shadows varied from pure hazel
to intense and brilliant jet — and a profusion
of curling, black hair, from which a forehead
of unusual breadth gleamed forth at inter-
vals all light and ivory — his were features
than which I have seen none more classically
regular, except, perhaps, the marble ones of
the Emperor Commodus. Yet his counte-
nance was, nevertheless, one of those which
all men have seen at some period of their
lives, and have never afterwards seen again.
It had no peculiar — it had no settled pre-
dominant expression to be fastened upon the
memory; a countenance seen and instantly
forgotten, but forgotten with a vague and
never-ceasing desire of recalling it to mind.
536
EDGAR ALLAN POE
Not that tlu" spirit of each rapid passion
failed, at any time, to throw its own distinct
irnaLje upon the mirror of that face; but that
the mirror, mirror-like, retained no vestige of
the passion, when the passion had departed.
Upon leavinp; him on the night of our
adventure, he sohcited me, in what I thought
an urgent manner, to call upon him very
early the next morning. Shortly after sun-
rise I found myself accordingly at his Palazzo,
one of those huge structures of gloomy, yet
fantastic pomp, which tower above the
waters of the Grand Canal in the vicinity of
the Rialto. I was shown up a broad, winding
staircase of mosaics, into an apartment
whose unparalleled splendor burst through
the opening door with an actual glare, mak-
ing me blind and dizzy with luxuriousness.
I knew my acquaintance to be wealthy.
Report had spoken of his possessions in
terms which I had even ventured to call
terms of ridiculous exaggeration. But as I
gazed about me, I could not bring myself to
believe that the wealth of any subject in
Europe could have supplied the princelymag-
nificence which burned and blazed around.
Although, as I say, the sun had arisen, yet
the room was still brilliantly lighted up. I
judged from this circumstance, as well as
from an air of exhaustion in the countenance
of my friend, that he had not retired to bed
during the whole of the preceding night. In
the architecture and embellishments of the
chamber, the evident design had been to
dazzle and astound. Little attention had
been paid to the decora o{ \\\\7it is technically
called keepings or to the proprieties of nation-
ality. The eye wandered from object to
object, and rested upon none — neither the
grotesques of the Greek painters, nor the
sculptures of the best Italian days, nor
the huge carvings of untutored Egypt. Rich
draperies in every part of the room trembled
to the vibration of low^ melancholy music,
whose origin was not to be discovered. The
senses were oppressed by mingled and con-
flicting perfumes, reeking up from strange
convolute censers, together with multitu-
dinous flaring and flickering tongues of
emerald and violet fire. The rays of the
newly risen sun poured in upon the whole,
through windows formed each of a single
pane of crimson-tinted glass. Glancing to
and fro in a thousand reflections, from cur-
tains which rolled from their cornices like
cataracts of molten silver, the beams of
natural glory mingled at length fitfully with
the artificial hglit, and lay weltering in sub-
dued masses upon a carpet of rich, liquid-
looking cloth of Chili gold.
"Ha! ha! ha! — ha! ha! ha!" — laughed the
proprietor, motioning me to a seat as I
entered the room, and throwing himself
back at full length upon an ottoman. **I
see," said he, perceiving that I could not
immediately reconcile myself to the hien-
seance of so singular a welcome — "I see you
are astonished at my apartment — at my
statues — my pictures — my originality of con-
ception in architecture and upholstery —
absolutely drunk, eh, with my magnificence.''
But pardon me, my dear sir" (here his tone
of voice dropped to the very spirit of cor-
diality), "pardon me for my uncharitable
laughter. You appeared so utterly aston-
ished. Besides, some things are so completely
ludicrous that a man must laugh, or die. To
die laughing must be the most glorious of all
glorious deaths! Sir Thomas More — a very
fine man was Sir Thomas More — Sir Thomas
More died laughing, you remember. Also in
the Absurdities of Ravisius Textor there is a
long list of characters who came to the same
magnificent end. Do you know, however,"
continued he musingly, "that at Sparta—
which is now Palaeochori — at Sparta, I say,
to the w^est of the citadel, among a chaos of
scarcely visible ruins, is a kind of socle upon
which are still legible the letters AA2M. They
are undoubtedly part of FEAAZ^MA. Now
at Sparta were a thousand temples and
shrines to a thousand different divinities.
How exceedingly strange that the altar of
Laughter should have survived all the others!
But in the present instance," he resumed,
with a singular alteration of voice and man-
ner, "I have no right to be merry at your
expense. You might well have been amazed.
Europe cannot produce anything so fine as
this, my little regal cabinet. My other apart-
ments are by no means of the same order —
mere ultras of fashionable insipidity. This is
better than fashion, is it not.? Yet this has
but to be seen to become the rage — that is,
with those who could afford it at the cost of
their entire patrimony. I have guarded,
however, against any such profanation.
With one exception you are the only human
THE ASSIGNATION
537
being, besides myself and my valet, who has
been admitted within the mysteries of these
imperial precincts, since they have been
bedizened as you see!"
I bowed in acknowledgment: for the over-
powering sense of splendor and perfume and
music, together with the unexpected eccen-
tricity of his address and manner, prevented
me from expressing, in words, my apprecia-
tion of what I might have construed into a
compliment.
"Here," he resumed, arising and leaning
on my arm as he sauntered around the apart-
ment,— '*here are paintings from the Greeks
to Cimabue, and from Cimabue to the pres-
ent hour. Many are chosen, as you see,
with little deference to the opinions of Virtu.
They are all, however, fitting tapestry for a
chamber such as this. Here, too, are some
chefs d'osuvre of the unknown great; and here,
unfinished designs by men, celebrated in their
day, whose very names the perspicacity of
the academies has left to silence and to me.
What think you," said he, turning abruptly
as he spoke — "what think you of this
Madonna della Pieta.?"
"It is Guido's own!" I said, v/ith all the
enthusiasm of my nature, for I had been por-
ing intently over its surpassing loveliness.
"It is Guido's own! — how could you have
obtained it? — she is undoubtedly in paint-
ing what the Venus is in sculpture."
"Ha!" said he, thoughtfully, "the Venus
— the beautiful Venus? — the Venus of the
Medici? — she of the diminutive head and
the gilded hair? Part of the left arm," (here
his voice dropped so as to be heard with diffi-
culty) "and all the right, are restorations;
and in the coquetry of that right arm lies, I
think, the quintessence of all affectation.
Give me the Canova! The Apollo, too, is a
copy — there can be no doubt of it — blind
fool that I am, w^ho cannot behold the
boasted inspiration of the Apollo! I cannot
help — pity me! — I cannot help preferring
the Antinous. Was it not Socrates who said
that the statuary found his statue in the
block of marble? Then Michel Angelo was
by no means original in his couplet —
Non ha Vottimo artista alcun concetto
Che un marmo solo in se non circonscriva."^
1 The best artist has no conception which a block of
marble by itself does not contain.
It has been or should be remarked that, in
the manner of the true gentleman, we are
always aware of a difference from the bearing
of the vulgar, without being at once precisely
able to determine in what such difference
consists. Allowing the remark to have ap-
plied in its full force to the outward de-
meanor of my acquaintance, I felt it, on that
eventful morning, still more fully applicable
to his moral temperament and character.
Nor can I better define that peculiarity of
spirit which seemed to place him so essen-
tially apart from aFl other human beings,
than by calling it a habit of intense and con-
tinual thought, pervading even his most
trivial actions, intruding upon his moments
of dalliance, and interweaving itself with his
very flashes of merriment — like adders which
writhe from out the eyes of the grinning
masks in the cornices around the temples of
Persepolis.
I could not help, however, repeatedly ob-
serving, through the mingled tone of levity
and solemnity with which he rapidly des-
canted upon matters of little importance, a
certain air of trepidation — a degree of
nervous unction in action and in speech — an
unquiet excitability of manner which ap-
peared to me at all times unaccountable, and
upon some occasions even filled me with
alarm. Frequently, too, pausing in the
middle of a sentence whose commencement
he had apparently forgotten, he seemed to be
listening in the deepest attention, as if either
in momentary expectation of a visitor, or to
sounds which must have had existence in his
imagination alone.
It was during one of these reveries or
pauses of apparent abstraction, that, in
turning over a page of the poet and
scholar Politian's beautiful tragedy, the
Orfeo (the first native Italian tragedy),
which lay near me upon an ottoman, I
discovered a passage underlined in pencil.
It was a passage towards the end of the
third act — a passage of the most heart-
stirring excitement — a passage which, al-
though tainted with impurity, no man shall
read without a thrill of novel emotion, no
woman without a sigh. The whole page
was blotted with fresh tears; and upon the
opposite interleaf were the following English
lines, written in a hand so very different
from the peculiar characters of my acquaint-
53^
EDGAR ALLAN POE
ance that I had some difficulty in recogniz-
ing it as his own:
Thou wast all that to me, love,
For which my soul did pine —
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mme.
Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope, that didst arise
But to be overcast! •
A voice from out the Future cries, lo
"On! On!"— but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!
For alas! alas! with me
The light of Life is o'er!
"No more — no more — no more'*
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar! 20
Now all my hours are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy gray eye glances.
And where thy footstep gleams—
In what ethereal dances.
By what Italian streams.
Alas! for that accursed time
They bore thee o'er the billow,
From Love to titled age and crime
And an unholy pillow: 30
From me, and from our misty clime
Where weeps the silver willow.
That these lines were written in English, a
language with which I had not believed their
author acquainted, afforded me little matter
for surprise. I was too well aware of the
extent of his acquirements, and of the singu-
lar pleasure he took in concealing them from
observation, to be astonished at any similar
discovery; but the place of date, I must con-
fess, occasioned me no little amazement. It
had been originally written Londoriy and
afterwards carefully overscored — not, how-
ever, so effectually as to conceal the word
from a scrutinizing eye. I say, this occa-
sioned me no little amazement; for I well
remember that, in a former conversation
with my friend, I particularly inquired if he
had at any time met in London the Marchesa
di Mentoni (who for some years previous to
her marriage had resided in that city), when
his answer, if I mistake not, gave me to
understand that he had never visited the
metropolis of Great Britain. I might as well
here mention that I have more than once
heard (without, of course, giving credit to a
report involving so many improbabilities),
that the person of whom I speak was not only
by birth, but in education, an Englishman.
"There is one painting," said he, without
being aware of my notice of the tragedy —
"there is still one painting which you have
not seen." And throwing aside a drapery,
he discovered a full-length portrait of the
Marchesa Aphrodite.
Human art could have done no more in the
delineation of her superhuman beauty. The
same ethereal figure which stood before me
the preceding night, upon the steps of the
Ducal Palace, stood before me once again.
But in the expression of the countenance,
which was beaming all over w^ith smiles,
there still lurked (incomprehensible ano-
maly!) that fitful stain of melancholy which
will ever be found inseparable from the per-
fection of the beautiful. Her right arm lay
folded over her bosom. With her left she
pointed downward to a curiously fashioned
vase. One small, fairy foot, alone visible,
barely touched the earth; and, scarcely dis-
cernible in the brilliant atmosphere which
seemed to encircle and enshrine her loveli-
ness, floated a pair of the most delicately
imagined wings. My glance fell from the
painting to the figure of my friend, and the
vigorous words of Chapman's Bussy D' Ani-
bois quivered instinctively upon my lips:
I am up;
Here like a Roman statue I will stand
Till death hath made me marble!
"Come," he said at length, turning
towards a table of richly enameled and mas-
sive silver, upon which were a few goblets
fantastically stained, together with two large
Etruscan vases, fashioned in the same ex-
traordinary model as that in the foreground
of the portrait, and filled with what I sup-
posed to be Johannisberger. "Come," he
said abruptly, "let us drink! It is early,
LIGEIA
539
but let us drink. It is indeed early," he con-
tinued musingly, as a cherub with a heavy
golden hammer made the apartment ring
with the first hour after sunrise — " it is ijideed
early, but what maiters it? let us drink! Let
us pour out an offering to yon solemn sun
which these gaudy lamps and censers are so
eager to subdue!" And, having made me
pledge him in a bumper, he swallowed in
rapid succession several goblets of the wine.
"To dream," he continued, resuming the
tone of his desultory conversation, as he held
up to the rich light of a censer one of the
magnificent vases — "to dream has been the
business of my life. I have therefore framed
for myself, as you see, a bower of dreams.
In the heart of Venice could I have erected a
better.^ You behold around you, it is true,
a medley of architectural embellishments.
The chastity of Ionia is offended by ante-
diluvian devices, and the sphinxes of Egypt
are outstretched upon carpets of gold. Yet
the effect is incongruous to the timid alone.
Proprieties of place, and especially of time,
are the bugbears which terrify mankind
from the contemplation of the magnificent.
Once I was myself a decorist; but that sub-
limation of folly has palled upon my soul.
All this is now the fitter for my purpose.
Like these arabesque censers, my spirit is
writhing in fire, and the delirium of this scene
is fashioning me for the wilder visions of that
land of real dreams w^hither I am now rapidly
departing." He here paused abruptly, bent
his head to his bosom, and seemed to listen
to a sound which I could not hear. At length,
erecting his frame, he looked upwards, and
ejaculated the lines of the Bishop of Chi-
chester:
Stay for me there! I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
In the next instant, confessing the power of
the wine, he threw himself at full length
upon an ottoman.
A quick step was now heard upon the
staircase, and a loud knock at the door rap-
idly succeeded. I was hastening to antici-
pate a second disturbance, when a page of
Mentoni's household burst into the room,
and faltered out, in a voice choking with
emotion, the incoherent words, "My mis-
tress ! — my mistress ! — Poisoned ! — poisoned !
Oh, beautiful — oh, beautiful Aphrodite!"
Bewildered, I flew to the ottoman, and
endeavored to arouse the sleeper to a sense
of the startling intelligence. But his limbs
were rigid — his lips were livid — his lately
beaming eyes were riveted in death. I stag-
gered back towards the table — my hand fell
upon a cracked and blackened goblet — and
a consciousness of the entire and terrible
truth flashed suddenly over my soul.
LIGEIAi
And the will therein lieth, which dieth not.
Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its
vif^or.'' For God is but a great will pervading all
things by nature of its intentness. Man doth
not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death
utterly, save only through the weakness of his
feeble will. — Joseph Glanvill.
I CANNOT, for my soul, remember how,
when, or even precisely where, I first became
acquainted with the lady Ligeia. Long years
have since elapsed, and my memory is feeble
through much suffering. Or, perhaps, I can-
not nozv bring these points to mind, because,
in truth, the character of my beloved, her
rare learning, her singular yet placid cast of
beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling elo-
quence of her low musical language, made
their way into my heart by paces so steadily
and stealthily progressive that they have
been unnoticed and unknown. Yet I believe
that I met her first and most frequently in
some large, old, decaying city near the Rhine.
Of her family I have surely heard her speak.
That it is of a remotely ancient date cannot
be doubted. Ligeia! Ligeia! Buried in
studies of a nature more than all else adapted
to deaden impressions of the outward world,
it is by that sweet word alone — by Ligeia —
that I bring before mine eyes in fancy the
» First published in The American Museum^ Sep-
tember, 1838. According to Woodberry, Poe regarded
this "as his finest tale." In it "he incarnated the
motions of the breeze and the musical voices of nature
in the form of a woman: but the Lady Ligeia has still
no human quality; her aspirations, her thoughts and
capabilities, are those of a spirit; the very beam and
glitter and silence of her ineffable eyes belong to the
visionary world. She is, in fact, . . . the air-woven
divinity in which he believed. ... In revealing
through Ligeia the awful might of the soul in the
victory of its will over death and in the eternity of its
love, Poe worked in the very element of his reverie,
in the liberty of a world as he would have had it."
(G. E. Woodberry's Life of Poe, I, 226-227.)
540
EDGAR ALLAN POE
imape of Iut who is no more. And now, while
I write, a recollection flashes upon me that I
have never kfUKvn the paternal name of her
who was my friend and my betrothed, and
who became the partner of my studies, and
finally the wife of my bosom. Was it a playful
charge on the part of my Ligeia? or was it a
test of my strength of affection, that I should
institute no inquiries upon this point.'' or was
it rather a caprice of my own — a wildly
romantic offering on the shrine of the most
passionate devotion? I but indistinctly re-
call the fact itself — what wonder that I have
utterly forgotten the circumstances which
originated or attended it.'' And, indeed, if
ever that spirit which is entitled Romance —
if ever she, the wan and the misty-winged
Ashtophet of idolatrous Egypt, presided, as
they tell, over marriages ill-omened, then
most surely she presided over mine.
There is one dear topic., however, on which
my memory fails me not. It is the person of
Ligeia. In stature she was tall, somewhat
slender, and, in her latter days, even emaci-
ated. I would in vain attempt to portray
the majesty, the quiet ease, of her demeanor,
or the incomprehensible lightness and elas-
ticity of her footfall. She came and departed
as a shadow. I was never made aware of her
entrance into my closed study, save by the
dear music of her low sweet voice, as she
placed her marble hand upon my shoulder.
In beauty of face no maiden ever equaled
her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream
— an airy and spirit-lifting vision more
wildly divine than the fantasies which hov-
ered about the slumbering souls of the daugh-
ters of Delos. Yet her features were not of
that regular mold which we have been
falsely taught to worship in the classical
labors of the heathen. "There is no ex-
quisite beauty," says Bacon, Lord Verulam,
speaking truly of all the forms and genera of
beauty, "without some strangeness in the
proportion." Yet, although I saw that the
features of Ligeia v/ere not of a classic regu-
larity— although I perceived that her loveli-
ness was indeed "exquisite," and felt that
there was much of "strangeness" pervading
it, yet I have tried in vain to detect the
irregularity and to trace home my own per-
ception of "the strange." I examined the
contour of the lofty and pale forehead: it was
faultless — how cold indeed that word when
applied to a majesty so divine! — the skin
rivaling the purest ivory, the commanding
extent and repose, the gentle prominence of
the regions above the temples; and then the
raven-black, the glossy, the luxuriant, and
naturally-curling tresses, setting forth the
full force of the Homeric epithet, "hyacin-
thine"! I looked at the delicate outlines of
the nose — and nowhere but in the graceful
medallions of the Hebrews had I beheld a
similar perfection. There were the same
luxurious smoothness of surface, the same
scarcely perceptible tendency to the aquiline,
the same harmoniously curved nostrils speak-
ing the free spirit. I regarded the sweet
mouth. Here was indeed the triumph of all
things heavenly — the magnificent turn of
the short upper lip — the soft, voluptuous
slumber of the under — the dimples which
sported, and the color which spoke — the
teeth glancing back, with a brilliancy almost
startling, every ray of the holy light which
fell upon them in her serene and placid, yet
most exultingly radiant of all smiles. I
scrutinized the formation of the chin: and
here, too, I found the gentleness of breadth,
the softness and the majesty, the fullness and
the spirituality, of the Greek — the contour
which the god Apollo revealed but in a dream
to Cleomenes, the son of the Athenian. And
then I peered into the large eyes of Ligeia.
For eyes we have no models in the re-
motely antique. It might have been, too,
that in these eyes of my beloved lay the
secret to which Lord Verulam alludes. They
were, I must believe, far larger than the ordi-
nary eyes of our own race. They were even
fuller than the fullest of the gazelle eyes of
the tribe of the valley of Nourjahad. Yet it
was only at intervals — in moments of in-
tense excitement — that this peculiarity be-
came more than slightly noticeable in Ligeia.
And at such moments was her beauty — in
my heated fancy thus it appeared perhaps —
the beauty of beings either above or apart
from the earth, the beauty of the fabulous
Houri of the Turk. The hue of the orbs was
the most brilliant of black, and, far over
them, hung jetty lashes of great length.
The brows, slightly irregular in outline, had
the same tint. The " strangeness, " however,
which I found in the eyes, was of a nature
distinct from the formation, or the color, or
the brilliancy of the features, and must, after
J
LIGEIA
541
all, be referred to the expression. Ah, word
of no mcaninf^! behind whose vast latitude
of mere sound we intrench our ignorance of
so much of the spiritual. The expression of
the eyes of Ligeia! How for long hours
have I pondered upon it! How have I,
through the whole of a midsummer night,
struggled to fathom it! What was it — that
something more profound than the well of
Democritus — which lay far within the
pupils of my beloved? What was it? I
was possessed with a passion to discover.
Those eyes! those large, those shining, those
divine orbs! they became to me twin stars
of Leda, and I to them devoutest of
astrologers.
There is no point, among the many in-
comprehensible anomalies of the science of
mind, more thrillingly exciting than the
fact — never, I believe, noticed in the schools
— that in our endeavors to recall to memory
something long forgotten, w^e often find our-'
selves upon the very verge of remembrance,
without being able, in the end, to remember.
And thus how frequently, in my intense
scrutiny of Ligeia's eyes, have I felt ap-
.proaching the full knowledge of their ex-
pression— felt it approaching, yet not quite
be mine, and so at length entirely depart!
And (strange, oh, strangest mystery of all!)
I found, in the commonest objects of the
universe, a circle of analogies to that ex-
pression. I mean to say that, subsequently
to the period when Ligeia's beauty passed
into my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine,
I derived, from many existences in the
material world, a sentiment such as I felt
always aroused within me by her large and
luminous orbs. Yet not the more could I
define that sentiment, or analyze, or even
steadily view it. I recognized it, let me
repeat, sometimes in the survey of a rapidly
growing vine — in the contemplation of a
moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of
running water. I have felt it in the ocean;
in the falling of a meteor. I have felt it in
the glances of unusually aged people. And
there are one or two stars in heaven (one
especially, a star of the sixth magnitude,
double and changeable, to be found near
the large star in Lyra), in a telescopic
scrutiny of which I have been made aware
of the feeling. I have been filled with it by
certain sounds from stringed instruments,
and not unfrequently by passages from
books. Among innumerable other instances,
I well remember something in a volume of
Joseph Glanvill, which (perhaps merely
from its quaintness — who shall say?) never
failed to inspire me with the sentiment:
"And the will therein lieth, which dieth
not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the
will, with its vigor? For God is but a great
will pervading all things by nature of its
intentness. Man doth not yield him to the
angels, nor unto death utterly, save only
through the weakness of his feeble wmII."
Length of years and subsequent reflection
have enabled me to trace, indeed, some
remote connection between this passage in
the English moralist and a portion of the
character of Ligeia. An intensity in thought,
action, or speech, was possibly, in her, a
result, or at least an index, of that gigantic
volition which, during our long intercourse,
failed to give other and more immediate
evidence of its existence. Of all the women
whom I have ever known, she, the out-
wardly calm, the ever-placid Ligeia, was
the most violently a prey to the tumultuous
vultures of stern passion. And of such
passion I could form no estimate, save by
the miraculous expansion of those eyes
which at once so delighted and appalled
me — by the almost magical melody, modula-
tion, distinctness, and placidity of her very
low voice — and by the fierce energy (ren-
dered doubly effective by contrast with her
manner of utterance) of the wild words
which she habitually uttered.
I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia:
it was immense — such as I have never
known in woman. In the classical tongues
was she deeply proficient, and as far as my
own acquaintance extended in regard to the
modern dialects of Europe, I have never
known her at fault. Indeed upon any
theme of the most admired, because simply
the most abstruse of the boasted erudition
of the academy, have I ever found Ligeia at
fault? How singularly, how thrillingly, this
one point in the nature of my wife has
forced itself, at this late period only, upon
my attention! I said her knowledge was
such as I have never known in woman — but
where breathes the man who has traversed,
and successfully, all the wide areas of moral,
physical, and mathematical science? I saw
54-
KIXiAR ALLAN POK
not then what I now clearly perceive, that
the acquisitions of Li<;eia were und; and it still stands, converted now into a
memorial of the poet. The character of Whittier's boyhood life can best be gathered from S?iozu-
Boujid, perhaps the one flawless poem which he wrote, and a faithful picture of that New England
country life which is historically of fundamental importance in the development of America. It was
a life ineager enough, with its full share of physical work and, too, of hardship, with the slightest of
opportunities for culture, but with large opportunities for the development of firm and sound — if
somewhat narrow and harsh — character. Whittier's family belonged to the Society of Friends, and the
household's small library, of about thirty volumes, consisted exclusively of Quaker literature and the
Bible. The boy attended country schools, when any of those nearby were open, and, for the rest,
read and re-read his father's few books. It is recorded also that when he was fourteen one of his
teachers read to him some of the poems of Burns, which made a deep impression upon him in their
revelation of what poetry could do in so transforming surrounding nature and the common and famil-
iar aspects of human life as to give them beauty and an ideal significance. From Whittier's acquaint-
ance with Burns, indeed, may be dated the first beginnings of his poetical life, and within a few years
he was firmly fixed in the habit of scribbling verses. The first of these to be printed was sent by his
sister, without Whittier's knowledge, to The Free Press, of Newburyport, and the youth was surprised
w^hen, in the summer of 1826, he discovered his poem in that paper. It was a paper recently estab-
lished by William Lloyd Garrison, who became sufficiently interested in Whittier to search him out
upon his father's farm, and who urged him to continue his education at an academy which had just
been opened in Haverhill. There were both religious scruples and financial difficulties to be con-
tended against, but Whittier managed to spend two terms at the academy, which completed his for-
mal education. His acquaintance with Garrison was the beginning of a life-long friendship, and he was
very soon enlisted heart and soul in the cause of abolition, which inspired much of his verse from this
time until the slaves were emancipated. The example of Garrison, too, played a part in leading him
into journalism, and in the earliest years of his manhood he cherished political ambitions. These,
however, he unhesitatingly sacrificed as soon as it became evident that a political career was incom-
patible with a bold stand against slavery. From 1828 until 1840 Whittier held a number of editorial
positions in various places, besides traveling much and working hard for the cause of abolition, but in
the latter year his health, never strong, broke down so alarmingly as to force him into a less active
life. In 1836, when the Haverhill farm had been sold, he had purchased a house in Amesbury, and
he now made this his home for the remainder of his long life. From 1847 to i860 he was associated
with The National Era, a weekly in which Uncle Tonis Cabin was first published. After 1857 the
periodical in which the greater number of his poems appeared was The Jilantic Monthly. He died
while visiting in New Hampshire on 7 September, 1892.
Whittier was greater as a man than as a poet — so admirable and high-minded a man, indeed, that
criticism would fain shirk the ungrateful task of passing judgment upon his literary performance.
But it is true that very many of his poems were occasional in character and have not kept their inter-
est, and that others made their initial appeal to a taste scarcely mature. Whittier once asserted that
Longfellow's Psalm of Life took a higher rank in his estimation than "all the dreams of Shelley, and
Keats, and Wordsworth," and thus he betrayed his own misfortune as a poet. He was too often care-
less of the niceties of expression, he tended to be diffuse, and he did not care to avoid didacticism.
Some of his religious verse, not primarily or at all didactic, deserves to live, and may in the long run
prove more grateful reading than perhaps at present would be generally granted. But the number
of his poems which, like Snow-Bound, live securely from their intrinsic worth, is small, and their author
can hardly be regarded as other than a minor figure in literature. "Whittier is probably," says a
sympathetic writer, "no more than a poet of the third rank. His native endowment was rich, but
it was supplemented by neither the technical training nor the discipline required for the development
of the artist. . . . The organ voice and the lyric cry were not, except at rare moments, his to com-
mand. But no American who lived in the shadow of slavery and internecine strife, none who grew
to manhood in the generation succeeding those epic days, would dream of measuring his love and
veneration for Whittier by the scale of absolute art." (W. M. Paine, Camb. Hist. Am. Lit., II.)
598
PROEM
599
THE MORAL WARFARE^
When Freedom, on her natal day,
Within her war-rocked cradle lay,
An iron race around her stood,
Baptized her infant hrow in blood;
And, through the storm which round her
swept.
Their constant ward and watching kept.
Then, where our quiet herds repose.
The roar of baleful battle rose,
And brethren of a common tongue
To mortal strife as tigers sprung, lo
And every gift on Freedom's shrine
Was man for beast, and blood for wine!
Our fathers to their graves have gone;
Their strife is past, their triumph won;
But sterner trials wait the race
Which rises in their honored place;
A moral warfare with the crime
And folly of an evil time.
So let it be. In God's own might
We gird us for the coming fight, 20
And, strong in Him whose cause is ours
In conflict with unholy powers,
We grasp the weapons He has given, —
The Light, and Truth, and Love of Heaven.
FORGIVENESS 2
My heart was heavy, for its trust had been
Abused, its kindness answered with foul
wrongj
So, turning gloomily from my fellow-men.
One summer Sabbath day I strolled among
The green mounds of the village burial-
place;
Where, pondering how all human love and
hate
Find one sad level; and how, soon or late.
Wronged and wrongdoer, each with meek-
ened face.
And cold hands folded over a still heart.
Pass the green threshold of our common
grave, 10
1 Written in 1836. An anti-slavery poem.
The selections from Whittier here reprinted are
used by permission of, and by arrangement with,
Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers.
* Written probably in 1846.
Whither all footsteps tend, whence none
depart.
Awed for myself, and pitying my race.
Our common sorrow, like a mighty wave,
Swept all my pride away, and trembling I
forgave!
PROEM -^
I LOVE the old melodious lays
Which softly melt the ages through.
The songs of Spenser's golden days,
Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase,
Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest
morning dew.
Yet, vainly in my quiet hours
To breathe their marvelous notes I try;
I feel them, as the leaves and flowers
In silence feel the dewy showers.
And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of
the sky. 10
The rigor of a frozen clime.
The harshness of an untaught ear,
The jarring words of one whose rhyme
Beat often Labor's hurried time.
Or Duty's rugged march through storm and
strife, are here.
Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace,
No rounded art the lack supplies;
Unskilled the subtle lines to trace,
Or softer shades of Nature's face,
I view her common forms with unanointed
eyes. 20
Nor mine the seer-like power to show
The secrets of the heart and mmd;
To drop the plummet-line below
Our common world of joy and woe,
A more intense despair or brighter hope to
find.
Yet here at least an earnest sense
Of human right and weal is shown;
A hate of tyranny intense.
And hearty in its vehemence,
As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my
own. 30
3 Written in November, 1847, ^^ an introduction
to the first collective edition of Whittier's poems,
1849 (so dated, though said to have been actually
published before the close of 1848).
6oo
JOHN GREENLEAF WIimiER
O Freedom! if to me belonp;
Nor mighty Milton's gift divine.
Nor Mar veil's wit and graceful song,
Still with a love as deep and strong
As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on
thy shrine!
THE WISH OF TO-DAYi
I ASK not now for gold to gild
With mocking shine a weary frame;
The yearning of the mind is stilled,
I ask not now for Fame.
A rose-cloud, dimly seen above.
Melting in heaven's blue depths away;
Oh, sweet, fond dream of human Love!
For thee I may not pray.
But, bowed in lowliness of mind,
I make my humble wishes known; lo
I only ask a will resigned,
0 Father, to Thine own!
To-day, beneath Thy chastening eye
1 crave alone for peace and rest.
Submissive in Thy hand to lie.
And feel that it is best.
A marvel seems the Universe,
A miracle our Life and Death;
A mystery which I cannot pierce,
Around, above, beneath. 20
In vain I task my aching brain,
In vain the sage's thought I scan,
I only feel how weak and vain,
How poor and blind, is man.
And now my spirit sighs for home.
And longs for light whereby to see,
And, like a weary child, would come,
O Father, unto Thee!
Though oft, like letters traced on sand.
My weak resolves have passed away, 30
In mercy lend Thy helping hand
Unto my prayer to-day!
1 Written in il
ICHAB0D2
So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore!
Tile glory from his gray hairs gone
forevermore!
Revile him not, the Tempter hath
A snare for all;
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
Befit his fall!
Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage.
When he who might
Have lighted up and led his age.
Falls back in night.
Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark
A bright soul driven.
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark.
From hope and heaven!
Let not the land once proud of him
Insult him now.
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
Dishonored brow.
But let its humbled sons, instead,
From sea to lake,
A long lament, as for the dead,
In sadness make.
Of all we loved and honored, naught
Save power remains;
A fallen angel's pride of thought.
Still strong in chains. •
All else is gone; from those great eyes
The soul has fled:
When faith is lost, when honor dies.
The man is dead!
Then, pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame;
Walk backward, with averted gaze.
And hide the shame!
20
30
2 Written in 1850. Occasioned by "the surprise and
grief and forecast of evil consequences" which Whittier
felt when he read Daniel Webster's speech supporting
the "compromise" and the Fugitive Slave Law. The
meaning of the title may be learned from I Samuel,
iv, 19-22.
BURNS
6oi
FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS^
In calm and cool and silence, once a<2;ain
I find my old accustomed place among
My brethren, where, perchance, no human
tongue
Shall utter words; where never hymn is
sung,
Nor deep-toned organ blown, nor censer
swung.
Nor dim light falling through the pictured
pane!
There, syllabled by silence, let me hear
The still small voice which reached the
prophet's ear;
Read in my heart a still diviner law
Than Israel's leader on his tables saw! lo
There let me strive with each besetting sin,
Recall my wandering fancies, and restrain
The sore disquiet of a restless brain;
And, as the path of duty is made plain,
May grace be given that I may walk therein,
Not like the hireling, fo;* his selfish gain.
With backward glances and reluctant tread,
Making a merit of his coward dread.
But, cheerful, in the light around me
thrown.
Walking as one to pleasant service led; 20
Doing God's will as if it were my own,
Yet trusting not in mine, but in His strength
alone!
TRUST2
The same old baffling questions! O my
friend,
I cannot answer them. In vain I send
My soul into the dark, where never burn
The lamps of science, nor the natural light
Of Reason's sun and stars! I cannot learn
Their great and solemn meanings, nor
discern
The awful secrets of the eyes which turn
Evermore on us through the day and
night
With silent challenge and a dumb demand,
Proffering the riddles of the dread unknown,
Like the calm Sphinxes, with their eyes of
stone, II
Questioning the centuries from their veils
of sand!
1 Written in 1852.
2 Written in 1853.
I have no answer for myself or thee,
Save that I learned beside my mother's knee;
"All is of God that is, and is to be;
And God is good." Let this sufl'ice us
still,
Resting in childlike trust upon His will
Who moves to His great ends unthwarted
by the ill.
BURNS^
ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER
IN BLOSSOM
No more these simple flowers belong
To Scottish maid and lover;
Sown in the common soil of song.
They bloom the wide world over.
In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,
The minstrel and the heather.
The deathless singer and the flowers
He sang of live together.
Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns!
The moorland flower and peasant! 10
How, at their mention, memory turns
Her pages old and pleasant!
The gray sky wears again its gold
And purple of adorning,
And manhood's noonday shadows hold
The dews of boyhood's morning.
The dews that washed the dust and soil
From off the wings of pleasure.
The sky, that flecked the ground of toil
With golden threads of leisure. 20
I call to mind the summer day,
The early harvest mowing,
The sky with sun and clouds at play,
And flowers with breezes blowing.
I hear the blackbird in the corn.
The locust in the haying;
And, like the fabled hunter's horn.
Old tunes my heart is playing.
How oft that day, with fond delay,
I sought the maple's shadow, 30
And sang with Burns the hours away,
Forgetful of the meadow!
'Written in 1854.
6o2
JOHN GREENLEAF WMIl IIKR
Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead
I heard the S(]uirrels leapin*:;,
The good dog hstcned while 1 read,
And wagged his tail in keeping.
I watched him while in sportive mood
I read " The Twa Dogs"'story,
And half believed he understood
The poet's allegory.
40
Sweet day, sweet songs! The golden hours
Grew brighter for that singing.
From brook and bird and meadow flowers
A dearer welcome bringing.
New light on home-seen Nature beamed,
New glory over Woman;
And daily life and duty seemed
No longer poor and common.
I woke to find the simple truth
Of fact and feeling better 50
Than all the dreams that held my youth
A still repining debtor:
That Nature gives her handmaid, Art,
The themes of sweet discoursing;
The tender id^ds of the heart
In every tongue rehearsing.
Why dream of lands of gold and pearl,
Of loving knight and lady,
When farmer boy and barefoot girl
Were wandering there already? 60
I saw through all familiar things
The romance underlying;
The joys and griefs that plume the wings
Of Fancy skyward flying.
I saw the same blithe day return,
The same sweet fall of even,
That rose on wooded Craigie-burn,
And sank on crystal Devon.
I matched with Scotland's heathery hills
The sweetbrier and the clover; 70
With Ayr and Doon, my native rills,
Their wood hymns chanting over.
O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen,
I saw the Man uprising;
No longer common or unclean,
The child of God's baptizing!
With clearer eyes I saw the worth
Of life among the lowly;
The Bible at his Cotter's hearth
Had made my own more holy. 80
And if at times an evil strain,
1 o lawless love appealing.
Broke in upon the sweet refrain
Of pure and healthful feeling.
It died upon the eye and ear,
No inward answer gaining;
No heart had I to see or hear
The discord and the staining.
Let those who never erred forget
His worth, in vain bewailings; 90
Sweet Soul of Song! I own my debt
Uncanceled by his failings!
Lament who will the ribald line
Which tells his lapse from duty,
How kissed the maddening lips of wine
Or wanton ones of beauty;
But think, while falls that shade between
The erring one and Heaven,
That he who loved like Magdalen,
Like her may be forgiven. 100
Not his the song whose thunderous chime
Eternal echoes render;
The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme,
And Milton's starry splendor!
But who his human heart has laid
To Nature's bosom nearer.''
Who sweetened toil like him, or paid
To love a tribute dearer.''
Through all his tuneful art, how strong
The human feeling gushes! no
The very moonlight of his song
Is warm with smiles and blushes!
Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time,
So *•* Bonnie Doon" but tarry;
Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme,
But spare his *' Highland Mary"!
i
i
MAUD MULLER
603
MAUD MULLERi
Maud Muller on a summer's day
Raked the meadow sweet with hay.
Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health.
Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee
The mock-bird echoed from his tree.
But when she glanced to the far-off town,
White from its hill-slope looking down,
The sweet song died, and a vague unrest
And a nameless longing filled her breast, — 10
A wish that she hardly dared to own.
For something better than she had known.
The Judge rode slowly down the lane,
Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane.
He drew his bridle in the shade
Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid,
And asked a draught from the spring that
flowed
Through the meadow across the road.
She stooped where the cool spring bubbled
up.
And filled for him her small tin cup, 20
And blushed as she gave it, looking down
On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.
"Thanks!" said the Judge; "a sweeter
draught
From a fairer hand was never quaffed."
He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,
Of the singing birds and the humming bees;
1 Written in 1854. Whittier wrote: "The poem
had no real foundation in fact, though a hint of it may
have been found in recalling an incident, trivial in
itself, of a journey on the picturesque Maine seaboard
with my sister some years before it was written. We
had stopped to rest our tired horse under the shade of
an apple-tree, and refresh him with water from a little
brook which rippled through the stone wall across
the road. A very beautiful young girl in scantest
summer attire was at work in the hay-field, and as we
talked with her we noticed that she strove to hide her
bare feet by raking hay over them, blushing as she
did so, through the tan of her cheek and neck."
Then talked of the haying, and wondered
whether
The cloud in the west would bring foul
weather.
And Maud forgot her biier-torn gown,
And her graceful ankles bare and brown; 30
And listened, while a pleased surprise
Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.
At last, like one who for delay
Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.
Maud Muller looked and sighed: "Ah me!
That I the Judge's bride might be!
"He would dress me up in silks so fine.
And praise and toast me at his wine.
"My father should wear a broadcloth coat;
My brother should sail a painted boat. 40
"I'd dress my mother so grand and gay.
And the baby should have a new toy each
day.
"And I'd feed the hungry and clothe the
poor,
And all should bless me who left our door."
The Judge looked back as he climbed the
hill, ^
And saw Maud Muller standing still.
"A form more fair, a face more sweet.
Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet.
"And her modest answer and graceful air
Show her wise and good as she is fair. 50
"Would she were mine, and I to-day.
Like her, a harvester of hay;
"No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,
Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,
"But low of cattle and song of birds.
And health and quiet and loving words."
But he thought of his sisters, proud and
cold.
And his mother, vain of her rank and gold.
6o4
JOHN GREENLEAF WHirilER
So, closing liis heart, the Judge rode on,
And Mnud was left in the field alone. 60
Hut the lawyers smiled that afternoon
When he hummed in court an old love-tune;
And the young girl mused beside the well
Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.
He wedded a wife of richest dower,
Who loved for fashion, as he for power.
Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow,
He watched a picture come and go;
And sweet Maud Mullet's hazel eyes
Looked out in their innocent surprise. 70
Oft, when the wine in his glass was red,
He longed for the wayside well instead;
And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms
To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.
And the proud man sighed, with a secret
pain,
"Ah, that I were free again!
"Free as when I rode that day,
Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay."
She wedded a man unlearned and poor,
And many children played round her door. 80
But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain,
Left their traces on heart and brain.
And oft, when the summer sun shone hot
On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,
And she heard the little spring brook fall
Over the roadside, through the wall,
In the shade of the apple-tree again
She saw a rider draw his rein;
And, gazing dow^n with timid grace,
She felt his pleased eyes read her face. 90
Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls
Stretched away into stately halls;
The weary w^heel to a spinnet turned,
The tallow candle an astral burned,
And for him who sat by the chimney lug.
Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug,
A manly form at lier side she saw.
And joy was duty and love was law.
Then she took up her burden of life again.
Saying only, "It might have been." 100
Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!
God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have
been!"
Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;
And, in the hereafter, angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away! no
THE BAREFOOT BOYi
Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face.
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy, —
I was once a barefoot boy!
Prince thou art, — the grown-up man
Only is republicaji.
Let the million-dollared ride!
Barefoot, trudging at his side.
Thou hast more than he can buy
In the reach of ear and eye, —
Outward sunshine, inward joy:
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!
<
10
Oh for boyhood's painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day.
Health that mocks the doctor's rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools.
Of the wild bee's morning chase,
Of the wnld-flower's time and place,
Flight of fowl and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood;
J Written in 1855.
20
SKIPPKR IRESON'S RIDE
605
How the tortoise bears his shell,
How the woodchuck dij^s his cell,
And the ground-mole sinks his well;
How the robin feeds her young, 30
How the oriole's nest is hung;
Where the whitest lilies blow,
Where the freshest berries grow.
Where the ground-nut trails its vine,
Where the wood-grape's clusters shine;
Of the black wasp's cunning way,
Mason of his walls of clay,
And the architectural plans
Of gray hornet artisans!
For, eschewing books and tasks, 40
Nature answers all he asks;
Hand in hand w4th her he walks.
Face to face with her he talks,
Part and parcel of her joy, —
Blessings on the barefoot boy!
Oh for boyhood's time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon.
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees, 50
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played.
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night.
Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, 60
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees.
Apples of Hesperides!
Still as my horizon grew.
Larger grew my riches too;
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy.
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!
Oh for festal dainties spread.
Like my bowl of milk and bread;
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
On the door-stone, gray and rude!
O'er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent.
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
While for music came the play
Of the pied frogs' orchestra;
70
And, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
I was monarch: pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy!
80
Cheerily, then, my little man.
Live and laugh, as boyhood can!
Though the flinty slopes be hard,
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward.
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisms of the dew;
Every evening from thy feet
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat: 90
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison cells of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt's for work be shod.
Made to tread the mills of toil.
Up and down in ceaseless moil:
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground;
Happy if they sink not in
Quick and treacherous sands of sin. 100
Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy.
Ere it passes, barefoot boy!
SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDEi
Of all the rides since the birth of time.
Told in story or sung in rhyme, —
On Apuleius's Golden Ass,
Or one-eyed Calender's horse of brass.
Witch astride of a human back,
Islam's prophet on Al-Borak, —
The strangest ride that ever was sped
Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead!
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead! 11
Body of turkey, head of owl.
Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl.
Feathered and ruffled in every part.
Skipper Ireson stood in the cart.
Scores of women, old and young,
Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue.
Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane,
Shouting and singing the shrill refrain:
> Begun in 1828 when VVhittier heard, from a school-
fellow at the Haverhill Academy, "a fragment of
rhyme" concerning Skipper Ireson; but not finished
until 1857. It then was published in The Atlantic
Monthly. In 1880 Whittier learned that researches in-
dicated that the crew, and not the Skipper, were
really responsible for the abandonment of the ship.
6o6
JOHN CRKKNLKAK WHII UKR
"Here's Find Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt 21
By the women o' Morble'ead!"
Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips,
Ciirls in bloom of cheek and lips,
Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase
Bacchus round some antique vase,
Brief of skirt, with ankles bare,
Loose of kerchief and loose of hair.
With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns'
twang.
Over and over the Maenads sang: 30
"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead!"
Small pity for him! — He sailed away
From a leaking ship in Chaleur Bay, —
Sailed away from a sinking wreck.
With his own town's-people on her deck!
"Lay by! lay by!" they called to him.
Back he answered, "Sink or swim!
Brag of your catch of fish again!" 40
And off he sailed through the fog and rain!
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart.
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!
Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur
That wreck shall lie forevermore.
Mother and sister, wife and maid.
Looked from the rocks of ^L^rblehead
Over the moaning and rainy sea, —
Looked for the coming that might not be! 50
What did the winds and the sea-birds say
Of the cruel captain who sailed away — ?
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart.
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!
Through the street, on either side.
Up flew windows, doors swung wide;
Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray.
Treble lent the fish-horn's bray.
Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound, 60
Hulks of old sailors run aground,
Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane.
And cracked with curses the hoarse refrain:
"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead!"
Sweetly along the Salem road
Bloom of orchard and lilac showed.
Little the wicked skipper knew
Of the fields so green and the sky so blue. 70
Riding there in his sorry trim.
Like an Indian idol glum and grim,
Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear
Of voices shouting, far and near:
"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead!"
"Hear me, neighbors!" at last he cried, —
"What to me is this noisy ride?
What is the shame that clothes the skin 80
To the nameless horror that lives within?
Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck.
And hear a cry from a reeling deck!
Hate me and curse me, — I only dread
The hand of God and the face of the dead!"
Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!
Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea
Said, "God has touched him! why should
we!" 90
Said an old wife mourning her only son,
"Cut the rogue's tether and let him run!"
So with soft relentings and rude excuse.
Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose.
And gave him a cloak to hide him in.
And left him alone with his shame and sin.
Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart.
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!
TELLING THE BEES^
Here is the place; right over the hill
Runs the path I took;
You can see the gap in the old wall still.
And the stepping-stones in the shallow
brook.
There is the house, with the gate red-barred.
And the poplars tall;
And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-
yard.
And the white horns tossing above the
wall.
1 Written in 1858. A custom which early Nei
Englanders brought with them from England is men-
tioned in the last stanza and gives its title to the poem.
When a member of the family died the bees were in-
formed, and their hives draped with black, which was
supposed to keep them from seeking a new home.
The scene described is in all particulars that of Whit-
tier's birthplace and first home.
LAUS DEO!
607
There are the beehives ranged in the sun;
And down by the brink 10
Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-
o'errun,
Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.
A year has gone, as the tortoise goes,
Heavy and slow;
And the same rose blows, and the same sun
glows,
And the same brook sings of a year ago.
There's the same sweet clover-smell in the
breeze;
And the June sun warm
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees,
Setting, as then, over Fernside farm. 20
I mind me how with a lover's care
From my Sunday coat
I brushed off the burs, and smoothed my
hair.
And cooled at the brookslde my brow and
throat.
Since we parted, a month had passed, —
To love, a year;
Down through the beeches I looked at last
On the little red gate and the well-sweep
near.
I can see it all now, — the slantwise rain
Of light through the leaves, 30
The sundown's blaze on her window-pane.
The bloom of her roses under the eaves.
Just the same as a month before, —
The house and the trees.
The barn's brown gable, the vine by the
door, —
Nothing changed but the hives of bees.
Before them, under the garden wall,
Forward and back,
Went drearily singing the chore-girl small.
Draping each hive with a shred of black. 40
Trembling, I listened: the summer sun
Had the chill of snow;
For I knew she was telling the bees of one
Gone on the journey we all must go!
Then I said to myself, "My Mary weeps
For the dead to-day:
Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps
The fret and the pain of his age away."
But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill,
With his cane to his chin, 50
The old man sat; and the chore-girl still
Sung to the bees stealing out and in.
And the song she was singing ever since
In my ear sounds on: —
"Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!
Mistress Mary is dead and gone!"
LAUS DEO!i
It is done!
Clang of bell and roar of gun
Send the tidings up and down.
How the belfries rock and reel!
How the great guns, peal on peal,
Fling the joy from town to town!
Ring, O bells!
Every stroke exulting tells
Of the burial hour of crime.
Loud and long, that all may hear,
Ring for every listening ear
Of Eternity and Time!
Let us kneel:
God's own voice is in that peal,
And this spot is holy ground.
Lord, forgive us! What are we,
That our eyes this glory see.
That our ears have heard the sound!
For the Lord
On the whirlwind is abroad;
In the earthquake He has spoken;
He has smitten with His thunder
The iron walls asunder,
And the gates of brass are broken!
Loud and long
Lift the old exulting song;
Sing with Miriam by the sea.
He has cast the mighty down;
Horse and rider sink and drown;
"He hath triumphed gloriously!"
Did we dare.
In our agony of prayer,
Ask for more than He has done?
When was ever His right hand
Over any time or land
Stretched as now beneath the sun?
10
20
30
» Written in 1865, upon the passage of the constitu-
tional amendment abolishing slavery, 31 January,
6o8
JOHN GRKKNLEAF WHllTIER
How tiny jKilc,
Ancient myth and s()nLK
627
could have authorized Phryne to "peel"
in the way she did! What fine speeches
are those two: " Non omnis moriar/'^ and
**I have tak-en all knowledge to be my
province"! Even in common people, con-
ceit has the virtue of making them cheerful;
the man who thinks his wife, his baby, his
house, his horse, his dog, and himself sever-
ally unequaled, is almost sure to be a good-
humored person, though liable to be tedious
at times.
— What are the great faults of conversa-
tion? Want of ideas, want of words, want
of manners, are the principal ones, I suppose
you think. I don't doubt it, but I will tell
you what I have found spoil more good talks
than anything else; — long arguments on
special points between people who differ on
the fundamental principles upon which these
points depend. No men can have satis-
factory relations with each other until they
have agreed on certain ultimata of belief
not to be disturbed in ordinary conversation,
and unless they have sense enough to trace
the secondary questions depending upon
these ultimate beliefs to their source. In
short, just as a written constitution is
essential to th'C best social order, so a code
of finalities is a necessary condition of profit-
able talk between two persons. Talking is
like playing on the harp; there is as much
in laying the hand on the strings to stop
their vibrations as in twanging them to
bring out their music.
— Do you mean to say the pun-question
is not clearly settled in your minds.'* Let
me lay down the law upon the subject.
Life and language are alike sacred. Homi-
cide and verbicide — that is, violent treat-
ment of a word with fatal results to its
legitimate meaning, which is its life — are
alike forbidden. Manslaughter, which is
the meaning of the one, is the same as man's
laughter, which is the end of the other. A
pun is prima facie an insult to the person
you are talking with. It implies utter
indifference to or sublime contempt for his
remarks, no matter how serious. I speak
of total depravity, and one says all that is
written on the subject is deep raving. I
have committed my self-respect by talking
with such a person. I should like to commit
1 1 shall not altogether die.
him, but cannot, because he is a nuisance.
Or I speak of geological convulsions, and
he asks me what was the cosine of Noah's
ark; also, whether the Deluge was not a
deal huger than any modern inundation.
A pun does not commonly justify a blow
in return. But if a blow were given for
such cause, and death ensued, the jury
would be judges both of the facts and of the
pun, and might, if the latter were of an
aggravated character, return a verdict of
justifiable homicide. Thus, in a case lately
decided before Miller, J., Doe presented
Roe a subscription paper, and urged the
claims of suffering humanity. Roe replied
by asking. When charity was like a top?
It was in evidence that Doe preserved a
dignified silence. Roe then said, *'When it
begins to hum." Doe then — and not till
then — struck Roe, and his head happening
to hit a bound volume of the Monthly Rag-
Bag and Stolen Miscellany^ intense mortifica-
tion ensued, with a fatal result. The chief
laid down his notions of the law to his
brother justices, who unanimously replied,
*' Jest so." The chief rejoined, that no man
should jest so without being punished for it,
and charged for the prisoner, who was
acquitted, and the pun ordered to be burned
by the sheriff. The bound volume was
forfeited as a deodand, but not claimed.
People that make puns are like wanton
boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks.
They amuse themselves and other children,
but their little trick may upset a freight
train of conversation for the sake of a
battered witticism.
I will thank you, B. F., to bring down two
books, of which I will mark the places on
this slip of paper. (While he is gone, I may
say that this boy, our landlady's youngest,
is called Benjamin Franklin, after the
celebrated philosopher of that name. A
highly merited compliment.)
I wished to refer to two eminent authori-
ties. Now be so good as to listen. The
great moralist says: *'To trifle with the
vocabulary which is the vehicle of social
intercourse is to tamper with the currency of
human intelligence. He who would violate
the sanctities of his mother tongue would
invade the recesses of the paternal till with-
out remorse, and repeat the banquet of
Saturn without an indigestion."
62S
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
And, once more, listen to tlic liistorian.
"The Puritans hated puns. The Bishops
were notoriously addicted to them. 1 he
Lords Femporal carried them to the verj^e
of license. Majesty itself must have its
Royal quibble. 'Ye be burly, my Lord of
Burleigh,* said Queen Elizabeth, 'but ye
shall make less stir in our realm than my
Lord of Leicester.* The gravest wisdom
and the highest breeding lent their sanction
to the practice. Lord Bacon playfully
declared himself a descendant of 'Og, the
King of Bashan. Sir Philip Sidney, with
his last breath, reproached the soldier who
brought him water, for wasting a casque
full upon a dying man. A courtier, who
saw Othello performed at the Globe Theater,
remarked, that the blackamoor was a brute,
and not a man. 'Thou hast reason,* replied
a great Lord, 'according to Plato his saying;
for this be a two-legged animal with feathers.'
The fatal habit became universal. The
language was corrupted. The infection
spread to the national conscience. Political
double-dealings naturally grew out of verbal
double meanings. The teeth of the new
dragon were sown by the Cadmus who in-
troduced the alphabet of equivocation.
What was levity in the time of the Tudors
grew to regicide and revolution in the age
of the Stuarts.**
Who was that boarder that just whispered
something about the Macaulay-flowers of
literature? — There was a dead silence. — 1
said calmly, I shall henceforth consider any
interruption by a pun as a hint to change
my boarding-house. Do not plead my
example. If / have used any such, it has
been only as a Spartan father would show up
a drunken helot. We have done with them.
— If a logical mind ever found out anything
with its logic? — I should say that its most
frequent work was to build a pons asinorum
over chasms which shrewd people can be-
stride without such a structure. You can
hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to prove
anything that you want to prove. You can
buy treatises to show that Napoleon never
lived, and that no battle of Bunker-hill was
ever fought. The great minds are those
with a wide span,i which couple truths
1 There is something like this in J. H. Newman's
Grammar of Assent. See Characteristics, arranged by
W. S. Lilly, p. 8i. (Holmes's note.)
related to, but far removed from, each other.
Logicians carry the surveyor's chain over
the track of which these are the true ex-
plorers. I value a man mainly for his
primary relations with truth, as I under-
stand truth, — not for any secondary artifice
in handling his ideas. Some of the sharpest
men in argument are notoriously unsound in
judgment. I should not trust the counsel
of a clever debater, any more than that of a
good chess-player. Either may of course
advise wisely, but not necessarily because
he wrangles or plays well.
The old gentleman who sits opposite got
his hand up, as a pointer lifts his forefoot, I
at the expression, "his relations with truth,
as I understand truth," and when I had
done, sniffed audibly, and said I talked like
a transcendentalist. For his part, common J
sense was good enough for him. . "
Precisely so, my dear sir, I replied; com-
mon sense, as you understand it. We all
have to assume a standard of judgment in
our own minds, either of things or persons.
A man who is willing to take another's
opinion has to exercise his judgment in the
choice of whom to follow, which is often as
nice a matter as to judge of things for one's
self. On the whole, I had rather judge
men's minds by comparing their thoughts
with my own, than judge of thoughts by
knowing who utter them. 1 must do one
or the other. It does not follow, of course,
that I may not recognize another man's
thoughts as broader and deeper than my
own; but that does not necessarily change
my opinion, otherwise this would be at the
mercy of every superior mind that held a
different one. How many of our most
cherished beliefs are like those drinking-
glasses of the ancient pattern, that serve
us well so long as we keep them in our hand,
but spill all if we attempt to set them down!
I have sometimes compared conversation to
the Italian game of mora, in which one ■
player lifts his hand with so many fingers
extended, and the other gives the number
if he can. I show my thought, another his,
if they agree, well; if they differ, we find the
largest common factor, if we can, but at
any rate avoid disputing about remainders
and fractions, which is to real talk what
tuning an instrument is to playing on it.
— What if, instead of talking this morning.
'niK AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE
629
I should read you a copy of verses, with
critical remarks by the author? Any of the
company can retire that like.
ALBUM VERSES
When Eve had led her lord away,
And Cam had killed his brother,
The stars and flowers, the poets say,
Agreed with one another
To cheat the cunning tempter's art.
And teach the race its duty.
By keeping on its wicked heart
Their eyes of light and beauty.
A million sleepless lids, they say,
Will be at least a warning, 10
And so the flowers would watch by day,''
The stars from eve to morning.
On hill and prairie, field and lawn,
Their dewy eyes upturning.
The flowers still watch from reddening dawn
Till western skies are burning.
Alas! each hour of daylight tells
A tale of shame so crushing,
That some turn white as sea-bleached shells,
And some are always blushing. 20
But when the patient stars look down
On all their light discovers,
The traitor's smile, the murderer's frown,
The lips of lying lovers.
They try to shut their saddening eyes,
And in the vain endeavor
We see them twinkling in the skies,
And so they wink forever.
What do you think of these verses,
my friends? — Is that piece an impromptu?
said my landlady's daughter. {Aet. 19-I-.
Tender-eyed blonde. Long ringlets. Cameo
pin. Gold pencil-case on a chain. Locket.
Bracelet. Album. Autograph book. Ac-
cordeon. Reads Byron, Tupper, and Syl-
vanus Cobb, Junior, while her mother makes
the puddings. Says "Yes?" when you tell
her anything.) — Out et non^ ma petite, —
Yes and no, my child. Five of the seven
verses were written oflF-hand; the other two
took a week, — that is, were hanging round
the desk in a ragged, forlorn, unrhymed
condition as long as that. All poets will
tell you just such stories. C'est le dernier
pas qui coute.^ Don't you know how hard it
is for some people to get out of a room after
their visit is really over? They want to be
off, and you want to have them ofl^, but they
don't know how to manage it. One would
think they had been built in your parlor or
study, and were waiting to be launched.
I have contrived a sort of ceremonial in-
clmed plane for such visitors, which being
lubricated with certain smooth phrases, I
back them down, metaphorically speaking,
stern-foremost, into their "native element,'*
the great ocean of out-doors. Well, now,
there are poems as hard to get rid of as these
rural visitors. They come in glibly, use
up all the serviceable rhymes, day, r<2y,
beauty, duty, skies, eyes, other, brother, moun-
tain, fountain, and the like; and so they go
on until you think it is time for the wind-up,
and the wind-up won't come on any terms.
So they lie about until you get sick of the
sight of them, and end by thrusting some
cold scrap of a final couplet upon them, and
turning them out of doors. I suspect a
good many "impromptus" could tell just
such a story as the above. — Here turning to
our landlady, I used an illustration which
pleased the company much at the time, and
has since been highly commended. "Mad-
am," I said, "you can pour three gills and
three quarters of honey from that pint jug,
if it is full, in less than one minute; but.
Madam, you could not empty that last
quarter of a gill, though you were turned
into a marble Hebe, and held the vessel
upside down for a thousand years.**
One gets tired to death of the old, old
rhymes, such as you see m that copy of
verses, — which I don't mean to abuse, or
to praise either. 1 always feel as if 1 were
a cobbler, putting new top-leathers to an
old pair of boot-soles and bodies, when I am
fitting sentiments to these venerable jingles.
youth
morning
truth
warning
Nine tenths of the "Juvenile Poems"
written spring out of the above musical and
suggestive coincidences.
"Yes?" said our landlady's daughter.
» It is the last step which counts.
630
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
I did not address tlie followinj; remark to
her, and I trust, from her hmited ranp;e of
reading, she will never see it; 1 said it softly
to my next neighbor.
Wlien a young female wears a flat circular
side-curl, gummed on each temple, — when
she walks with a male, not arm in arm, but
his arm against the back of hers, — and when
she says "Yes?" with the note of interroga-
tion, you are generally safe in asking her
what wages she gets, and who the "feller"
was you saw her with.
"What were you whispering.'"' said the
daughter of the house, moistening her lips,
as she spoke, in a very engaging manner.
"I was only laying down a principle of
social diagnosis."
"Yes.?"
— It is curious to see how the same wants
and tastes find the same implements and
modes of expression in all times and places.
The young ladies of Otaheite, as you may
see in Cook's VoyageSy had a sort of crinoline
arrangement fully equal in radius to the
largest spread of our own lady-baskets.
When I fling a Bay-State shawl over my
shoulders, I am only taking a lesson from
the climate which the Indian had learned
before me. A blanket-s\\2L-w\ we call it, and
not a plaid; and we wear it like the abori-
gines, and not like the Highlanders.
— We are the Romans of the modern world,
the great assimilating people. Conflicts
and conquests are of course necessary acci-
dents with us, as with our prototypes. And
so we come to their style of weapon. Our
army sword is the short, stiflF, pointed
gladius of the Romans; and the American
bowie-knife is the same tool, modified to
meet the daily wants of civil society. I
announce at this table an axiom not to be
found in Montesquieu or the journals of
Congress: —
The race that shortens its weapons
lengthens its boundaries.
Corollary. It was the Polish lance that
left Poland at last with nothing of her own
to bound.
Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered
spear!
What business had Sarmatia to be fighting
for liberty with a fifteen-foot pole between
her and the breasts of her enemies.? If she
had but clutched the old Roman and young
American weapon, and come to close (juart-
ers, there might have been a chance for her;
but it would have spoiled the best passage
in The Pleasures of Hope.
— Self-made men? — Well, yes. Of course
everybody likes and respects self-made
men. It is a great deal better to be made
in that way than not to be made at all. Are
any of you younger people old enough to
remember that Irishman's house on the
marsh at Cambridgeport, which house he
built from drain to chimney-top with his
own hands? It took him a good many
years to build it, and one could see that it
was a little out of plumb, and a little wavy in
outline, and a little queer and uncertain
in general aspect. A regular hand could
certainly have built a better house; but
it was a very good house for a "self-made"
carpenter's house, and people praised it, and
said how remarkably well the Irishman had
succeeded. They never thought of praising
the fine blocks of houses a little farther on.
Your self-made man, whittled into shape
with his own jack-knife, deserves more
credit, if that is all, than the regular engine-
turned article, shaped by the most approved
pattern, and French-polished by society
and travel. But as to saying that one is
every way the equal of the other, that is
another matter. The right of strict social
discrimination of all things and persons,
according to their merits, native or ac-
quired, is one of the most precious republican
privileges. I take the liberty to exercise it
when I say that, other things being equal, in
most relations of life I prefer a man of family.
What do I mean by a man of family? — -
O, I'll give you a general idea of what I
mean. Let us give him a first-rate fit out;
it costs us nothing.
Four or five generations of gentlemen and
gentlewomen; among them a member of
his Majesty's Councd for the Province, a
Governor or so, one or two Doctors of
Divinity, a member of Congress, not later
than the time of long boots with tassels.
Family portraits. ^ The member of the
1 The full-length pictures by Copley I was thinking
of are such as may be seen in the Memorial Hall of
Harvard University, but many are to be met with in
different parts of New England, sometimes in the
possession of the poor descendants of the rich gentle-
i
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE
631
Council, by Smibert. The great merchant-
uncle, by Copley, full length, sitting in his
arm-chair, in a velvet cap and flowered robe,
with a globe by him, to show the range of
his commercial transactions, and letters
with large red seals lying round, one directed
conspicuously to The Honorable, etc., etc.
Great-grandmother, by the same artist;
brown satin, lace very fine, hands super-
lative; grand old lady, stiffish, but imposing.
Her mother, artist unknown; flat, angular,
hanging sleeves; parrot on fist. A pair of
Stuarts, tiz.y i. A superb, full-blown, med-
ieval gentleman, with a fiery dash of Tory
blood in his veins, tempered down with
that of a fine old rebel grandmother, and
warmed up with the best of old India
Madeira; his face is one flame of ruddy
sunshine; his ruffled shirt rushes out of his
bosom with an impetuous generosity, as if it
would drag his heart after it; and his smile
is good for twenty thousand dollars to the
Hospital, besides ample bequests to all
relatives and dependants. 2. Lady of the
same; remarkable cap; high waist, as in
time of Empire; bust a la Josephine; wisps
of curls, like celery-tips, at sides of fore-
head; complexion clear and warm, like rose-
cordial. As for the miniatures by Malbone,
we don't count them in the gallery.
Books, too, with the names of old college-
students in them, — family names; — you will
find them at the head of their respective
classes in the days when students took rank
on the catalogue from their parents' condi-
tion. Elzevirs, with the Latinized appella-
tions of youthful progenitors, and Ilic liber
est mens on the title-page. A set of Ho-
garth's original plates. Pope, original edi-
tion, 15 volumes, London, 1717. Barrow
on the lower shelves in folio. Tillotson on
the upper, in a little dark platoon of octo-
decimos.
Some family silver; a string of wedding
and funeral rings; the arms of the family
folks in lace ruffles and glistening satins, grandees and
grand dames of the ante-Revolutionary period. I
remember one poor old gentleman who had nothing
left of his family possessions but the full-length por-
traits of his ancestors, the Counselor and his lady,
saying, with a gleam of the pleasantry which had come
down from the days of Mather Byles, and "Balch
the Hatter," and Sigourney, that he fared not so badly
after all, for he had a pair of canvas-backs every day
through the whole year. (Holmes's note.)
curiously blazoned; the same in worsted,
by a maiden aunt.
If the man of family has an old place to
keep these things in, furnished with claw-
footed chairs and black mahogany tables,
and tall bevel-edged mirrors, and stately
upright cabinets, his outfit is complete.
No, my friends, I go (always, other things
being equal) for the man who inherits family
traditions and the cumulative humanities
of at least four or five generations. Above
all things, as a child, he should have tumbled
about in a library. All men are afraid of
books, who have not handled them from
infancy. Do you suppose our dear dida-
scalos^ over there ever read Poli Synopsis, or
consulted Castelli Lexicon, while he was
growing up to their stature? Not he; but
virtue passed through the hem of their
parchment and leather garments whenever
he touched them, as the precious drugs
sweated through the bat's handle in the
Arabian story. I tell you he is at home
wherever he smells the invigorating fragrance
of Russia leather. No self-made man feels
so. One may, it is true, have all the ante-
cedents I have spoken of, and yet be a boor
or a shabby fellow. One may have none of
them, and yet be fit for councils and courts.
Then let them change places. Our social
arrangement has this great beauty, that its
strata shift up and down as they change
specific gravity, without being clogged by
layers of prescription. But I still insist on
my democratic liberty of choice, and I go
for the man with the gallery of family
portraits against the one with the twenty-
five-cent daguerreotype, unless I find out
that the last is the better of the two.
— I should have felt more nervous about
the late comet, if I had thought the world was
ripe. But it is very green yet, if I am not
mistaken; and besides, there is a great deal
of coal to use up, which I cannot bring
myself to think was made for nothing. If
1 "Our dear didascalos" was meant for Professor
James Russell Lowell, now Minister to England. It
requires the union of exceptional native gifts and
generations of training to bring the "natural man" of
New England to the completeness of scholarly man-
hood, such as that which adds new distinction to the
najne he bears, already remarkable for its successive
generations of eminent citizens.
"Self-made" is imperfectly made, or education is a
superfluity and a failure. (Holmes's note.)
632
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
certain things, which seem to mc essential
to a millennium, had come to pass, I should
have been frightened; but they haven't.
Perhaps you would like to hear my
LATTER-DAY WARNINGS
When legislators keep the law.
When banks dispense with bolts and locks,
When berries, whortle — rasp — and straw —
Grow bigger downwards through the box, —
When he that selleth house or land
Shows leak in roof or flaw in right, —
When haberdashers choose the stand
Whose window hath the broadest light, —
When preachers tell us all they think,
And party leaders all they mean, — 10
When what we pay for, that we drink,
From real grape and cofFee-bean, —
When lawyers take what they would give,
And doctors give what they would take, —
When city fathers eat to live.
Save when they fast for conscience' sake, —
When one that hath a horse on sale
Shall bring his merit to the proof.
Without a lie for every nail
That holds the iron on the hoof, — 20
When in the usual place for rips
Our gloves are stitched with special care.
And guarded well the whalebone tips
Where first umbrellas need repair, —
When Cuba's weeds have quite forgot
The power of suction to resist.
And claret-bottles harbor not
Such dimples as would hold your fist, —
When publishers no longer steal.
And pay for what they stole before,-
When the first locomotive's wheel
Rolls through the Hoosac tunnel's bore;^ —
30
1 This hoped for, but almost despaired of, event,
occurred on the 9th of February, 1875. The writer
of the above lines was as much pleased as his fellow-
citizens at the termination of an enterprise which
gave constant occasion for the most inveterate pun
on record. When the other conditions referred to are
as happily fulfilled as this has been, he will still say as
before, that it is time for the ascension garment to be
ordered. (Holmes's note.)
Till then let Gumming blaze away,
And Miller's saints blow up the globe;
But when you see that blessed day.
Then order your ascension robe!
The company seemed to like the verses,
and I promised them to read others occasion-
ally, if they had a mind to hear them. Of
course they would not expect it every morn-
ing. Neither must the reader suppose
that all these things I have reported were
said at any one breakfast-time. I have not
taken the trouble to date them, as Raspail,
perey used to date every proof he sent to the
printer; but they were scattered over
several breakfasts; and I have said a good
many more things since, which I shall very
possibly print some time or other, if I am
urged to do it by judicious friends.
I finished off with reading some verses of
my friend the Professor, of whom you may
perhaps hear more by and by. The Pro-
fessor read them, he told me, at a farewell
meeting, where the youngest of our great
historians^ met a few of his many friends at
their invitation.
Yes, we knew we must lose him, — though
friendship may claim
To blend her green leaves with the laurels of
fame;
Though fondly, at parting, we call him our
own,
'T is the whisper of love when the bugle has
blown.
As the rider who rests with the spur on his
heel, —
As the guardsman who sleeps in his corselet
of steel, —
As the archer who stands with his shaft on
the string.
He stoops from his toil to the garland we
bring.
What pictures yet slumber unborn in his
loom
Till their warriors shall breathe and their
beauties shall bloom, 10
2 "The youngest of our great historians," referred
to in the poem, was John Lothrop Motley. His career
of authorship was as successful as it was noble, and
his works are among the chief ornaments of our na-
tional literature. Are Republics still ungrateful, as
of old? (Holmes's note.)
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE
633
While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing
dyes
That caught from our sunsets the stain of
their skies!
In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of
time,
Where flit the gaunt specters of passion and
crime,
There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs
unsung.
There are heroes yet silent to speak with his
tongue!
Let us hear the proud story which time has
bequeathed
From lips that are warm with the freedom
they breathed!
Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their
doom.
Though he sweep the black past like Van
Tromp with his broom! 20
• • • • •
The dream flashes by, for the west-winds
awake
On pampas, on prairie, o'er mountain and
lake,
To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled
shrine.
With incense they stole from the rose and
the pine.
So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that
gushed
When the dead summer's jewels were
trampled and crushed:
The True Knight of Learning, — the
world holds him dear, —
Love bless him, Joy crown him, God speed
his career!
II
I really believe some people save their
bright thoughts as being too precious for
conversation. What do you think an
admiring friend said the other day to one
that was talking good things, — good enough
to print? *'Why, " said he, **you are wast-
ing merchantable literature, a cash article,
at the rate, as nearly as I can tell, of fifty
dollars an hour." The talker took him to
the window and asked him to look out and
tell what he saw.
"Nothing but a very dusty street," he
said, "and a man driving a sprinkhng-
machine through it."
"Why don't you tell the man he is wasting
that water? What would be the state of
the highways of life, if we did not drive our
thought-sprinklers through them with the
valves open, sometimes ?
"Besides, there is another thing about this
talking, which you forget. It shapes our
thoughts for us; — the waves of conversation
roll them as the surf rolls the pebbles on the
shore. Let me modify the image a little.
I rough out my thoughts in talk as an artist
models in clay. Spoken language is so
plastic, — you can pat and coax, and spread
and shave, and rub out, and fill up, and
stick on so easily, when you work that soft
material, that there is nothing like it for
modeling. Out of it come the shapes which
you turn into marble or bronze in your
immortal books, if you happen to write
such. Or, to use another illustration, writ-
ing or printing is like shooting with a rifle;
you may hit your reader's mind, or miss it; —
but talking is like playing at a mark with
the pipe of an engine; if it is within reach,
and you have time enough, you can't help
hitting it."
The company agreed that this last illus-
tration was of superior excellence, or, in
the phrase used by them, "Fust-rate." I
acknowledged the compliment, but gently
rebuked the expression. "Fust-rate,"
"prime," "a prime article," "a superior
piece of goods," "a handsome garment,"
"a gent in a flowered vest," — all such ex-
pressions are final. They blast the lineage
of him or her who utters them, for
generations up and down. There is one
other phrase which will soon come to be
decisive of a man's social status^ if it is not
already: "That tells the whole story." It
is an expression which vulgar and conceited
people particularly aflPect, and which well-
meaning ones, who know better, catch from
them. It is intended to stop all debate,
like the previous question in the General
Court. Only it doesn't; simply because
"that" does not usually tell the whole, nor
one half of the whole story.
— It is an odd idea, that almost all our
people have had a professional education.
To become a doctor a man must study some
6.34
0LIVP:R WENDELL HOLMES
three years and hear a thousand lectures,
more or less. Just how much study it takes
to make a lawyer I cannot say, but probably
not more than this. Now, most decent
people hear one hundred lectures or sermons
(discourses) on theology every year, — and
this, twenty, thirty, fifty years together.
They read a great many religious books
besides. The clergy, however, rarely hear
any sermons except what they preach them-
selves. A dull preacher might be conceived,
therefore, to lapse into a state of quasi
heathenism, simply for want of religious
instruction. And, on the other hand, an
attentive and intelligent hearer, listening to
a succession of wise teachers, might become
actually better educated in theology than
any one of them. We are all theological
students, and more of us qualified as doctors
of divinity than have received degrees at
any of the universities.
|b It is not strange, therefore, that very
good people should often find it difficult, if
not impossible, to keep their attention fixed
upon a sermon treating feebly a subject
which they have thought vigorously about
for years, and heard able men discuss scores
of times. I have often noticed, however,
that a hopelessly dull discourse acts induc-
tively, as electricians would say, in develop-
ing strong mental currents. I am ashamed
to think with what accompaniments and
variations and flourishes I have sometimes
followed the droning of a heavy speaker, —
not willingly, — for my habit is reverential,
— but as a necessary result of a slight con-
tinuous impression on the senses and the
mind, which kept both in action without
furnishing the food they required to work
upon. If you ever saw a crow with a king-
bird after him, you will get an image of a
dull speaker and a lively listener. The bird
in sable plumage flaps heavily along his
straightforward course, while the other sails
round him, over him, under him, leaves
him, comes back again, tweaks out a black
feather, shoots away once more, never
losing sight of him, and finally reaches the
crow's perch at the same time the crow does,
having cut a perfect labyrinth of loops and
knots and spirals while the slow fowl was
painfully working from one end of his
straight line to the other.
iJ think these remarks were received
rather coolly. A temporary boarder from
the country, consisting of a somewhat more
than middle-aged feinale, with a parchment
forehead and a dry little "frisette" shing-
ling it, a sallow neck with a necklace of gold
beads, a black dress too rusty for recent
grief, and contours in basso-rilievo, left the
table prematurely, and was reported to
have been very virulent about what I said.
So I went to my good old minister, and
repeated the remarks, as nearly as I could
remember them, to him. He laughed good-
naturedly, and said there was considerable
truth in them. He thought he could tell
when people's minds were wandering, by
their looks. In the earlier years of his
ministry he had sometimes noticed this,
when he was preaching; — very little of late
years. Sometimes, when his colleague was
preaching, he observed this kind of in-
attention; but after all, it was not so very
unnatural. I will say, by the way, that
it is a rule I have long followed, to tell my
worst thoughts to my minister, and my best
thoughts to the young people I talk with.]
— I want to make a literary confession
now, which I believe nobody has made
before me. You know very well that I
write verses sometimes, because I have read
some of them at this table. (The company
assented, — two or three of them in a resigned
sort of way, as I thought, as if they supposed
I had an epic in my pocket, and were going
to read half a dozen books or so for their
benefit.) — I continued. Of course I write
some lines or passages which are better
than others; some which, compared with
the others, might be called relatively excel-
lent. It is in the nature of things that I
should consider these relatively excellent
lines or passages as absolutely good. So
much must be pardoned to humanity. Now
I never wrote a "good" line in my life, but
the moment after it was written it seemed a
hundred years old. Very commonly I had
a sudden conviction that I had seen it J
somewhere. Possibly I may have some- "
times unconsciously stolen it, but I do not
remember that I ever once detected any
historical truth in these sudden convictions
of the antiquity of my new thought or
phrase. I have learned utterly to distrust
them, and never allow them to bully me
out of a thought or hne.
I
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TARLE
635
This is the philosophy of it. (Merc the
number of the company was diminished by a
small secession.) Any new formula which
suddenly emerges in our consciousness has
its roots in long trams of thought; it is
virtually old when it first makes its appear-
ance among the recognized growths of our
intellect. Any crystalline group of musical
words has had a long and still period to form
it. Here is one theory.
But there is a larger law which perhaps
comprehends these facts. It is this. The
rapidity with which ideas grow old in our
memories is in a direct ratio to the squares of
their importance. Their apparent age runs
up miraculously, like the value of diamonds,
as they increase in magnitude. A great
calamity, for instance, is as old as the
trilobites an hour after it has happened.
It stains backward through all the leaves
we have turned over in the book of life,
before its blot of tears or of blood is dry on
the page we are turning. For this we seem
to have lived; it was foreshadowed in
dreams that we leaped out of in the cold
sweat of terror; in the ** dissolving views" of
dark day-visions; all omens pointed to it;
all paths led to it. After the tossing half-
forgetfulness of the first sleep that follows
such an event, it comes upon us afresh, as a
surprise, at waking; in a few moments it is
old again, — old as eternity.
[I wish I had not said all this then and
there. I might have known better. The
pale schoolmistress, in her mourning dress,
was looking at me, as I noticed, with a wild
sort of expression. All at once the blood
dropped out of her cheeks as the mercury
drops from a broken barometer-tube, and
she melted away from her seat like an image
of snow; a slung-shot could not have brought
her down better. God forgive me!
After this little episode, I continued, to
some few who remained balancing teaspoons
on the edges of cups, twirling knives, or
tilting upon the hind legs of their chairs
until their heads reached the wall, where
they left gratuitous advertisements of
various popular cosmetics.]
When a person is suddenly thrust into any
strange, new position of trial, he finds the
place fits him as if he had been measured for
it. He has committed a great crime, for
instance, and is sent to the State Prison.
The traditions, prescriptions, limitations,
privileges, all the sharp conditions of his
new life, stamp themselves upon his con-
sciousness as the signet on soft wax; — a
single pressure is enough. Let me strengthen
the image a little. Did you ever happen
to see that most soft-spoken and velvet-
handed steam-engine at the Mint.'' The
smooth piston slides backward and forward
as a lady might slip her delicate finger in and
out of a ring. The engine lays one of its
fingers calmly, but firmly, upon a bit of
metal; it is a coin now, and will remember
that touch, and tell a new race about it,
when the date upon it is crusted over with
twenty centuries. So it is that a great
silent-moving misery puts a new stamp on
us in an hour or a moment, — as sharp an
impression as if it had taken half a lifetime
to engrave it.
It is awful to be in the hands of the whole-
sale professional dealers in misfortune;
undertakers and jailers magnetize you in a
moment, and you pass out of the individual
life you were living into the rhythmical
movements of their horrible machinery. Do
the worst thing you can, or suflPer the worst
that can be thought of, you find yourself
in a category of humanity that stretches
back as far as Cain, and with an expert at
your elbow who has studied your case all
out beforehand, and is waiting for you with
his implements of hemp or mahogany. I
believe, if a man were to be burned in any
of our cities to-morrow for heresy, there
would be found a master of ceremonies who
knew just how many fagots were necessary,
and the best way of arranging the whole
matter.!
1 Accidents are liable to happen if no thoroughly
trained expert happens to be present. When Catharine
Hays was burnt at Tyburn, in 1726, the officiating
artist scorched his own hands, and the whole business
was awkwardly managed for want of practical familiar-
ity with the process. We have still remaining a guide
to direct us in one important part of the arrangements.
Bishop Hooper was burned at Gloucester, England, in
the year 1555. A few years ago, in making certain
excavations, the charred stump of the stake to which
he was bound was discovered. An account of the
interesting ceremony, so important in ecclesiastical
history — the argumentum ad ignem, with a photo-
graph of the half-burned stick of timber was sent me
by my friend, Mr. John Bellows, of Gloucester, a
zealous antiquarian, widely known by his wonderful
miniature French dictionary, one of the scholarly
printers and publishers who honor the calling of Aldus
G}6
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
— So we have not won the (Goodwood cup;
au contrairey we were a "bad fiftli," if not
worse than that; and trying it again, and
the third time, has not yet bettered the
matter. Now I am as patriotic as any of
my fellow-citizens, — too patriotic in fact, for
I have got into hot water by loving too much
of my country; in short, if any man, whose
fighting weight is not more than eight stone
four pounds, disputes it, I am ready to
discuss the point with him. I should have
gloried to see the stars and stripes in front
at the finish. I love my country and I love
horses. Stubbs's old mezzotint of Eclipse
hangs over my desk, and Herring's portrait
of Plenipotentiary — whom I saw run at
Epsom — over my fireplace. Did I not elope
from school to see Revenge, and Prospect,
and Little John, and Peacemaker run over
the race-course where now yon suburban
village flourishes, in the year eighteen hun-
dred and ever-so-few .? Though I never
owned a horse, have I not been the proprietor
of six equine females, of which one was the
prettiest little "Morgin" that ever stepped?
Listen, then, to an opinion I have often
expressed long before this venture of ours in
England. Horse-racing is not a republican
institution; \\oxse-trotting is. Only very rich
persons can keep race-horses, and everybody
knows they are kept mainly as gambling
implements. All that matter about blood
and speed we won't discuss; we understand
all that; useful, very, — of course, — great ob-
ligations to the Godolphin ''Arabian," and
the rest. I say racing-horses are essentially
gambling implements, as much as roulette
tables. Now, I am not preaching at this
moment; I may read you one of my sermons
some other morning; but I maintain that
gambling, on the great scale, is not republi-
can. It belongs to two phases of society, —
a cankered over-civilization, such as exists
in rich aristocracies, and the reckless life of
borderers and adventurers, or the semi-
barbarism of a civilization resolved into its
primitive elements. Real Republicanism is
stern and severe; its essence is not in forms
of government, but in the omnipotence of
public opinion which grows out of it. This
public opinion cannot prevent gambling
and the Elzevirs. The stake was big enough to chain
the whole Bench of Bishops to as fast as the Athanasian
creed still holds them. (Holmes's note.)
with dice or stocks, but it can and docs com-
pel it to keep comparatively quiet. But
horse-racing is the most public way of
gambling, and with all its immense attrac-
tions to the sense and the feelings, — to which
I plead very susceptible, — the disguise is
too thin that covers it, and everybody knows
what it means. Its supporters are the
Southern gentry, — fine fellows, no doubt,
but not republicans exactly, as we under-
stand the term, — a few Northern million-
aires more or less thoroughly millioned,
who do not represent the real people, and the
mob of sporting men, the best of whom are
commonly idlers, and the worst very bad
neighbors to have near one in a crowd, or to
meet in a dark alley. In England, on the
other hand, with its aristocratic institutions,
racing is a natural growth enough; the
passion for it spreads downwards through
all classes, from the Queen to the coster-
monger. London is like a shelled corn-cob
on the Derby day, and there is not a clerk
who could raise the money to hire a saddle
with an old hack under it that can sit down
on his office-stool the next day without
wincing.
Now just compare the racer with the
trotter for a moment. The racer is inci-
dentally useful, but essentially something to
bet upon, as much as the thimble-rigger's
"little joker." The trotter is essentially and
daily useful, and only incidentally a tool for
sporting men.
What better reason do you want for the
fact that the racer is most cultivated and
reaches his greatest perfection in England,
and that the trotting horses of America beat
the world.'* And why should we have ex-
pected that the pick — if it was the pick — of
our few and far-between racing stables
should beat the pick of England and France.'*
Throw over the fallacious time-test, and
there was nothing to show for it but a
natural kind of patriotic feeling, which we all
have, with a thoroughly provincial conceit,
which some of us must plead guilty to.
We may beat yet.^ As an American, I
1 We have beaten in many races in England since
this was written, and at last carried off the blue ribbon
of the turf at Epsom. But up to the present time
trotting matches and baseball are distinctively Ameri-
can, as contrasted with running races and cricket,
which belong, as of right, to England. The wonderful
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE
637
hope we shall. As a moralist and occasional
sermonizer, I am not so anxious about it.
Wherever the trotting horse goes, he carries
in his train brisk omnibuses, lively bakers'
carts, and therefore hot rolls, the jolly
butcher's wagon, the cheerful gig, the
wholesome afternoon drive with wife and
child, — all the forms of moral excellence,
except truth, which does not agree with any
kind of horse-flesh. The racer brings with
him gambling, cursing, swearing, drinking,
and a distaste for mob-caps and the middle-
aged virtues.
And by the way, let me beg you not to call
a trotting match a race, and not to speak
of a "thoroughbred'* as a "blooded" horse,
unless he has been recently phlebotomized.
I consent to your saying "blood horse," if
you like. Also, if, next year, we send out
Posterior and Posterioress, the winners of
the great national four-mile race in 7:183^,
and they happen to get beaten, pay your
bets, and behave like men and gentlemen
about it, if you know how.
[I felt a great deal better after blowing off
the ill-temper condensed in the above para-
graph. To brag little, — to show well, — to
crow gently, if in luck, — to pay up, to own
up, and to shut up, if beaten, are the virtues
of a sporting man, and I can't say that I
think we have shown them in any great
perfection of late.]
— Apropos of horses. Do you know how
important good jockeying is to authors?
Judicious management; letting the public
see your animal just enough, and not too
much; holding him up hard when the market
is too full of him; letting him out at just the
right buying intervals; always gently feeling
his mouth; never slacking and never jerking
the rein; — this is what I mean by jockeying.
effects of breeding and training in a particular direc-
tion are shown in the records of the trotting horse. In
1844 Lady Suffolk trotted a mile in 2: 26>2> which
was, I think, the fastest time to that date. In 1859
Flora Temple's time at Kalamazoo — I remember Mr.
Emerson surprised me once by correcting my error of a
quarter of a second in mentioning it — was 2: igH-
Dexter in 1867 brought the figure down to 2: ly^i-
There is now a whole class of horses that can trot under
2: 20, and in 1881 Maud S. distanced all previous
records with 2: io>^. Many of our best running
horses go to England. Racing in distinction from
trotting, I think, attracts less attention in this country
now than in the days of American Eclipse and Henry.
(Holmes's note.)
— When an author has a number of books
out a cunning hand will keep them all spin-
ning, as Signor Blitz does his dinner-plates;
fetching each one up, as it begins to "wab-
ble," by an advertisement, a puff, or a
quotation.
— Whenever the extracts from a living
writer begin to multiply fast in the papers,
without obvious reason, there is a new book
or a new edition coming. The extracts are
ground-bait.
— Literary life is full of curious phe-
nomena. I don't know that there is anything
more noticeable than what we may call
conventional reputations. There is a tacit
understanding in every community of men
of letters that they will not disturb the popu-
lar fallacy respecting this or that electro-
gilded celebrity. There are various reasons
for this forbearance: one is old; one is rich;
one is good-natured; one is such a favorite
with the pit that it would not be safe to hiss
him from the manager's box. The venerable
augurs of the literary or scientific temple may
smile faintly when one of the tribe is men-
tioned; but the farce is in general kept up as
well as the Chinese comic scene of entreating
and imploring a man to stay with you, with
the implied compact between you that he
shall by no means think of doing it. A poor
wretch he must be who would wantonly sit
down on one of these bandbox reputations.
A Prince-Rupert's-drop, which is a tear of
unannealed glass, lasts indefinitely, if you
keep it from meddling hands; but break
its tail off, and it explodes and resolves itself
into powder. These celebrities I speak of are
the Prince-Rupert's-drops of the learned and
polite world. See how the papers treat them !
What an array of pleasant kaleidoscopic
phrases, which can be arranged in ever so
many charming patterns, is at their service!
How kind the "Critical Notices" — where
small authorship comes to pick up chips of
praise, fragrant, sugary, and sappy — always
are to them! Well, life would be nothing
without paper-credit and other fictions; so
let them pass current. Don't steal their
chips; don't puncture their swimming-
bladders; don't come down on their paste-
board boxes; don't break the ends of their
brittle and unstable reputations, you fellows
who all feel sure that your names will be
household words a thousand years from now.
638
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
"A thousand 3'ears is a good while," said
the old gentleman who sits opposite,
thoughtfully.
— Where have I been for the last three or
four days? Down at the Island,^ deer-
shooting. — How many did I bag? I brought
home one buck shot. — The Lsland is where?
No matter. It is the most splendid domain
that any man looks upon in these latitudes.
Blue sea around it, and running up into its
heart, so that the little boat slumbers like a
baby in lap, while the tall ships are stripping
naked to fight the hurricane outside, and
storm-stay-sails banging and flying in rib-
bons. Trees, in stretches of miles; beeches,
oaks, most numerous; — many of them hung
with moss, looking like bearded Druids;
some coiled in the clasp of huge, dark-
stemmed grape-vines. Open patches where
the sun gets in and goes to sleep, and the
winds come so finely sifted that they are
as soft as swan's-down. Rocks scattered
about, — Stonehenge-like monoliths. Fresh-
water lakes; one of them, Mary's lake,
crystal-clear, full of flashing pickerel lying
under the lily-pads like tigers in the jungle.
Six pounds of ditto killed one morning for
breakfast. Ego fecit.
The divinity-student looked as if he would
like to question my Latin. No sir, I said, —
you need not trouble yourself. There is a
higher law in grammar not to be put down by
Andrews and Stoddard. Then I went on.
Such hospitality as that island has seen
there has not been the like of in these our
New England sovereignties. There is noth-
ing in the shape of kindness and courtesy
that can make life beautiful, which has not
found its home in that ocean-principality. It
has welcomed all who were worthy of wel-
come, from the pale clergyman who came to
breathe the sea-air with its medicinal salt
and iodine, to the great statesman who
turned his back on the affairs of empire, and
smoothed his Olympian forehead, and
flashed his white teeth in merriment over the
long table, where his wit was the keenest and
his story the best.
1 The beautifi'l island referred to is Naushon, the
largest of a group lying between Buzzard's Bay and the
Vineyard Sound, south of the mainland of Massa-
chusetts. It is the noblest domain in New England,
and the present Lord of the Manor is worthy of suc-
ceeding " the Governor " of blessed memory. (Holmes's
note.)
[I don't believe any man ever talked like
that in this world. I don't believe / talked
just so; but the fact is, in reporting one's
conversation, one cannot help Blair-'ing it
up more or less, ironing out crumpled para-
graphs, starching limp ones, and crimping
and plaiting a little sometimes; it is as
natural as prinking at the looking-glass.]
— How can a man help writing poetry in
such a place? Everybody does write poetry
that goes there. In the state archives, kept
in the library of the Lord of the Isle, are
whole volumes of unpublished verse, —
some by well-known hands, and others quite
as good, by the last people you would think
of as versifiers, — men who could pension off
all the genuine poets in the country, and
buy ten acres of Boston common, if it was
for sale, with what they had left. Of course
I had to write my little copy of verses with
the rest; here it is, if you will hear me read
It. When the sun is in the west, vessels
sailing in an easterly direction look bright or
dark to one who observes them from the
north or south, according to the tack they
are sailing upon. Watching them from one
of the windows of the great mansion, I saw
these perpetual changes, and moralized
thus : — i
SUN AND SHADOW
As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of ^
green.
To the billows of foam-crested blue.
Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen,
Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue:
Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the
spray
As the chaff in the stroke of the flail;
Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her
way,
The sun gleaming bright on her sail.
Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to
shun, —
Of breakers that whiten and roar; 10
How little he cares, if in shadow or sun
They see him that gaze from the shore!
He looks to the beacon that looms from the
reef.
To the rock that is under his lee.
As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted
leaf.
O'er the gulfs of the desolate sea.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE HREAKFAST-TABLE
639
Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves
Where life and its ventures are laid,
The dreamers who gaze while we battle the
waves
May see us in sunshine or shade; 20
Yet true to our course, though our shadow
grow dark,
We'll trim our broad sail as before,
And stand by the rudder that governs the
bark.
Nor ask how we look from the shore!
— Insanity is often the logic of an accu-
rate mind overtasked. Good mental ma-
chinery ought to break its own wheels and
levers, if anything is thrust among them
suddenly which tends to stop them or re-
verse their motion. A weak mind does not
accumulate force enough to hurt itself;
stupidity often saves a man from going mad.
We frequently see persons in insane hospi-
tals, sent there in consequence of what are
called religious mental disturbances. I con-
fess that I think better of them than of many
who hold the same notions, and keep their
wits and appear to enjoy life very well, out-
side of the asylums. Any decent person
ought to go mad, if he really holds such or
such opinions. It is very much to his dis-
credit in every point of view, if he does not.
What is the use of my saying what some of
these opinions are.^ Perhaps more than one
of you hold such as I should think ought to
send you straight over to Somerville, if you
have any logic in your heads or any human
feeling in your hearts. Anything that is
brutal, cruel, heathenish, that makes life
hopeless for the most of mankind and per-
haps for entire races, — anything that as-
sumes the necessity of the extermination of
instincts which were given to be regulated, —
no matter by what name you call it, — no
matter whether a fakir, or a monk, or a
deacon believes it, — if received, ought to
produce insanity in every well-regulated
mind. That condition becomes a normal
one, under the circumstances. I am very
much ashamed of some people for retaining
their reason, when they know perfectly well
that if they were not the most stupid or the
most selfish of human beings, they would
become non-compotes at once.
[Nobody understood this but the theo-
logical student and the schoolmistress. They
looked intelligently at each other; but
whether they were thinking about my para-
dox or not, I am not clear. — It would be
natural enough. Stranger things have
happened. Love and Death enter boarding-
houses without asking the price of board,
or whether there is room for them. Alas!
these young people are poor and pallid!
Love should be both rich and rosy, but must
be either rich or rosy. Talk about military
duty! What is that to the warfare of a
married maid-of-all-work, with the title of
mistress, and an American female constitu-
tion, which collapses just in the middle third
of life, and comes out vulcanized India-rub-
ber, if it happened to live through the
period when health and strength are most
wanted?]
— Have I ever acted in private theatricals?
Often. I have played the part of the "Poor
Gentleman," before a great many audi-
ences,— more, I trust, than I shall ever face
again. I did not wear a stage-costume, nor
a wig, nor moustaches of burnt cork, but I
was placarded and announced as a public
performer, and at the proper hour I came
forward with the ballet-dancer's smile upon
my countenance, and made my bow and
acted my part. I have seen my name stuck
up in letters so big that I was ashamed to
show myself in the place by daylight. I
have gone to a town with a sober literary
essay in my pocket, and seen myself every-
where announced as the most desperate of
buffos, — one who was obliged to restrain
himself in the full exercise of his powers,
from prudential considerations. I have been
through as many hardships as Ulysses, in
the pursuit of my histrionic vocation. I
have traveled in cars until the conductors all
knew me like a brother. I have run off the
rails, and stuck all night in snow-drifts, and
sat behind females that would have the
window open when one could not wink
without his eyelids freezing together. Per-
haps I shall give you some of my experiences
one of these days; — I will not now, for I have
something else for you.
Private theatricals, as I have figured in
them in country lyceum-halls, are one
thing, — and private theatricals, as they may
be seen in certain gilded and frescoed saloons
of our metropolis, are another. Yes, it is
pleasant to see real gentlemen and ladies.
640
OLIVER WKNDKLL HOLMES
who do not think it necessary to mouth, and
rant, and stride, Hke most of our stage heroes
and heroines, in the characters which show
ofF their graces and talents; most of all to
see a fresh, unrouged, unspoiled, highbred
young maiden, with a lithe figure, and a
pleasant voice, acting in those love-dramas
which make us young again to look upon,
when real youth and beauty will play them
for us.
— Of course I wrote the prologue I was
asked to write. I did not see the play,
though. I knew there was a young lady in
it, and that somebody was in love with her,
and she was in love with him, and some-
body (an old tutor, I believe) wanted to
interfere, and, very naturally, the young
lady was too sharp for him. The play of
course ends charmingly; there is a general
reconciliation, and all concerned form a line
and take each other's hands, as people
always do after they have made up their
quarrels, — and then the curtain falls,— if it
does not stick, as it commonly does at
private theatrical exhibitions, in which case a
boy is detailed to pull it down, which he
does, blushing violently.
Now, then, for my prologue. I am not
going to change my caesuras and cadences
for anybody; so if you do not like the heroic,
or iambic trimeter brachy-catalectic, you
had better not wait to hear it.
THIS IS IT
A Prologue? Well, of course the ladies
know; —
I have my doubts. No matter, — here we go!
What is a prologue.'' Let our Tutor teach:
Pro means beforehand; logus stands for
speech.
*Tis like the harper's prelude on the strings,
The prima donna's courtesy ere she sings.
**The world's a stage," — as Shakespeare said,
one day;
The stage a world — was what he meant to
say.
The outside world's a blunder, that is clear;
The real world that Nature meant is here. 10
Here every foundling finds its lost mamma;
Each rogue, repentant, melts his stern papa;
Misers relent, the spendthrift's debts are
paid.
The cheats are taken in the traps they laid;
One after one the troubles all are past
Till the fifth act comes right side up at last,
When the young couple, old folks, rogues,
and all.
Join hands, so happy at the curtain's fall.
— Here suffering virtue ever finds relief, '
And black-browed ruffians always come to
grief, 20
— When the lorn damsel, with a frantic
speech.
And cheeks as hueless as a brandy-peach,
Cries, "Help, kyind Heaven!" and drops
upon her knees
On the green — baize, — beneath the (canvas)
trees, — ,
See to her side avenging Valor fly: —
*'Ha! Villain! Draw! Now, Terraitorr, yield
or die!"
— When the poor hero flounders in despair,
Some dear lost uncle turns up millionaire, —
Clasps the young scapegrace with paternal
joy>
Sobs on his neck, "My hoy! My boy!! MY
BOY!!!" 30
Ours, then, sweet friends, the real world
to-night
Of love that conquers in disaster's spite.
Ladies, attend! While woeful cares and doubt
Wrong the soft passion in the world without.
Though fortune scowl, though prudence
interfere,
One thing is certain: Love will triumph herel
Lords of creation, whom your ladies rule, —
The world's great masters, when you're out
of school, —
Learn the brief moral of our evening's play:
Man has his will, — but woman has her
way!
40
While man's dull spirit toils in smoke and
fire,
Woman's swift instinct threads the electric
wire, —
The magic bracelet stretched beneath the
waves
Beats the black giant with his score of
slaves.
All earthly powers confess your sovereign art
But that one rebel, — woman's willful heart.
All foes you master; but a woman's wit
Lets daylight through you ere you know
you're hit.
So, just to picture what her art can do,
Hear an old story, made as good as new. 50
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE
641
Rudolph, professor of the headsman's trade,
Alike was famous for his arm and blade.
One day a prisoner Justice had to kill
Knelt at the block to test the artist's skill.
Bare-armed, swart-visaged, gaunt, and
shaggy-browed,
Rudolph the headsman rose above the
crowd.
His falchion lightened with a sudden gleam,
As the pike's armor flashes in the stream.
He sheathed his blade; he turned as if to go;
The victim knelt, still waiting for the
blow. 60
"Why strikest not? Perform thy murderous
act.
The prisoner said. (His voice was slightly
cracked.)
"Friend, I have struck," the artist straight
replied;
"Wait but one moment, and yourself
decide."
He held his snufF-box, — "Now then, if you
please!"
The prisoner sniffed, and, with a crashing
sneeze,
Off his head tumbled, — bowled along the
floor, —
Bounced down the steps; — the prisoner
said no more!
Woman! thy falchion is a glittering eye;
If death lurks in it, oh, how sweet to die! 70
Thou takest hearts as Rudolph took the
head;
We die with love, and never dream we're
dead!
The prologue went oflF very well, as I hear.
No alterations were suggested by the lady
to whom it was sent, so far as I know.
Sometimes people criticize the poems one
sends them, and suggest all sorts of improve-
ments.1 Who was that silly body that
wanted Burns to alter "Scots wha hae," so
as to lengthen the last line, thus? —
"Edward!** Chains and slavery.
1 I remember being asked by a celebrated man of
letters to let him look over an early, but somewhat
elaborate poem of mine. He read the manuscript
and suggested the change of one word, which I adopted
in deference to his opinion. The emendation was any-
thing but an improvement, and in later editions the
passage reads as when first-written. (Holmes's note.)
Here is a little poem I sent a short time
since to a committee for a certain celebra-
tion. I understood that it was to be a
festive and convivial occasion, and ordered
myself accordingly. It seems the president
of the day was what is called a "teetotaler."
I received a note from him in the following
words, containing the copy subjoined, with
the emendations annexed to it.
Dear Sir, — your poem gives good satisfaction to
the committee. The sentiments expressed with
reference to liquor are not, however, those gener-
ally entertained by this community. I have
therefore consulted the clergyman of this place,
who has made some slight changes, which he
thinks will remove all objections, and keep the
valuable portions of the poem. Please to inform
me of your charge for said poem. Our means
are limited, etc., etc., etc.
Yours with respect.
Here It is, — with the slight alterations.^
Come! fill a fresh bumper, — for why should
we go
logwood
While the nectar still reddens our cups as,
they flow!
decoction
Four out the rich juices still bright with the
sun,
dye-stuff
Till o*er the brimmed crystal the *«E«fr shall
run.
their life-dews
half-ripened apples
The purple globed cl^^i^
have bled;
taste sugar of
How sweet is the breat4^ of the fragrance
lead
rank poisons
wines ! ! !
For summer's laot roses lie hid in the-wtnea-
stable-boys
That were garnered by maidens who laughed
smoking long-nines.
through the vincst
2 1 recollect a British criticism of the poem "with
the slight alterations," in which the writer was quite
indignant at the treatment my convivial song had
received. No committee, he thought, would dare to
treat a Scotch author in that way. I could not help
being reminded of Sydney Smith, and the surgical
operation he proposed, in order to get a pleasantry
into the head of a North Briton. (Holmes's note.)
P
642
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
scowl
howl
scoff
Then a smile, and a glast;, and a tQast> and sL
strychnine and whiskey, and ratsbane and beer
For all the good wino, and Vi^o've somo of it
In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall,
Down, down, with the tyrant that masters us all!
Long live the gay servant that laughs for ug
The company said I had been shabbily
treated, and advised me to charge the com-
mittee double, — which I did. But as I never
got my pay, I don't know that it made much
difference. I am a very particular person
about having all I write printed as I write it.
I require to see a proof, a revise, a re-revise,
and a double re-revise, or fourth-proof
rectified impression of all my productions,
especially verse. A misprint kills a sensitive
author. An intentional change of his text
murders him. No wonder so many poets die
young
I have nothing more to report at this time,
except two pieces of advice I gave to the
young women at table. One relates to a
vulgarism of language, which I grieve to say
is sometimes heard even from female lips.
The other is of more serious purport, and
applies to such as contemplate a change of
condition, — matrimony, in fact.
— The woman who *'calc'lates" is lost.
— Put not your trust in money, but put
your money in trust.
XI
[The company looked a little flustered one
morning when I came in, — so much so, that
I inquired of my neighbor, the divinity-
student, what had been going on. It ap-
pears that the young fellow whom they call
John had taken advantage of my being a
little late (I having been rather longer than
usual dressing that morning) to circulate
several questions involving a quibble or
play upon w^ords, — in short, containing that
indignity to the human understanding, con-
demned in the passages from the distin-
guished moralist of the last century and the
illustrious historian of the present, which I
cited on a former occasion, and known as a
pini. After breakfast, one of the boarders
handed me a small roll of paper containing
some of the questions and their answers. I
subjoin two or three of them, to show what
a tendency there is to frivolity and meaning-
less talk in young persons of a certain sort,
when not restramed by the presence of more
reflective natures. — It was asked, "Why
tertian and quartan fevers were like certain
short-lived insects." Some interesting physi-
ological relation would be naturally sug-
gested. The inquirer blushes to find that
the answer is in the paltry equivocation,
that they skip a day or two. — "Why an
Englishman must go to the Continent to
weaken his grog or punch." The answer
proves to have no relation whatever to the
temperance-movement, as no better reason
is given than that island- (or, as it is absurdly
written. He and) water won't mix. — But
when I came to the next question and its
answer, I felt that patience ceased to be a
virtue. "Why an onion is like a piano" is a
query that a person of sensibility would be
slow to propose; but that in an educated
community an individual could be found to
answer it in these words, — "Because it
smell odious," quasi, it's melodious, — is not
credible, but too true. I can show you the
paper.
Dear reader, I beg your pardon for repeat-
ing such things. I know most conversations
reported in books are altogether above such
trivial details, but folly will come up at every
table as surely as purslain and chickweed
and sorrel will come up in gardens. This
young fellow ought to have talked philoso-
phy, I know perfectly well; but he didn't, —
he made jokes.]
I am w^illing, — I said, — to exercise your
ingenuity in a rational and contemplative
manner. — No, I do not proscribe certain
forms of philo.sophical speculation which
involve an approach to the absurd or the
ludicrous, such as you may find, for example,
in the folio of the Reverend Father Thomas
Sanchez, in his famous Disputations, De
Sancto Matrimonio. I will therefore turn
this levity of yours to profit by reading you
a rhymed problem, wrought out by my
friend the Professor.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE
643
THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE:
OR THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS-
SHAY"
A LOGICAL STORY
Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss-
shay,
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it — ah, but stay,
ril tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits.
Frightening people out of their wits, —
Have you ever heard of that, I say?
Seventeen hundred and fifty-five,
Georgius Secundus was then alive, — 10
Snuffy old drone from the German hive;
That was the year when Lisbon-town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down,
And Braddock's army was done so brown,
Left without a scalp to its crown.
It was on the terrible earthquake-day
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss-shay.
Now in building of chaises, I tell you what.
There is always somewhere a weakest spot, —
In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill, 20
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill,
In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, — lurking still.
Find it somewhere you must and will, —
Above or below, or within or without, —
And that's the reason, beyond a doubt,
A chaise breaks down, but doesn't wear out.
But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do.
With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell yeou,")
He would build one shay to beat the taown
'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun'; 30
It should be so built that it couldn break
daown,
— "Fur," said the Deacon, "'t's mighty plain
Thut the weakes' place -mus' stan' the
strain;
'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain.
Is only jest
T' make that place uz strong uz the rest."
So the Deacon inquired of the village folk
Where he could find the strongest oak.
That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke, —
That was for spokes and floor and sills; 40
He sent for lancewood to make the thills;
The crossbars were ash, from the straightest
trees,
The panels of white-wood, that cuts like
cheese.
But lasts like iron for things like these;
The hubs of logs from the "Settler's
ellum," —
Last of its timber, — they couldn't sell 'em,
Never an ax had seen their chips.
And the wedges flew from between their lips,
Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips;
Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, 50
Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too.
Steel of the finest, bright and blue;
Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide;
Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide
Found in the pit when the tanner died.
That was the way he "put her through." —
"There!" said the Deacon, "naow she'll
dew."
Do! I tell you, I rather guess
She was a wonder, and nothing less!
Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, 60
Deacon and deaconess dropped away.
Children and grand-children — where were
they?
But there stood the stout old one-hoss-shay
As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day!
Eighteen hundred; — it came and found
The Deacon's Masterpiece strong and sound.
Eighteen hundred increased by ten; —
"Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then.
Eighteen hundred and twenty came; —
Running as usual; much the same. 70
Thirty and forty at last arrive.
And then come fifty, and fifty-five.
Little of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year
Without both feeling and looking queer.
In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth.
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
(This is a moral that runs at large;
Take it. — You're welcome. — No extra
charge.)
First of November, — The Earthquake-
day. — 80
There are traces of age in the one-hoss-shay,
A general flavor of mild decay.
But nothing local, as one may say.
644
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
There couldn't be, — for the Deacon's art
Had made it so hkc in every part
That there wasn't a chance for one to start.
For the wheels were just as strong as the
thills,
And the floor was just as strong as the sills,
And the panels just as strong as the floor,
And the whippletree neither less nor more, 90
And the back-crossbar as strong as the
fore,
And spring and axle and hub encore.
And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt
In another hour it will be zvorn out!
First of November, 'Fifty-five!
This morning the parson takes a drive.
Now, small boys, get out of the way!
Here comes the wonderful one-hoss-shay,
Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.
"Huddup!" said the parson. — OflF went
they. 100
The parson was working his Sunday's text, —
Had got to fifthly y and stopped perplexed
At what the — Moses — was coming next.
All at once the horse stood still,
Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill.
— First a shiver, and then a thrill,
Then something decidedly like a spill, —
And the parson was sitting upon a rock.
At half-past nine by the meet'n'-house
clock, —
Just the hour of the Earthquake shock! no
— What do you think the parson found,
When he got up and stared around?
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound.
As it it had been to the mill and ground.
You see, of course, if you're not a dunce,
How it went to pieces all at once, —
All at once, and nothing first, —
Just as bubbles do when they burst.
End of the wonderful one-hoss-shay.
Logic is logic. That's all I say.
120
— I think there is one habit, — I said to our
company a day or two afterwards, — worse
than that of punning. It is the gradual sub-
stitution of cant or slang terms for words
which truly characterize their objects. I
have known several very genteel idiots whose
whole vocabulary had deliquesced into some
half dozen expressions. All things fell into
one of two great categories, — Jast or slozv.
Man's chief end was to be a brick. When the
great calamities of life overtook their friends,
these last were spoken of as being a good
deal cut up. Nine tenths of human existence
were summed up in the single word, hore.
These expressions come to be the algebraic
symbols of minds which have grown too weak
or indolent to discriminate. They are the
blank checks of intellectual bankruptcy; —
you may fill them up with what idea you
like; it makes no diflFerence, for there are
no funds in the treasury upon which they are
drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing smok-
ing-clubs are the places where these con-
versational fungi spring up most luxuriantly.
Don't think I undervalue the proper use and
application of a cant word or phrase. It
adds piquancy to conversation, as a mush-
room does to a sauce. But it is no better
than a toadstool, odious to the sense and
poisonous to the intellect, when it spawns
itself all over the talk of men and youths
capable of talking, as it sometimes does. As
we hear slang phraseology, it is commonly
the dish-water from the washings of English
dandyism, schoolboy or full-grown, wrung
out of a three-volume novel which had
sopped it up, or decanted from the pictured
urn of Mr. Verdant Green, and diluted to
suit the provincial climate.
— The young fellow called John spoke up
sharply and said, it was "rum" to hear me
*'pitchin' into fellers" for "goin' it in the
slang line," when I used all the flash words
myself just when I pleased.
— I replied with my usual forbearance. —
Certainly, to give up the algebraic symbol
because « or ^ is often a cover for ideal
nihility, would be unwise. I have heard a
child laboring to express a certain condition,
involving a hitherto undescribed sensation
(as it supposed), all of which could have
been sufl&ciently explained by the parti-
ciple— bored. I have seen a country-clergy-
man, with a one-story intellect and a one-
horse vocabulary, who has consumed his
valuable time (and mine) freely, in develop-
ing an opinion of a brother-minister's dis-
course which would have been abundantly
characterized by a peach-down-lipped sopho-
more in the one word — slow. Let us dis-
criminate, and be shy of absolute proscrip-
tion. I am omniverbivorous by nature and
training. Passing by such words as are
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TARLE
645
poisonous, I can swallow most others, and
chew such as I cannot swallow.
Dandies are not good for much, but they
are good for something. They invent or keep
in circulation those conversational blank
checks or counters just spoken of, which
intellectual capitalists may sometimes find
it worth their while to borrow of them.
They are useful, too, in keeping up the
standard of dress, which, but for them,
would deteriorate, and become, what some
old fools would have it, a matter of con-
venience, and not of taste and art. Yes, I
like dandies well enough, — on one condition.
"What is that, Sir.^" — said the divinity-
student.
That they have pluck. I find that lies
at the bottom of all true dandyism. A
little boy dressed up very fine, who puts his
finger in his mouth and takes to crying, if
other boys make fun of him, looks very
silly. But if he turns red in the face and
knotty in the fists, and makes an example of
the biggest of his assailants, throwing off
his fine Leghorn and his thickly-buttoned
jacket, if necessary, to consummate the act
of justice, his small toggery takes on the
splendors of the crested helmet that fright-
ened Astyanax. You remember that the
Duke said his dandy oflicers w^ere his best
officers. The "Sunday blood," the super-
superb sartorial equestrian of our annual
Fast-day, is not imposing or dangerous.
But such fellows as Brummel and D'Orsay
and Byron are not to be snubbed quite so
easily. Look out for "/a mai?i de fer sous le
gant de velours"^ (which I printed in English
the other day without quotation-marks,
thinking whether any scarahaus criticus^
would add this to his globe and roll in glory
with it into the newspapers, — which he
didn't do it, in the charming pleonasm of
the London language, and therefore I claim
the sole merit of exposing the same). A good
many powerful and dangerous people have
had a decided dash of dandyism about them.
There was Alcibiades, the "curled son of
Clinias," an accomplished young man, but
what would be called a " swell " in these days.
There was Aristoteles, a very distinguished
writer, of whom you have heard, — a philoso-
pher, in short, whom it took centuries to
iThe iron hand beneath the velvet glove.
« Critical beetle.
learn, centuries to unlearn, and is now going
to take a generation or more to learn over
again. Regular dandy he was. So was
Marcus Antonius; and though he lost his
game, he played for big stakes, and it wasn't
his dandyism that spoiled his chance.
Petrarca was not to be despised as a scholar
or a poet, but he was one of the same sort.
So was Sir Humphrey Davy; so was Lord
Palmerston, formerly, if I am not forgetful.
Yes, — a dandy is good for something as such;
and dandies such as I was just speaking of
have rocked this planet like a cradle, — aye,
and left it swinging to this day. — Still, if I
were you, I wouldn't go to the tailor's, on
the strength of these remarks, and run up a
long bill which will render pockets a super-
fluity in your next suit. Elegans *' nasci-
tur, 710 n Jit." A man is born a dandy, as he
is born a poet. There are heads that can't
wear hats; there are necks that can't fit
cravats; there are jaws that can't fill out
collars — (Willis touched this last point in
one of his earlier ambrotypes, if I remember
rightly); there are tournures nothing can
humanize, and movements nothing can sub-
due to the gracious suavity or elegant languor
or stately serenity w^hich belong to different
styles of dandyism.
We are forming an aristocracy, as you may
observe, in this country, — not a gratid-Deif
nor a jure-divino one, — but a de-facto upper
stratum of being, which floats over the turbid
waves of common life like the iridescent
film you may have seen spreading over the
water about our wharves, — very splendid,
though its origin may have been tar, tallow,
train-oil, or other such unctuous com-
modities. I say, then, we are forming an
aristocracy; and, transitory as its indi-
vidual life often is, it maintains itself
tolerably, as a whole. Of course money is
its corner-stone. But now observe this.
Money kept for two or three generations
transforms a race, — I don't mean merely in
manners and hereditary culture, but in
blood and bone. Money buys air and sun-
shine, in which children grow up more
kindly, of course, than in close, back streets;
it buys country places to give them happy
and healthy summers, good nursing, good
doctoring, and the best cuts of beef and
mutton. When the spring-chickens come
to market 1 beg your pardon, — that is
646
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
not what I was goino; to speak of. As the
yoiinp; females of eacli successive season
come on, the finest specimens among them,
other things being equal, are apt to attract
those who can afford the expensive luxury
of beauty. The physical character of the
next generation rises in consequence. It is
plain that certain families have in this way
acquired an elevated type of face and figure,
and that in a small circle of city-connections
one may sometimes find models of both
sexes which one of the rural counties would
find it hard to match from all its townships
put together. Because there is a good deal
of running down, of degeneration and waste
of life, among the richer classes, you must
not overlook the equally obvious fact I have
just spoken of, — which in one or two genera-
tions more will be, I think, much more
patent than just now.
The weak point in our chryso-aristocracy
is the same I have alluded to in connection
with cheap dandyism. Its thorough man-
hood, its high-caste gallantry, are not so
manifest as the plate-glass of its windows
and the more or less legitimate heraldry of
its coach-panels. It is very curious to ob-
serve of how small account military folks
are held among our Northern people. Our
young men must gild their spurs, but they
need not win them. The equal division of
property keeps the younger sons of rich
people above the necessity of military ser-
vice. Thus the army loses an element of
refinement, and the moneyed upper class
forgets what it is to count heroism among
its virtues. Still, I don't believe in any
aristocracy without pluck as its backbone.
Ours may show it when the time comes if it
ever does come.^
— These United States furnish the greatest
market for intellectual green fruit of all the
places in the world. I think so, at any rate.
The demand for intellectual labor is so
enormous and the market so far from nice,
that young talent is apt to fare like unripe
gooseberries, — get plucked to make a fool
of. Think of a country which buys eighty
1 The marble tablets and memorial windows in our
churches and monumental buildings bear evidence as
to whether the young men of favored social position
proved worthy of their privileges or not during the
four years of trial which left us a nation. (Holmes's
note.)
thousand copies of the Proverbial Phi-
losophy, while the author's admiring
countrymen have been buying twelve thou-
sand! How can one let his fruit hang in the
sun until it gets fully ripe, while there are
eighty thousand such hungry mouths ready
to swallow it and proclaim its praises.?
Consequently, there never was such a collec-
tion of crude pippins and half-grown wind-
falls as our native literature displays among
its fruits. There are literary green-groceries
at every corner, which will buy anything,
from a button-pear to a pine-apple. It
takes a long apprenticeship to train a whole
people to reading and writing. The tempta-
tion of money and fame is too great for
young people. Do I not remember that
glorious moment when the late Mr.
we won't say who, — editor of the we
won't say what, offered me the sum of fifty
cents per double-columned quarto page for
shaking my young boughs over his foolscap
apron? Was it not an intoxicating vision
of gold and glory.'' I should doubtless have
reveled in its wealth and splendor, but for
learning that the fifty cents was to be con-
sidered a rhetorical embellishment, and by
no means a literal expression of past fact or
present intention.
— Beware of making your moral staple
consist of the negative virtues. It is good to
abstain, and teach others to abstain, from
all that is sinful or hurtful. But making a
business of it leads to emaciation of charac-
ter, unless one feeds largely also on the more
nutritious diet of active sympathetic benevo-
lence.
— I don't believe one word of what you
are saying, — spoke up the angular female in
black bombazine.
I am sorry you disbelieve it. Madam, — I
said, and added softly to my next neigh-
bor,— but you prove it.
The young fellow sitting near me winked;
and the divinity-student said, in an under-
tone,— Optime dictum.
Your talking Latin, — said I, — reminds me
of an odd trick of one of my old tutors. He
read so much of that language, that his
English half turned into it. He got caught
in town, one hot summer, in pretty close
quarters, and wrote, or began to write, a
series of city pastorals. Eclogues he called
them, and meant to have published them
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE
647
by subscription. I remember some of his
verses, if you want to hear them. — You,
Sir (addressing myself to the divinity-
student), and all such as have been through
college, or what is the same thing, received
an honorary degree, will understand them
without a dictionary. The old man had a
great deal to say about "aestivation," as he
called it, in opposition, as one might say, to
hibernation. Intramural aestivation, or town-
life in summer, he would say, is a peculiar
form of suspended existence, or semi-
asphyxia. One wakes up from it about the
beginning of the last week in September.
This is what I remember of his poem: —
.ESTIVATION
^n Unpublished Poeniy by my late Latin Tutor
In candent ire the solar splendor flames;
The foles, languescent, pend from arid rames;
His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes,
And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes.
How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes,
Dorm on the herb with none to supervise,
Carp the suave berries from the crescent
vine,
And bibe the flow from longicaudate kine!
To me, alas! no verdurous visions come.
Save yon exiguous pool's conferva-scum, — 10
No concave vast repeats the tender hue
That laves my milk-jug with celestial blue!
Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine
shades!
EfFund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids!
Oh, might I vole to some umbrageous
clump, —
Depart, — be oflF, — excede, — evade, — erump !
— I have lived by the sea-shore and by the
mountains. — No, I am not going to say
which is best. The one where your place is
is the best for you. But this difference there
is: you can domesticate mountains, but the
sea is ferce natures. You may have a hut, or
know the owner of one, on the mountain-
side; you see a light half-way up its ascent in
the evening, and you know there is a home,
and you might share it. You have noted
certain trees, perhaps; you know the par-
ticular zone where the hemlocks look so
black in October, when the maples and
beeches have faded. All its reliefs and in-
taglios have electrotyped themselves in the
medallions that hang round the walls of
your memory's chamber. — The sea remem-
bers nothing. It is feline. It licks your
feet, — its huge flanks purr very pleasantly
for you; but it will crack your bones and eat
you, for all that, and wipe the crimsoned
foam from its jaws as if nothing had hap-
pened. The mountains give their lost chil-
dren berries and water; the sea mocks their
thirst and lets them die. The mountains
have a grand, stupid, lovable tranquillity;
the sea has a fascinating, treacherous in-
telligence. The mountains lie about like
huge ruminants, their broad backs awful to
look upon, but safe to handle. The sea
smooths its silver scales until you cannot
see their joints, — but their shining is that of
a snake's belly, after all. — In deeper sug-
gestiveness I find as great a difference. The
mountains dwarf mankind and foreshorten
the procession of its long generations. The
sea drowns out humanity and time; it has
no sympathy with either; for it belongs to
eternity, and of that it sings its monotonous
song forever and ever.
Yet I should love to have a little box by
the sea-shore. I should love to gaze out on
the wild feline element from a front window
of my own, just as I should love to look on a
caged panther, and see it stretch its shining
length, and then curl over and lap its
smooth sides, and by-and-by begin to lash
itself into rage and show its white teeth ana
spring at its bars, and howl the cry of its
mad, but, to me, harmless fury. — And then,
— to look at it with that inward eye, — who
does not love to shuffle off time and its con-
cerns, at intervals, — to forget who is Presi-
dent and who is Governor, what race he
belongs to, what language he speaks, which
golden-headed nail of the firmament his
particular planetary system is hung upon,
and listen to the great liquid metronome as
it beats its solemn measure, steadily swing-
ing when the solo or duet of human life
began, and to swing just as steadily after the
human chorus has died out and man is a
fossil on its shores.''
— What should decide one, in choosing a
summer residence.? — Constitution, first of
all. How much snow could you melt in an
648
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
hour, if you were planted in a hogshead of
it? Comfort is essential to enjoyment. All
sensitive people should remember that per-
sons in easy circumstances suffer much more
from cold in summer — that is, the warm half
of tile year — than in winter, or the other half.
You must cut your climate to your constitu-
tion, as much as your clothing to your shape.
After this, consult your taste and con-
venience. But if you would be happy in
Berkshire, you must carry mountains in
your brain; and if you would enjoy Nahant,
you must have an ocean in your soul.
Nature plays at dominos with you; you must
match her piece, or she will never give it
up to you.
— The schoolmistress said, in a rather
mischievous way, that she was afraid some
minds or souls would be a little crowded, if
they took in the Rocky Mountains or the
Atlantic.
Have you ever read the little book called
The Stars and the Earth? — said L —
Have you seen the Declaration of Inde-
pendence photographed in a surface that a
fly's foot would cover.'' The forms or con-
ditions of Time and Space, as Kant will tell
you, are nothing in themselves, — only our
way of looking at things. You are right, I
think, however, in recognizing the idea of
Space as being quite as applicable to minds as
to the outer world. Every man of reflection
is vaguely conscious of an imperfectly-
defined circle which is drawn about his
intellect. He has a perfectly clear sense
that the fragments of his intellectual circle
include the curves of many other minds of
which he is cognizant. He often recognizes
these as manifestly concentric with his own,
but of less radius. On the other hand, when
we find a portion of an arc on the outside of
our own, we say it intersects ours, but are
very slow to confess or to see that it circum-
scribes it. Every now and then a man's
mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation,
and never shrinks back to its former dimen-
sions. After looking at the Alps, I felt that
my mind had been stretched beyond the
limits of elasticity, and fitted so loosely on
my old ideas of space that I had to spread
these to fit it.
— If 1 thought 1 should ever see the
Alps! — said the schoolmistress.
Perhaps you will, some time or other, — I
said.
It is not very likely, — she answered. — I
have had one or two opportunities, but I had
rather be anything than governess in a rich
family.
[Proud, too, you little soft-voiced woman!
Well, I can't say I like you any the worse
for it. How long will school-keeping take
to kill you? Is it possible the poor thing
works with her needle, too? I don't like
those marks on the side of her forefinger.
Tableau. Chamouni. Mont Blanc in full
view. Figures in the foreground; two of
them standing apart; one of them a gentle-
man of oh, — ah, — yes! the other a lady
in a white cashmere, leaning on his shoulder.
— The ingenuous reader will understand that
this was an internal, private, personal, sub-
jective diorama, seen for one instant on the
background of my own consciousness, and
abolished into black nonentity by the first
question which recalled me to actual life,
as suddenly as if one of those iron shop-
blinds (which I always pass at dusk with a
shiver, expecting to stumble over some poor
but honest shop-boy's head, just taken off"
by its sudden and unexpected descent, and
left outside upon the sidewalk) had come
down in front of it "by the run."]
— Should you like to hear what moderate
wishes life brings one to at last? I used to
be very ambitious, — wasteful, extravagant,
and luxurious in all my fancies. Read too
much in the Arabian Nights. Must have
the lamp, — couldn't do without the ring.
Exercise every morning on the brazen horse.
Plump down into castles as full of little milk-
white princesses as a nest is of young
sparrows. All love me dearly at once. —
Charming idea of life, but too high-colored
for the reality. I have outgrown all this;
my tastes have become exceedingly primi-
tive,— almost, perhaps, ascetic. We carry
happiness into our condition, but must not
hope to find it there. I think you will be
willing to hear some lines which embody
the subdued and limited desires of my
maturity.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TARLE
649*
CONTENTMENT
"Man wants but little here below."
Little I ask; my wants are few;
I only wish a hut of stone
(A very plain brown stone will do),
That I may call my own; —
And close at hand is such a one,
In yonder street that fronts the sun.
Plain food is quite enough for me;
Three courses are as good as ten; —
If Nature can subsist on three.
Thank Heaven for three. Amen! 10
I always thought cold victual nice; —
My choice would be vanilla-ice.
I care not much for gold or land; —
Give me a mortgage here and there, —
Some good bank-stock, — some note of hand,
Or trifling railroad share; —
I only ask that Fortune send
A little more than I shall spend.
Honors are silly toys, I know.
And titles are but empty names; — 20
I would, perhapSy be Plenipo, —
But only near St. James; —
I'm very sure I should not care
To fill our Gubernator's chair.
Jewels are baubles; 'tis a sin
To care for such unfruitful things; —
One good-sized diamond in a pin, —
Some, not so large, in rings, —
A ruby and a pearl, or so.
Will do for me; — I laugh at show. 30
My dame should dress in cheap attire
(Good, heavy silks are never dear); —
I own perhaps I might desire
Some shawls of true cashmere, —
Some marrowy crapes of China silk,
Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk.
I would not have the horse I drive
So fast that folks must stop and stare:
An easy gait — two, forty-five —
Suits me; I do not care; — 40
Perhaps, for just a single spurt.
Some seconds less would do no hurt.
Of pictures, I should like to own
Titians and Raphaels three or four. —
I love so much their style and tone, —
One Turner, and no more
(A landscape, — foreground golden dirt, —
The sunshine painted with a squirt).
Of books but few, — some fifty score
For daily use, and bound for wear; 50
The rest upon an upper floor; —
Some little luxury there
Of red morocco's gilded gleam.
And vellum rich as country cream.
Busts, cameos, gems, — such things as these,
Which others often show for pride,
/ value for their power to please,
And selfish churls deride; —
One Stradivarius, I confess.
Two Meerschaums, I would fain possess. 60
Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn,
Nor ape the glittering upstart fool; —
Shall not carved tables serve my turn,
But all must be of buhl.?
Give grasping pomp its double share, —
I ask but one recumbent chair.
Thus humble let me live and die,
Nor long for Midas' golden touch.
If Heaven more generous gifts deny,
I shall not miss them much, — 70
Too grateful for the blessing lent
Of simple tastes and mind content!
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891)
Lowell came of a family whose Massachusetts history extends back as far as 1639, and a family
notable for the honorable achievements of more than one of its members. His father was the minister
of the West Church in Boston, and lived in one of the pre-Revolutionary houses of Cambridge, Elm-
wood, not very far from Craigie House. There Lowell was born on 22 February, 1819, and there he
spent his boyhood and youth, going to a good classical school near by, and thence to Harvard College,
from which he was graduated in 1838. Already in his student years he was what he remained through-
out his life, a great reader — a reader restricted in his range, but one who, within the confines of belles
lettres, read widely, copiously, enormously. Indeed, no small part of Lowell's literary work may be
regarded as an indication of what happy things good company, the best company, enjoyed contin-
uously, will do for one. And, too, already in his student years he was a writer of verse and of essays,
and he was chosen Class Poet in his senior year. The poem was duly written, but was not read on
Class Day, because at that time Lowell was in rustication at Concord, having been suspended from the
College because of irregularities in attendance upon morning prayers.
After his graduation he commenced study of the law. It was already clear, perhaps clear enough
to himself, that his heart was in literary pursuits, but he not unnaturally hesitated to trust himself to so
frail a bark as a literary career. From the law he turned for a short time to thought of a career in
business, but all the time he was writing, and he announced his final decision in 1841 by the publica-
tion of his first volume of verse, A Yearns Life. In 1841 also he became engaged to Maria White, who
exerted upon him a strong influence, both in giving definition to deep moral convictions which the two
shared and in encouraging him to express these copiously in poetry. In 1843 a second volume of poems
was published, and in 1844 a volume of essays, Conversations on Some of the Old Poets. In the same year
Lowell and Maria White were married. He had now become a steady contributor of both prose and
verse to periodicals, at first chiefly those active in opposing slavery, and was making a name for him-
self, and in 1846 he suddenly extended his public with the first of the Biglow Papers. He had not
planned to write a series. He had simply turned for variety to a new method of expressing his hatred
of slavery, but, as he later said, "The success of my experiment soon began not only to astonish me,
but to make me feel the responsibility of knowing that I had in my hand a weapon" able to pierce the
ears of thousands. Hence he kept on writing more Biglow Papers, and in 1848 he collected into a vol-
ume those now known as the First Series. In the same year he published Poems, Second Series, A
Fable for Critics, and The Vision of Sir Launfal, and in the following year a collected edition of his
poems. The two volumes of this edition were, however, his last publications — outside of contributions
to periodicals — for some years.
In 1851-1852 Lowell and his wife were in Europe for about fifteen months, and in October, 1853,
Mrs. Lowell died. Her husband's grief was deep, and his activities for a time almost paralyzed. In
1855 he delivered in Boston some lectures on English poetry, and was immediately thereafter chosen
Longfellow's successor at Harvard, his title being Smith Professor of the French and Spanish Languages
and Literatures and Professor of Belles Lettres. He spent some time in Europe in preparation for his
academic work. By 1857 he was back in Cambridge, and in this year he married Frances Dunlap, of
Portland, Maine. In 1857, too. The Atlantic Monthly began to appear, with Lowell as its editor; — a
post he held for a little over two years, while he also contributed regularly to its pages until 1862,
when he ajid Charles Eliot Norton joined in editing The North American Review. For the next ten
years his etssays appeared chiefly in this periodical. The Civil War called forth a second series o{ Biglow
Papers (collected into a volume in 1866), and the deep currents of intense patriotic feeling which that
War opened up in Lowell also found remarkable and very different expression in the memorial odes
which he wrote at the War's close and in following years. The essays which were the result of Lowell's
reading and study during his mature years were collected and published in Among My Books (1870),
My Study Windows (1871), and Among My Books, Second Series (1876). Before the publication of the
last-named Lowell had spent two years in Europe (1872-1874), and in 1877 he was appointed U. S.
Minister to Spain. From 1880 until 1885 he represented the United States at the Court of St. James,
London. In the latter year, while they were still in England, his wife died. And Lowell himself died
six years later at Elmwood, on 12 August.
Lowell's great contemporary reputation rested partly upon personal qualities which the mere
reader of his books cannot always know. It rested, too, partly upon work which, intimately con-
650
SONNETS
651
nected with passing events or with a past stage of American cultural development, is now important
historically rather than intrinsically. His very remarkable qualities and powers tended rather to
possess him than to be deliberately used for any uniHed purpose. He was unreflective, and the unity
and balance of his character rested rather upon a group of moral prejudices than upon any conscious
effort to work out and express through his poetry and criticism and political utterances a single and
coherent view of life. Ferris Greenslet, in his excellent biography of Lowell, tells us that he "had a
way of uttering a good thing in talk, then jotting it down in his notebook, then writing it to a corre-
spondent, and then using it, a little filed and polished, in whatever he happened to be composing at the
time." And Lowell's essays and his mature poetry are full of "good things" — many of them so good
that we would not on any account miss them — but too often they are not held together by any gen-
eral plan or purpose. And this is true of his work as a whole. It is of the nature of casual comment;
it is miscellaneous; it represents the call upon his energies of diverse opportunities and interests; and
it makes one conclude that Lowell was a man who never quite found himself. W. C. Brownell, in
his acute essay on Lowell {American Prose Masters), pictures him as primarily a representative figure,
the accomplished mouthpiece, so to say, of mid-nineteenth-ccntury America, uttering its prejudices
with his own extraordinary cleverness or, on occasion, depth of conviction. This seems to be a true
picture. And it indicates that, while he was little fitted for the work of criticism, still, a certain pro-
portion of his poetry and prose keeps its interest and its value because in it we hear, at its informed
best, the authentic voice of nineteenth-century New England.
SONNETS 1
III
I WOULD not have this perfect love of ours
Grow from a single root, a single stem,
Bearing no goodly fruit, but only flowers
That idly hide life's iron diadem:
It should grow alway like that Eastern tree
Whose limbs take root and spread forth
constantly;
That love for one, from which there doth
not spring
Wide love for all, is but a worthless thing.
Not in another world, as poets prate,
Dwell we apart above the tide of things, 10
High floating o'er earth's clouds on faery
wings;
But our pure love doth ever elevate
Into a holy bond of brotherhood
All earthly things, making them pure and
good.
VI
Great Truths are portions of the soul of man;
Great souls are portions of Eternity;
Each drop of blood that e'er through true
heart ran
With lofty message, ran for thee and me;
1 The sonnets are given the numbers they bear in
the Riverside Edition of LoweH's writings and the
Cambridge Edition of his poems. Sonnet III was
written in 1840, VI in 1841, and XXV was published
in 1843.
The selections from Lowell's writings reprinted in
this volume are used with the permission of, and by
arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, the
authorized publishers.
For God's law, since the starry song began,
Hath been, and still forevermore must be.
That every deed which shall outlast Time's
span
Must spur the soul to be erect and free;
Slave is no word of deathless lineage sprung;
Too many noble souls have thought and
died, 10
Too many mighty poets lived and sung,
And our good Saxon, from lips purified
With martyr-fire, throughout the world hath
rung
Too long to have God's holy cause denied.
XXV
I GRIEVE not that ripe Knowledge takes away
The charm that Nature to my childhood
wore,
For, with that insight, cometh, day by day,
A greater bliss than wonder was before;
The real doth not clip the poet's wings, —
To win the secret of a weed's plain heart
Reveals some clew to spiritual things,
And stumbling guess becomes firm-footed
art:
Flowers are not flowers unto the poet's eyes,
Their beauty thrills him by an inward
sense; 10
He knows that outward seemings are but lies,
Or, at the most, but earthly shadows,
whence
The soul that looks within for truth may
guess
The presence of some wondrous heaven-
liness.
652
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
THE SOWER 1
I SAW a Sower walking slow
Across the earth, from east to west;
His hair was white as mountain snow,
His head drooped forward on his breast.
With shriveled hands he flung his seed,
Nor ever turned to look behind;
Of sight or sound he took no heed;
It seemed he was both deaf and blind.
His dim face showed no soul beneath,
Yet in my heart I felt a stir, 10
As if I looked upon the sheath
That once had held Excalibur.
I heard, as still the seed he cast.
How, crooning to himself, he sung,
*T sow again the holy Past,
The happy days when I was young.
''Then all was wheat without a tare.
Then all was righteous, fair, and true;
And I am he whose thoughtful care
Shall plant the Old World in the New. 20
"The fruitful germs I scatter free.
With busy hand, while all men sleep;
In Europe now, from sea to sea,
The nations bless me as they reap."
Then I looked back along his path.
And heard the clash of steel on steel.
Where man faced man, in deadly wrath.
While clanged the tocsin's hurrying peal.
The sky with burning towns flared red.
Nearer the noise of fighting rolled, 30
And brothers' blood, by brothers shed.
Crept curdling over pavements cold.
Then marked I how each germ of truth
Which through the dotard's fingers ran
Was mated with a dragon's tooth
Whence there sprang up an armed man.
I shouted, but he could not hear;
Made signs, but these he could not see;
And still, without a doubt or fear,
Broadcast he scattered anarchy. 40
Long to my straining ears the blast
Brought faintly back the words he sung:
"I sow again the holy Past,
The happy days when I was young.**
1 Written in 1848.
EREED0M2
Ark we, then, wholly fallen? Can it be
That thou, North wind, that from thy
mountains bringest
Their spirit to our plains, and thou, blue sea,
Who on our rocks thy wreaths of freedom
flingest.
As on an altar, — can it be that ye
Have wasted inspiration on dead ears,
Dulled with the too familiar clank of chains?
The people's heart is like a harp for years
Hung where some petrifying torrent rains
Its slow-incrusting spray: the stiffened
chords 10
Faint and more faint make answer to th«i
tears
That drip upon them: idle are all words:
Only a golden plectrum wakes the tone
Deep buried 'neath that ever-thickeninj
stone.
We are not free: doth Freedom, then, consist
In musing with our faces toward the Past,
While petty cares, and crawling interests,
twist
Their spider-threads about us, which at last
Grow strong as iron chains, to cramp and
bind
In formal narrowness heart, soul, and
mind? 20
Freedom is recreated year by year,
In hearts wide open on the Godward side.
In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling
sphere.
In minds that sway the future like a tide.
No broadest creeds can hold her, and no
codes;
She chooses men for her august abodes.
Building them fair and fronting to the dawn;
Yet, when we seek her, we but find a few
Light footprints, leading morn-ward through
the dew:
Before the day had risen, she was gone. 30
And we must follow: swiftly runs she on.
And, if our steps should slacken in despair,
Half turns her face, half smiles through
golden hair,
Forever yielding, never wholly won:
That is not love which pauses in the race
Two close-linked names on fleeting sand to
trace;
2 Written in 1848.
THE BIGLOW PAPERS, FIRST SERIES
653
Freedom gained yesterday is no more ours;
Men gather but dry seeds of last year's
flowers;
Still there's a charm ungranted, still a grace,
Still rosy Hope, the free, the unattained, 40
Makes us Possession's languid hand let fall;
*T is but a fragment of ourselves is gained,
The Future brings us more, but never all.
And, as the finder of some unknown realm,
Mounting a summit whence he thinks to see
On either side of him the imprisoning sea,
Beholds, above the clouds that overwhelm
The valley-land, peak after snowy peak
Stretch out of sight, each like a silver helm
Beneath its plume of smoke, sublime and
bleak, 50
And what he thought an island finds to be
A continent to him first oped, — so we
Can from our height of Freedom look along
A boundless future, ours if we be strong;
Or if we shrink, better remount our ships
And, fleeing God's express design, trace back
The hero-freighted Mayflower s prophet-
track
To Europe, entering her blood-red eclipse.
THE BIGLOW PAPERS^
FIRST SERIES
NO. I. A LETTER
FROM MR. EZEKIEL BIGLOW OF JAALAM TO THE
HON. JOSEPH T, BUCKINGHAM, EDITOR OF THE
BOSTON COURIER, ENCLOSING A POEM OF HIS
SON, MR. HOSEA BIGLOW.
Jaylem, June 1846.
Mister Eddyter: — Our Hosea wuz down to
Boston last week, and he see a cruetin Sarjunt a
struttin round as popler as a hen with i chicking,
with 2 fellers a drummin and fifin arter him like
all nater. the sarjunt he thout Hosea bed n't
gut his i teeth cut cos he looked a kindo 's though
1 The papers composing the First Series were pub-
lished at intervals in the Boston Courier and the Anti-
Slavery Standard from June, 1846, until September,
1848, and were reprinted in a volume in the latter year.
They were a part of Lowell's literary campaign against
slavery, and their immediate occasion was the war
against Mexico, brought about by the efforts of South-
erners to protect their "peculiar institution" by ex-
tending the slaveholding area of the United States.
In May, 1846, President Polk was authorized to use
the militia and to call for 50,000 volunteers in case of
need. He at once asked for the full number. Lowell
he 'd jest com down, so he cal'latcd to hook him
in, but Hosy wood n't take none o' his sarse for
all he hed much as 20 Rooster's tales stuck onto
his hat and eenamost enuf brass a bobbin up and
down on his shoulders and figureed onto his coat
and trousis, let alone wut nater hed sot in his
featers, to make a 6 pounder out on.
wal, Hosea he com home considerabal riled, and
arter I 'd gone to bed I heern Him a thrashin round
like a short-tailed Bull in fli-time. The old
Woman ses she to me ses she, Zekle, ses she, our
Hosee's gut the chollery or suthin anuther ses she,
don't you Bee skeered, ses I, he 's oney amakin
pottery ses i, he 's oilers on hand at that ere
busynes like Da & martin, and shure enuf, cum
mornin, Hosy he cum down stares full chizzle,
hare on eend and cote tales flyin, and sot rite
of to go reed his varses to Parson Wilbur bein he
haint aney grate shows o' book larnin himself,
bimeby he cum back and sed the parson wuz
dreffle tickled with 'em as i hoop you will Be, and
said they wuz True grit.
Hosea ses taint hardly fair to call 'em hisn now,
cos the parson kind o' slicked off sum o' the last
varses, but he told Hosee he did n't want to put
his ore in to tetch to the Rest on 'em, bein they
wuz verry well As thay wuz, and then Hosy ses
he sed suthin a nuther about Simplex Mundishes
or sum sech feller, but I guess Hosea kind o' did
n't hear him, for I never hearn o' nobody o' that
name in this villadge, and I've lived here man and
boy "jd year cum next tater diggin, and thair aint
no wheres a kitting spryer 'n I be.
If you print 'em I wish you 'd just let folks
know who hosy's father is, cos my ant Keziah
used to say it 's nater to be curus ses she, she ain't
livin though and he 's a likely kind o' lad.
Ezekiel Biglow
Thrash away, you'll hev to rattle
On them kittle-drums o' yourn, —
'Taint a knowin' kind o' cattle
Thet is ketched with moldy corn;
Put in stiff, you fifer feller.
Let folks see how spry you be, —
Guess you'll toot till you are yeller
'Fore you git ahold o' me!
published the papers under a somewhat elaborate dis-
guise, in the beginning because, he said, he wished
"slavery to think it has as many enemies as possible."
There is reason to suppose that the absence of his name
helped to give him a valuable sense of freedom — even
after his authorship of the Papers became generally
known — which enabled him to write more indepen-
dently, vividly, and naturally than he did in the
greater part of his more formal verse, with the result
that the Biglow Papers have kept their interest better
than all save a small number of his other poems.
654 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Tlict air flag's a Icetlc rotten,
1 hey may talk 0' Freedom's airy
Hope it aint your Sunday's best; — lo
Tell they 're pupple in the face, —
Fact! it takes a sight o' cotton
It 's a grand gret cemetary
To stuff out a soger's chest:
Fer the barthrights of our race; 60
Sence we farmers hev to pay fer 't,
They jest want this Californy
Ef you must wear humps Hke tliese,
So 's to lug new slave-states in
Sposin' you should try salt hay fer 't,
To abuse ye, an' to scorn ye,
It would du ez slick ez grease.
An' to plunder ye like sin.
'T would n't suit them Southun fellers,
Aint it cute to see a Yankee
They 're a drcffle graspin' set.
Take sech everlastin' pains.
We must oilers blow the bellers
All to git the Devil's thankee
Wen they want their irons het; 20
Helpin' on 'em weld their chains?
May be it 's all right ez preachin*,
Wy, it 's jest ez clear ez figgers.
But my narves it kind 0' grates,
Clear ez one an' one make two, 70
Wen I see the overreachin'
Chaps thet make black slaves 0' niggers
0' them nigger-drivin' States.
Want to make wite slaves 0' you.
Them thet rule us, them slave-traders,
Tell ye jest the eend I 've come to
Haint they cut a thunderin' swarth
Arter cipherin' plaguy smart.
(Helped by Yankee renegaders),
An' it makes a handy sum, tu, '
Thru the vartu 0' the North!
Any gump could larn by heart;
We begin to think it 's nater
Laborin' man an' laborin' woman
To take sarse an' not be riled; — 30
Hev one glory an' one shame.
Who *d expect to see a tater
Ev'y thin' thet 's done inhuman
• All on eend at bein' biled?
Injers all on 'em the same. 80
Ez fer war, I call it murder, —
'Taint by turnin' out to hack folks
There you hev it plain an' flat;
You 're agoin' to git your right.
I don't want to go no furder
Nor by lookin' down on black folks
Than my Testyment fer that;
Coz you 're put upon by wite;
God hez sed so plump an' fairly,
Slavery aint 0' nary color,
It 's ez long ez it is broad,
'Taint the hide thet makes it wus.
An' you 've gut to git up airly
All it keers fer in a feller
Ef you want to take in God. 40
'S jest to make him fill its pus.
'Taint your eppyletts an' feathers
Want to tackle me in, du ye?
Make the thing a grain more right;
I expect you '11 hev to wait; 90
'Taint afollerin' your bell-wethers
Wen cold lead puts daylight thru ye
Will excuse ye in His sight;
You'll begin to kal'late;
Ef you take a sword an' dror it.
S'pose the crows wun't fall to pickin'
An' go stick a feller thru.
All the carkiss from your bones, {
Guv'ment aint to answer for it,
Coz you helped to give a lickin'
God '11 send the bill to you.
To them poor half-Spanish drones?
Wut 's the use 0' meetin'-goin'
Jest go home an' ask our Nancy
Every Sabbath, wet or dry, 50
Wether I'd be sech a goose
Ef it 's right to go amowin'
Ez to jine ye, — guess you'd fancy
Feller-men like oats an' rye?
The etarnal bung wuz loose! - ICX)
I dunno but wut it 's pooty
She wants me fer home consumption,
Trainin' round in bobtail coats, —
Let alone the hay 's to mow, —
But it 's curus Christian dooty
Ef you 're arter folks 0' gumption,
This 'ere cuttin' folks's throats.
You 've a darned long row to hoe.
J
THE BIGLOW PAPERS, FIRST SERIES
655
Take them editors thet's crowin'
Like a cockerel three months old, —
Don't ketch any on 'em goin',
Though they he so blasted bold;
Aint they a prime lot o* fellers?
'Fore they think on't guess they 'II
sprout no
(Like a peach thet 's got the yellers),
With the meanness bustin' out.
Wal, go 'long to help 'em stealin'
Bigger pens to cram with slaves,
Help the men thet 's oilers dealin'
Insults on your fathers' graves;
Help the strong to grind the feeble.
Help the many agin the few,
Help the men thet call your people
Witewashed slaves an* peddlin* crew! 120
Massachusetts, God forgive her,
She 's akneelin' with the rest.
She, thet ough' to ha' clung ferever
In her grand old eagle-nest;
She thet ough' to stand so fearless
Wile the wracks are round her hurled,
Holdin' up a beacon peerless
To the oppressed of all the world!
Ha'n't they sold your colored seamen ?
Ha'n't they made your env'ys w'iz? 130
Wut '11 make ye act like freemen?
Wut '11 git your dander riz?
Come, I'll tell ye wut I'm thinkin*
Is our dooty in this fix.
They 'd ha' done 't ez quick ez winkin*
In the days o' seventy-six.
Clang the bells in every steeple,
Call all true men to disown
The tradoocers of our people,
The enslavers o' their own;
Let our dear old Bay State proudly
Put the trumpet to her mouth.
Let her ring this messidge loudly
In the ears of all the South: —
140
"I '11 return ye good fer evil
Much ez we frail mortils can,
But I wun't go help the Devil
Makin' man the cus o' man;
Call me coward, call me traiter.
Jest ez suits your mean idees, —
Here I stand a tyrant-hater,
An' the friend o' God an' Peace!"
Ef I'd my way I hed ruther
We should go to work an' part, —
They take one way, we take t' other, —
Guess it would n't break my heart;^
Man hed ough' to put asunder
Them thet God has noways jined;
An' I should n't gretly wonder
Ef there's thousands o' my mind.
160
150
[The first recruiting sergeant on record I con-
ceive to have been that individual who is men-
tioned in the Book of Job as going to and fro in the
earth, and walking up and down in it. Bishop
Latimer will have him to have been a bishop, but
to me that other calling would appear more con-
genial. The sect of Cainites is not yet extinct,
who esteemed the first-born of Adam to be the
most worthy, not only because of that privilege of
primogeniture, but inasmuch as he was able to
overcome and slay his younger brother. That
was a wise saying of the famous Marquis Pescara
to the Papal Legate, that it was impossible for men
to serve Mars and Christ at the same time. Yet in
time past the profession of arms was judged to be
Kar' k^oxvi^"^ that of a gentleman, nor does this
opinion want for strenuous upholders even in our
day. Must we suppose, then, that the profession
of Christianity was only intended for losels, or, at
best, to afford an opening for plebeian ambition?
Or shall we hold with that nicely metaphysical
Pomeranian, Captain Vratz, who was Count
Konigsmark's chief instrument in the murder of
Mr. Thynne, that the Scheme of Salvation has
been arranged with an especial eye to the neces-
sities of the upper classes and that "God would
consider a gentleman and deal with him suitably
to the condition and profession he had placed him
in "? It may be said of us all, Exemplo plus quam
ratione vivimus.^ — H. W.] ^
1 The threat of secession from the Union had first
been made, after the adoption of the Constitution, by
New England federalists, and had been repeated by
New F.nglanders on various occasions through the first
half of the nineteenth century. Calhoun first heard of
secession when he was a student in Connecticut. Bry-
ant at the outbreak of the War of 181 2 was youthfully
eager to take up arms, not against England, but in
defense of Massachusetts against the Union. The
Garrisonian abolitionists were openly in favor of the
secession of the Northern states, though Whittier, in
his poem entitled Texas, seemed to favor Southern
secession. 2 Preeminently.
' We live by example rather than by doctrine.
* Here and later the square brackets are Lowell's.
When the Big/ow Papers were collected they were
published as if edited — "with an introduction, notes,
glossary, and copious index" — by Homer Wilbur, the
"Parson Wilbur" to whom Hosea Biglow took the
above poem for his judgment upon it after it was
written. Passages signed H. W. are the fictitious
Wilbur's editorial notes.
Gc,G
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
NO. II L
WHAT MR. ROBINSON
THINKS
[A few remarks on the following verses will not
be out of place. The satire in them was not
meant to have any personal, but only a general,
application. Of the gentleman upon whose letter
they were intended as a commentary Mr. Biglow
had never heard, till he saw the letter itself. The
position of the satirist is oftentimes one which he
would not have chosen, had the election been left
to himself. In attacking bad principles, he is
obliged to select some individual who has made
himself their exponent, and in whom they are
impersonate, to the end that what he says may
not, through ambiguity, be dissipated teyiues in
auras} For what says Seneca.'' Longum iter per
pracepta, breve et eficace per exampla? A bad
principle is comparatively harmless while it con-
tinues to be an abstraction, nor can the general
mind comprehend it fully till it is printed in that
large type which all men can read at sight, namely,
the life and character, the sayings and doings, of
particular persons. It is one of the cunningest
fetches of Satan, that he never exposes himself
directly to our arrows, but, still dodging behind
this neighbor or that acquaintance, compels us to
wound him through them, if at all. He holds our
affections as hostages, the while he patches up a
truce with our conscience.
Meanwhile, let us not forget that the aim of
the true satirist is not to be severe upon persons,
but only upon falsehood, and, as Truth and False-
hood start from the same point, and sometimes
even go along together for a little way, his busi-
ness is to follow the path of the latter after it
diverges, and to show her floundering in the bog
at the end of it. Truth is quite beyond the reach
of satire. There is so brave a simplicity in her,
that she can no more be made ridiculous than an
oak or a pine. The danger of the satirist is that
continual use may deaden his sensibility to the
force of language. He becomes more and more
liable to strike harder than he knows or intends.
He may be careful to put on his boxing-gloves,
and yet forget that, the older they grow, the more
plainly may the knuckles inside be felt. More-
over, in the heat of contest, the eye is insensibly
drawn to the crown of victory, whose tawdry
tinsel glitters through that dust of the ring which
obscures Truth's wreath of simple leaves. I have
sometimes thought that my young friend, Mr.
Biglow, needed a monitory hand laid on his arm,
— aliquid sufflaminandus erat? I have never
1 Into thin air.
2 Through precept the way is long, through example
short and sure.
3 He should be somewhat restrained.
thought it good husbandry to water the tender
plants of reform with aqua fortis, yet, where so
much is to do in the beds, he were a sorry gardener
who should wage a whole day's war with an iron
scuffle on those ill weeds that make the garden-
walks of life unsightly, when a sprinkle of Attic
salt will wither them up. Est ars etiam vialcdi-
cendi,^ says Scaliger, and truly it is a hard thing
to say where the graceful gentleness of the lamb
merges in downright sheepishness. We may con-
clude with worthy and wise Dr. Fuller, that "one
may be a lamb in private wrongs, but in hearing
general affronts to goodness they are asses which
are not lions." — H. W.]
GuvENER B.'' is a sensible man;
He stays to his home an' looks arter his
folks; J
He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can, '
An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes;
But John P.
Robinson^ he
Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.
My! aint it terrible? Wut shall we du?
We can't never choose him o' course, —
thet 'sflat;
Guess we shall hev to come round (don't
you?), 10
An' go in fer thunder an' guns, an' all that;
Fer John P.
Robinson he
Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.
Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man:
He 's ben on all sides that give places or
pelf;
But consistency still wuz a part of his
plan, —
He's ben true to one party, — an' thet is
himself; —
So John P.
Robinson he 20
Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.
* There is even an art in cursing.
' G. N. Briggs, Governor of Massachusetts, 1844-
1851. In 1847, when this poem was written, he was a
candidate for reelection on the Whig ticket, and was
running against Brigadier-General Caleb Gushing, who
at the time was in Mexico. Briggs was elected by a
large majority.
« A lawyer of Lowell, Massachusetts, and a promi-
nent Whig, who in this campaign went over to the
Democratic side and supported Gushing.
A
THE BIGLOW PAPERS, FIRST SERIES
6S7
Gineral C. he goes in fer the war;
He don't vally principle more *n an old cud;
Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer,
But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an'
blood?
So John P.
Robinson he
Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.
We were gittin' on nicely up here to our vil-
lage,
With good old idees o' wut's right an' wut
aint, 30
We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an'
pillage.
An thet eppyletts worn't the best mark of
a saint;
But John P.
Robinson he
Sez this kind o' thing 's an exploded
idee.
The side of our country must oilers be took,
An' Presidunt Polk, you know, he is our
country.
An' the angel thet writes all our sins in a book
Puts the debit to him, an' to us the per
contry;
An' John P. 40
Robinson he
Sez this is his view o' the thing to a T.
Parson Wilbur he calls all these argimunts
lies;
Sez they 're nothin' on airth but jest fee,
fazv,fum:
An' thet all this big talk of our destinies
Is half on it ign'ance, an' t' other half rum;
But John P.
Robinson he
Sez it aint no sech thing; an', of course,
so must we.
Parson Wilbur sez he never heerd in his life 50
Thet th' Apostles rigged out in their swal-
ler-tail coats,
An' marched round in front of a drum an' a
fife.
To git some on 'em office, an' some on 'em
votes;
But John P.
Robinson he
Sez they did n't know everythin* down
in Judee.
Wal, it 's a marcy we 've gut folks to tell us
The rights an' the wrongs o' these matters,
I vow, —
God sends country lawyers, an' other wise
fellers.
To start the world's team wen it gets in a
slough; 60
Fer John P.
Robinson he
Sez the world '11 go right, ef he hollers
our Gee!
[The attentive reader will doubtless have per-
ceived in the foregoing poem an allusion to that
pernicious sentiment, — "Our country, right or
wrong." It is an abuse of language to call a cer-
tain portion of land, much more, certain person-
ages, elevated for the time being to high station,
our country, I would not sever nor loosen a
single one of those ties by which we are united to
the spot of our birth, nor minish by a tittle the
respect due to the Magistrate. I love our own
Bay State too well to do the one, and as for the
other, I have myself for nigh forty years exercised,
however unworthily, the function of Justice of
the Peace, having been called thereto by the un-
solicited kindness of that most excellent man and
upright patriot, Caleb Strong. Patrice fumus igne
alieno luculentior ^ is best qualified with this, —
Ubi libertas, ibi patria? We are inhabitants of
two worlds, and owe a double, but not a divided
allegiance. In virtue of our clay, this little ball
of earth exacts a certain loyalty of us, while, in
our capacity as spirits, we are admitted citizens
of an invisible and holier fatherland. There is
a patriotism of the soul whose claim absolves us
from our other and terrene fealty. Our true
country is that ideal realm which we represent
to ourselves under the names of religion, duty,
and the like. Our terrestrial organizations are
but far-off approaches to so fair a model, and all
they are verily traitors who resist not any attempt
to divert them from this their original intend-
ment. When, therefore, one would have us to
fling up our caps and shout with the multitude, —
^' Our country, hotvcver bounded!" he demands of
us that we sacrifice the larger to the less, the
higher to the lower, and that we yield to the
imaginary claims of a few acres of soil our duty
and privilege as liegemen of Truth. Our true
country is bounded on the north and the south,
on the east and the west, by Justice, and when
she oversteps that invisible boundary-line by so
much as a hair's-breadth, she ceases to be our
mother, and chooses rather to be looked upon quasi
> The smoke of one's own country is brighter than
the flame of a foreign one.
« Where liberty is, there is my country.
658
JAMKS RL'SSKLL LOWELL
noverca.^ That is a hard choice when our earthly
love of country calls upon us to tread one path
and our duty points us to another. We must
make as noble and becoming an election as did
Penelope between Icarius and Ulysses. \'eiling
our faces, we must take silently the hand of Duty
to follow her.
* 4= « * 4c * *
-H. W.]
NO. VL THE PIOUS EDITOR'S CREED
[At the special instance of Mr. Biglow, I preface
the following satire with an extract from a sermon
preached during the past summer, from Ezekiel,
xx.\iv, 2: "Son of man, prophesy against the
shepherds of Israel." Since the Sabbath on which
this discourse was delivered, the editor of the
Jaalam Independent Blunderbuss has unaccount-
ably absented himself from our house of worship.
"I know of no so responsible position as that
of the public journalist. The editor of our day
bears the same relation to his time that the clerk
bore to the age before the invention of printing.
Indeed, the position which he holds is that which
the clergyman should hold even now. But the
clergyman chooses to walk off to the extreme edge
of the world, and to throw such seed as he has clear
over into that darkness which he calls the Next
Life. As if next did not mean nearest, and as if
any life were nearer than that immediately present
one which boils and eddies all around him at the
caucus, the ratification meeting, and the polls!
Who taught him to exhort men to prepare for eter-
nity, as for some future era of which the present
forms no integral part.'' The furrow which Time
is even now turning runs through the Everlasting,
and in that must he plant, or nowhere. Yet he
would fain believe and teach that we are goiyig
to have more of eternity' than we have now. This
going of his is like that of the auctioneer, on which
gone follows before we have made up our minds to
bid, — in which manner, not three months back,
I lost an excellent copy of Chappelow on Job. So
it has come to pass that the preacher, instead of
being a living force, has faded into an emblematic
figure at christenings, weddings, and funerals.
Or, if he exercise any other function, it is as keeper
and feeder of certain theologic dogmas, which,
when occasion offers, he unkennels with a staboy!
'to bark and bite as 't is their nature to,' whence
that reproach of odium theologicum has arisen.
"Meanwhile, see what a pulpit the editor
mounts daily, sometimes with a congregation of
fifty thousand within reach of his voice, and
never so much as a nodder, even, among them!
And from what a Bible can he choose his text.
— a Bible which needs no translation, and which
no priestcraft can shut and clasp from the laity, -
the open volume of the world, upon which, with
a pen of sunshine or destroying fire, the inspired
Present is even now writing the annals of God!
Methinks the editor who should understand his
calling, and be equal thereto, would truly deserve
that title of iroLn-qv \aCiv^ which Homer bestows
upon princes. He would be the Moses of our nine-
teenth century; and whereas the old Sinai, silent
now, is but a common mountain stared at by the
elegant tourist and crawled over by the hammer-
ing geologist, he must find his tables of the new
law here among factories and cities in this Wilder-
ness of Sin (Numbers, xxxiii, 12) called Progress
of Civilization, and be the captain of our Exodus
into the Canaan of a truer social order.
"Nevertheless, our editor will not come so far
within even the shadow of Sinai as Mahomet did,
but chooses rather to construe Moses by Joe Smith.
He takes up the crook, not that the sheep may be
fed, but that he may never want a warm woolen
suit and a joint of mutton.
^'Imniemor, 0, fidci, pecorumque oblite tuorum! ^
For which reason I would derive the name editor
not so much from edo, to publish, as from edo,
to eat, that being the peculiar profession to which
he esteems himself called. He blows up the flames
of political discord for no other occasion than that
he may thereby handily boil his own pot. I be-
lieve there are two thousand of these mutton-
loving shepherds in the United States, and of
these, how many have even the dimmest percep-
tion of their immense power, and the duties con- I
sequent thereon.'' Here and there, haply, one.
Nine hundred and ninety-nine labor to impress
upon the people the great principles of Tzveedle-
dum, the other nine hundred and ninety-nine
preach with equal earnestness the gospel according
to Tweedledee." — K. W.]
I DU believe in Freedom's cause,
Ez fur away ez Payris is;
I love to see her stick her claws
In them infarnal Phayrisees;
It 's wal enough agin a king
To dror resolves an' triggers, —
But libbaty 's a kind o' thing
Thet don't agree with niggers.
I du believe the people want
A tax on teas an' coffees,
Thet nothin' aint extravygunt, —
Purvidin' I 'm in office;
10
1 As a stepmother.
2 Shepherd of the people.
3 O, forgetful of honesty, and unheedful of your
sheep!
THE BIGLOW PAPERS, FIRST SERIES
659
Fer I hev loved my country sence
My eye-teeth filled their sockets,
An' Uncle Sam I reverence,
•Partic'larly his pockets.
I du believe in any plan
O' levyin' the texes,
Ez long ez, like a lumberman,
I git jest wut I axes; 20
I go free-trade thru thick an' thin,
Because it kind o' rouses
The folks to vote, — an* keeps us in
Our quiet custom-houses.
I du believe it 's wise an* good
To sen' out furrin missions,
Thet is, on sartin understood
An' orthydox conditions; —
I mean nine thousan' dolls, per ann..
Nine thousan' more fer outfit, 30
An' me to recommend a man
The place 'ould jest about fit.
I du believe in special ways
O' prayin' an' convartin';
The bread comes back in many days,
An' buttered, tu, fer sartin;
'. mean in preyin' till one busts
On wut the party chooses.
An' in convartin' public trusts
To very privit uses. 40
I du believe hard coin the stuff
Fer 'lectioneers to spout on;
The people 's oilers soft enough
To make hard money out on;
Dear Uncle Sam pervides fer his.
An* gives a good-sized junk to all, —
I don't care how hard money is,
Ez long ez mine 's paid punctooal.
I du believe with all my soul
In the gret Press's freedom, 50
To pint the people to the goal
An' in the traces lead 'em;
Palsied the arm thet forges yokes
At my fat contracts squintin',
An' withered be the nose thet pokes
Inter the gov'ment printin*!
I du believe thet I should give
Wut *s his'n unto Caesar,
Fer it's by him I move an' live,
Frum him my bread an' cheese air; 60
I du believe thet all o' me
Doth bear his superscription, —
Will, conscience, honor, honesty,
An things o' thet description.
I du believe in prayer an' praise
To him thet hez the grantin*
O' jobs, — in every thin' thet pays,
But most of all in Cantin';
This doth my cup with marcies fill.
This lays all thought o' sin to rest, — 70
I dont believe in princerple.
But O, I du in interest.
I du believe in bein' this
Or thet, ez it may happen
One way or t' other hendiest is
To ketch the people nappin';
It aint by princerples nor men
My preudunt course is steadied, —
I scent wich pays the best, an' then
Go into it baldheaded. 80
I du believe thet holdin' slaves
Comes nat'ral to a Presidunt,
Let 'lone the rowdedow it saves
To hev a wal-broke precedunt;
Fer any office, small or gret,
I could n't ax with no face,
'uthout I 'd ben, thru dry an* wet,
Th' unrizzest kind o' doughface.
I du believe wutever trash
'11 keep the people in blindness, — 90
Thet we the Mexicuns can thrash
Right inter brotherly kindness,
Thet bombshells, grape, an' powder 'n* ball
Air good-wiirs strongest magnets,
Thet peace, to make it stick at all.
Must be druv in with bagnets.
In short, I firmly du believe
In Humbug generally,
Fer it 's a thing thet I perceive
To hev a solid vally; 100
This heth my faithful shepherd ben,
In pasturs sweet heth led me.
An* this '11 keep the people green
To feed ez they hev fed me.
66o
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Reader t •uaJk up at o«ee {it H'iU sooh be too late)
and buy at a ferjectly ruinous rate
FABLE FOR CRITICS*;
OR. BETTER.
(/ tike, o." a thing that the riader' i first fancy may jlrite.
an nldfashionid litlepnfr,
lucH ai freitnts a tiihu/ar vinv cf the fiolume's eontents,)
A GLANCE
AT A FEW OF OUR LITERARY PROGENIES
iMn Malaprop't uxird)
fROM
THE TUB OF DIOGENES;
A VOCAL AND MUSICAL MEDLEY,
THAT IS,
A SERIES OF JOKES
tliko ttcetrnipanies himself ■with a rub-a-dub-dub, full of spirit and graet,
on the top of the tub.
Set forth in October, the 3ISI day.
In the year '48. G- P Putnam. Broadway
It being the commonest mode of procedure, I
premise a few candid remarks
To THE Reader: —
This trifle, begun to please only myself and my
own private fancy, was laid on the shelf. But
some friends, who had seen it, induced me, by
1 Written in 1847 and 1848. Lowell explained, in a
later edition of the Fable: "Thisy^« d' esprit was ex-
temporized, I may fairly say, so rapidly was it written,
purely for my own amusement and with no thought of
publication. I sent daily installments of it to a friend
in New York, the late Charles F. Briggs. He urged
me to let it be printed, and I at last consented to its
anonymous publication. The secret was kept till after
several persons had laid claim to its authorship."
From letters written in 1847 and 1848 to Briggs it
would appear that Lowell did write the Fable with the
intention of publishing it at once, and that he felt con-
fident of its success with the public. His confidence
was justified, and the Fable, like The Biglow Papers,
has kept its interest better than many of his more for-
mal poems. Lowell's biographer (H. E. Scudder) has
called attention to the fact that Leigh Hunt's Feast of
the Poets had been included in a volume of Hunt's poems
published in Boston in 1844. "The measure is the
same. Phoebus Apollo also introduces the poets,
though Hunt's scheme is more deliberate than Lowell's,
and there is the same disposition to make use of unex-
pected rhymes."
(lint of saying they liked it, to put it in print.
1 hat is, having come to that very conclusion, I
asked their advice when 'twould make no con-
fusion. For though (in the gentlest of ways) they
had hinted it was scarce worth the while, I should
doubtless have printed it.
I began it, intending a Fable, a frail, slender
thing, rhyme-ywinged, with a sting in its tail.
But, by addings and alterings not previously
planned, digressions chance-hatched, like birds'
eggs in the sand, and dawdlings to suit every
wiiimsey's demand (always freeing the bird which
I held in my hand, for the two perched, perhaps
out of reach, in the tree), — it grew by degrees to
the size which you see. I was like the old woman
that carried the calf, and my neighbors, like hers,
no doubt, wonder and laugh; and when, my
strained arms with their grown burthen full, I
call it my Fable, they call it a bull.
Having scrawled at full gallop (as far as that
goes) in a style that is neither good verse nor bad
prose, and being a person whom nobody knows,
some people will say I am rather more free with
my readers than it is becoming to be, that I seem
to expect them to wait on my leisure in following
wherever I wander at pleasure, that, in short, I
take more than a young author's lawful ease, and
laugh in a queer way so like Mephistopheles, that
the Public will doubt, as they grope through my
rhythm, if in truth I am making fun of them or
with them.
So the excellent Public is hereby assured that
the sale of my book is already secured. For there
is not a poet throughout the whole land but will
purchase a copy or two out of hand, in the fond
expectation of being amused in it, by seeing his
betters cut up and abused in it. Now, I find,
by a prett}'^ exact calculation, there are something
like ten thousand bards in the nation, of that
special variety whom the Review and Magazine
critics call lofty and true, and about thirty thou-
sand {this tribe is increasing) of the kinds who
are termed full of promise and pleasiyig. The
Public will see by a glance at this schedule, that
they cannot expect me to be over-sedulous about
courting them, since it seems I have got enough
fuel made sure of for boiling my pot.
As for such of our poets as find not their names
mentioned once in my pages, with praises or
blames, let them send in their cards, without
further delay, to my friend G. P. Putnam, Es-
quire, in Broadway, where a list will be kept with
the strictest regard to the day and the hour of
receiving the card. Then, taking them up as I
chance to have time (that is, if their names can
he twisted in rhyme), I will honestly give each
his PROPER position, at the rate of one author
to each new edition. Thus a PREMIUM is of-
fered sufficiently high (as the magazines say when
they tell their best lie) to induce bards to club
A FABLE FOR CRITICS
66i
their resources and buy the balance of every edi-
tion, until they have all of them fairly been run
through the mill.
One word to such readers (judicious and wise)
as read books with something behind the mere
eyes, of whom in the country, perhaps, there are
two, including myself, gentle reader, and you.
All the characters sketched in this slight jeu
d'espril, though, it may be, they seem, here and
there, rather free, and drawn from a somewhat
too cynical standpoint, are meant to be faithful,
for that is the grand point, and none but an owl
would feel sore at a rub from a jester who tells you,
without any subterfuge, that he sits in Diogenes'
tub.i
A FABLE FOR CRITICS
Phoebus, sitting one day in a laurel-
tree's shade,
Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was
made,
For the god being one day too warm in his
wooing,
She took to the tree to escape his pursuing;
Be the cause what it might, from his offers
she shrunk,
And Ginevra-like, shut herself up in a trunk;
And, though 'twas a step into which he had
driven her.
He somehow or other ha Additional remarks were prefixed to the second
edition, but they are not here reprinted.
And, for mercy's sake, how could one keep
up a dialogue
With a dull wooden thing that will live and
will die a log, —
Not to say that the thought would forever
intrude
That you've less chance to win her the more
she is wood?
Ah! it went to my heart, and the memory
still grieves,
To see those loved graces all taking their
leaves;
Those charms beyond speech, so enchanting
but now.
As they left me forever, each making its
bough!
If her tongue had a tang sometimes more
than was right,
Her new bark is worse than ten times her old
bite." 30
Now, Daphne — before she was happily
treeified —
Over all other blossoms the lily had deified.
And when she expected the god on a visit
('Twas before he had made his intentions
explicit,
Some buds she arranged with a vast deal of
care.
To look as if artlessly twined in her hair.
Where they seemed, as he said, when he paid
his addresses.
Like the day breaking through the long night
of her tresses;
So whenever he wished to be quite irresistible.
Like a man with eight trumps in his hand at a
whist-table 40
(I feared me at first that the rhyme was un-
twistable,
Though I might have lugged in an allusion
toCristabel), —
He would take up a lily, and gloomily look
in it,
As I shall at the , when they cut up my
book in it.
Well, here, after all the bad rhyme I've
been spinning,
I've got back at last to my story's beginning:
Sitting there, as I say, in the shade of his
mistress,
As dull as a volume of old Chester mysteries.
Or as those puzzling specimens which, in old
histories.
662
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
We read of his verses — the Oracles,
namely SO
(I wonder the Greeks should have swallowed
them tamely,
For one might bet safely whatever he has to
risk,
They were laid at his door by some ancient
Miss Asterisk,
And so dull that the men who retailed them
out-doors
Got the ill name of augurs, because they were
bores), — t
First, he mused what the animal substance
or herb is
Would induce a mustache, for you know he's
imberbis;^
Then he shuddered to think how his youth-
ful position
Was assailed by the age of his son the phy-
sician;
At some poems he glanced, had been sent to
him lately, 60
And the meter and sentiment puzzled him
greatly;
**Mehercle! I'd make such proceeding felo-
nious,—
Have they all of them slept in the cave of
Trophonius?
Look well to your seat, 'tis like taking an
airing
On a corduroy road, and that out of repairing;
It leads one, 'tis true, through the primitive
forest,
Grand natural features, but then one has no
rest;
You just catch a glimpse of some ravishing
distance.
When a jolt puts the whole of it out of exist-
ence,—
Why not use their ears, if they happen to
have any?" 7°
— Here the laurel-leaves murmured the name
of poor Daphne.
**0, weep with me. Daphne," he sighed,
*'for you know it's
A terrible thing to be pestered with poets!
But, alas, she is dumb, and the proverb holds
good,
She never will cry till she's out of the wood!
What wouldn't I give if I never had known
of her?
Beardless.
'Twere a kind of relief had I something to
groan over:
If I had but some letters of hers, now, to
toss over,
I might turn for the nonce a Byronic philos-
opher,
And bewitch all the flats by bemoaning the
loss of her. 80
One needs something tangible, though, to
begin on, —
A loom, as it were, for the fancy to spin on;
What boots all your grist? it can never be
ground ik
Till a breeze makes the arms of the windmill
go round
(Or if 'tis a water-mill, alter the metaphor.
And say it won't stir, save the wheel be well
wet afore.
Or lug in some stuflf about water "so dream-
ily,"- , . . . i
It is not a metaphor, though, 'tis a simile); '
A lily, perhaps, would set my mill a-going.
For just at this season, I think, they are
blowing. 90
Here, somebody, fetch one; not very far hence
They're in bloom by the score, 'tis but climb-
ing a fence;
There's a poet hard by, who does nothing
but fills his
Whole garden, from one end to t'other, with
lilies;
A very good plan, were it not for satiety,
One longs for a weed here and there, for
variety;
Though a weed is no more than a flower in
disguise,
Which is seen through at once, if love give a
man eyes."
Now there happened to be among Phce-
bus's followers,
A gentleman, one of the omnivorous swal-
lowers, 100
Who bolt every book that comes out of the
press.
Without the least question of larger or less.
Whose stomachs are strong at the expense of
their head, —
For reading new books is like eating new
bread, ^
One can bear it at first, but by gradual steps
he
Is brought to death's door of a mental dys-
pepsy.
A FABLE FOR CRITICS
663
On a previous stage of existence, our Hero
Had ridden outside, with the glass below zero;
He had been, 'tis a fact you may safely rely
on.
Of a very old stock a most eminent scion, —
A stock all fresh quacks their fierce boluses
ply on, III
Who stretch the new boots Earth's unwilling
to try on,
Whom humbugs of all shapes and sorts keep
their eye on,
Whose hair's in the mortar of every new
Zion,
Who, when whistles are dear, go directly and
buy one.
Who think slavery a crime that we must not
say fie on,
Who hunt, if they e'er hunt at all, with the
lion
(Though they hunt lions also, whenever they
spy one).
Who contrive to make every good fortune a
wry one.
And at last choose the hard bed of honor to
die on, 120
Whose pedigree, traced to earth's earliest
years.
Is longer than anything else but their ears; —
In short, he was sent into life with the wrong
key.
He unlocked the door, and stepped forth a
poor donkey.
Though kicked and abused by his bipedal
betters,
Yet he filled no mean place in the kingdom of
letters;
Far happier than many a literary hack,
He bore only paper-mill rags on his back
(For it makes a vast difference which side the
mill
One expends on the paper his labor and
skill); 130
So, when his soul waited a new transmigra-
tion,
And Destiny balanced 'twixt this and that
station.
Not having much time to expend upon
bothers,
Remembering he'd had some connection
with authors.
And considering his four legs had grown par-
alytic,—
She set him on two, and he came forth a
critic.
Through his babyhood no kind of pleasure
he took
In any amusement but tearing a book;
For him there was no intermediate stage
From babyhood up to straight-laced middle
age; 140
There were years when he didn't wear coat-
tails behind.
But a boy he could never be rightly defined;
Like the Irish Good Folk, though in length
scarce a span,
From the womb he came gravely, a little old
man;
While other boys' trousers demanded the toil
Of the motherly fingers on all kinds of soil.
Red, yellow, brown, black, clayey, gravelly,
loamy,
He sat in the corner and read Firi Romcs.
He never was known to unbend or to revel
once
In base, marbles, hockey, or kick up the devil
once; 150
He was just one of those who excite the
benevolence
Of your old prigs who sound the soul's depths
with a ledger.
And are on the lookout for some young men
to "edger-
cate," as they call it, who won't be too costly,
And who'll afterward take to the ministry
mostly;
Who always wear spectacles, always look
bilious.
Always keep on good terms with each mater-
familias
Throughout the whole parish, and manage to
rear
Ten boys like themselves, on four hundred a
year:
Who, fulfilling in turn the same fearful con-
ditions, 160
Either preach through their noses, or go upon
missions.
In this way our Hero got safely to college,
Where he bolted alike both his commons and
knowledge;
A reading-machine, always wound up and
going.
He mastered whatever was not worth the
knowing.
Appeared in a gown, and a vest of black
satin,
To spout such a Gothic oration in Latin
664
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
That Tully could never have made out a
word in it
(Though himself was the model the author
preferred in it),
And grasping the parchment which gave him
in fee 170
All the mystic and-so-forths contained in
A.B.,
He was launched (life is always compared to
a sea)
With just enough learning, and skill for the
using it,
To prove he'd a brain, by forever confusing it.
So worthy St. Benedict, piously burning
With the holiest zeal against secular learning,
Nesciensque scienter, as writers express it,
Indoctusque sapienter a Roma recessit}
'Twould be endless to tell you the things
that he knew,
Each a separate fact, undeniably true, 180
But with him or each other they'd nothing to
do;
No power of combining, arranging, discern-
ing.
Digested the masses he learned into learning;
There was one thing in life he had practical
knowledge for
(And this, you will think, he need scarce go
to college for), —
Not a deed would he do, nor a word would he
utter,
Till he'd weighed its relations to plain bread
and butter.
When he left Alma Mater, he practiced his
wits
In compiling the journals' historical bits, —
Of shops broken open, men falling in fits, 190
Great fortunes in England bequeathed to
poor printers.
And cold spells, the coldest for many past
winters, —
Then, rising by industry, knack, and address.
Got notices up for an unbiased press.
With a mind so well poised, it seemed equally
made for
Applause or abuse, just which chanced to be
paid for:
From this point his progress was rapid and
sure.
To the post of a regular heavy reviewer.
1 Knowingly ignorant and wisely unlearned departed
from Rome.
And here I must say he wrote excellent
articles
On Hebraical points, or the force of Greek
particles; 2Cxd
They filled up the space nothing else was pre-
pared for.
And nobody read that which nobody cared
for;
If any old book reached a fiftieth edition.
He could fill forty pages with safe erudi-
tion:
He could gauge the old books by the old set
of rules.
And his very old nothings pleased very old
fools;
But give him a new book, fresh out of the
heart.
And you put him at sea without compass or
chart, —
His blunders aspired to the rank of an
art;
For his lore was engraft, something foreign
that grew in him, 210
Exhausting the sap of the native and true in
him,
So that when a man came with a soul that
was new in him.
Carving new forms of truth out of Nature's
old granite.
New and old at their birth, like Le Verrier's
planet,
Which, to get a true judgment, themselves
must create
In the soul of their critic the measure and
weight.
Being rather themselves a fresh standard of
grace.
To compute their own judge, and assign him
his place.
Our reviewer would crawl all about it and
round it.
And, reporting each circumstance just as he
found it, 220
Without the least malice, — his record would
be
Profoundly aesthetic as that of a flea.
Which, supping on Wordsworth, should print,
for our sakes.
Recollections of nights with the Bard of the
Lakes,
Or, lodged by an Arab guide, ventured to
render a
Comprehensive account of the ruins at Den-
derah.
A FABLE FOR CRITICS
66s
As I said, he was never precisely unkind,
The defect in his brain was just absence of
mind;
If he boasted, 'twas simply that he was self-
made,
A position which I, for one, never gain-
said, 230
My respect for my Maker supposing a skill
In His works which our Hero would answer
but ill;
And I trust that the mold which he used may
be cracked, or he.
Made bold by success, may enlarge his phyl-
actery.
And set up a kind of a man-manufactory, —
An event which I shudder to think about,
seeing
That Man is a moral, accountable being.
He meant well enough, but was still in the
way.
As dunces still are, let them be where they
may;
Indeed, they appear to come into exist-
ence 240
To impede other folks with their awkward
assistance;
If you set up a dunce on the very North pole
All alone with himself, I believe, on my soul.
He'd manage to get betwixt somebody's
shins,
And pitch him down bodily, all in his sins.
To the grave polar bears sitting round on the
ice.
All shortening their grace, to be in for a slice;
Or, if he found nobody else there to pother.
Why, one of his legs would just trip up the
other.
For there's nothing we read of in torture's
inventions, 250
Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of
intentions.
A terrible fellow to meet in society,
Not the toast that he buttered was ever so
dry at tea;
There he'd sit at the table and stir in his
sugar.
Crouching close for a spring, all the while,
like a cougar;
kBe sure of your facts, of your measures and
weights.
Of your time, — he's as fond as an Arab of
dates;
You'll be telling, perhaps, in your comical
way.
Of something you've seen in the course of the
day;
And, just as you're tapering out the conclu-
sion, 260
You venture an ill-fated classic allusion, —
The girls have all got their laughs ready,
when, whack!
The cougar comes down on your thunder-
struck back!
You had left out a comma, — your Greek's
put in joint.
And pointed at cost of your story's whole
point.
In the course of the evening you find chance
for certain
Soft speeches to Anne, in the shade of the
curtain:
You tell her your heart can be likened to one
flower,
"And that, O most charming of women's the
sunflower.
Which turns" — here a clear nasal voice, to
your terror, 270
From outside the curtain, says, "That's all
an error."
As for him, he's — no matter, he never grew
tender.
Sitting after a ball, with his feet on the fender.
Shaping somebody's sweet features out of
cigar smoke
(Though he'd willingly grant you that such
doings are smoke);
All women he damns with mutahile semper^^
And if ever he felt something like love's dis-
temper,
'Twas tow'rds a young lady who spoke
ancient Mexican,
And assisted her father in making a lexicon;
Though I recollect hearing him get quite
ferocious 280
About Mary Clausum, the mistress of Gro-
tius,^
Or something of that sort, — but, no more to
bore ye
With character-painting, I'll turn to my
story.
1 Always changeable.
2 Mare Clausum (The Enclosure of the Sea) is the
title of a treatise published in 1635 by John Selden, in
answer to Hugo Grotius's Mare Liberum (The Freedom
of the Sea).
666
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
" But stay, here comes Tityrus Griswold,'
and leads on
The flocks whom lie first plucks alive, and
then feeds on, —
A loud-cackling swarm, in whose feathers
warm-dressed,
He goes for as perfect a — swan as the rest.
"There comes Emerson first, whose rich
words, every one,
Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies
on,
Whose prose is grand verse, while his verse,
the lord knows, 290
Ls some of it pr — No,'t is not even prose;
Tm speaking of meters; some poems have
welled
From those rare depths of soul that have
ne'er been excelled;
They're not epics, but that doesn't matter a
pin,
In creating, the only hard thing's to begin;
A grass-blade's no easier to make than an
oak;
If you've once found the way, you've
achieved the grand stroke;
In the worst of his poems are mines of rich
matter,
But thrown in a heap with a crush and a
clatter;
Now it is not one thing nor another alone 300
Makes a poem, but rather the general tone,
The something pervading, uniting the whole.
The before unconceived, unconceivable soul,
So that just in removing this trifle or that,
you
Take away, as it were, a chief limb of the
statue;
Roots, wood, bark, and leaves singly perfect
may be,
But, clapped hodge-podge together, they
don't make a tree.
*' But to come back to Emerson (whom, by
the way,
I believe we left waiting), — his is, we may
say,
A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders,
whose range 310
Has Olympus for one pole, for t'other the
Exchange;
1 R. \N . Griswold, compiler of three anthologies, The
Poets and Poetry of America (1842), The Prose Writers
of America (1847), ^" derniere chemise of a man in a fix \
(As a captain besieged, when his garrison's
small.
Sets up caps upon poles to be seen o'er the
wall); 550
And the women he draws from one model
don't vary.
All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie.
When a character's wanted, he goes to the
task
As a cooper would do in composing a
cask;
He picks out the staves, of their qualities
heedful.
Just hoops them together as tight as is
needful,
And, if the best fortune should crown the
attempt, he
Has made at the most something wooden and
empty.
"Don't suppose I would underrate
Cooper's abilities;
If I thought you'd do that, I should feel
very ill at ease; 560
The men who have given to one character
Hfe
And objective existence are not very rife;
You may number them all, both prose-
writers and singers.
Without overrunning the bounds of your
fingers.
And Natty won't go to oblivion quicker >
Than Adams the parson or Primrose thc>
vicar.
A FABLE FOR CRITICS
671
"There is one thing in Cooper I Hke, too,
and that is
That on manners he lectures his country-
men gratis;
Not precisely so either, because, for a
rarity.
He is paid for his tickets in unpopularity. 570
Now he may overcharge his American
pictures.
But you'll grant there's a good deal of truth
in his strictures;
And I honor the man who is willing to
sink
Half his present repute for the freedom to
think,
And, when he has thought, be his cause
strong or weak,
Will risk t'other half for the freedom to
speak,
Caring naught for what vengeance the mob
has in store.
Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or
lower.
"There are truths you Americans need
to be told.
And it never'll refute them to swagger and
scold; 580
John Bull, looking o'er the Atlantic, in
choler
At your aptness for trade, says you worship
the dollar;
But to scorn such eye-dollar-try's what very
few do,
And John goes to that church as often as
you do.
No matter what John says, don't try to
outcrow him,
'Tis enough to go quietly on and outgrow
him;
Like most fathers. Bull hates to see Number
One
Displacing himself in the mind of his son,
And detests the same faults in himself he'd
neglected
When he sees them again in his child's glass
reflected; 590
To love one another you're too like by
half;
If he is a bull, you're a pretty stout calf.
And tear your own pasture for naught but
to show
What a nice pair of horns you're beginning
to grow.
"There are one or two things I should just
like to hint,
For you don't often get the truth told you
in print;
The most of you (this is what strikes all
beholders)
Have a mental and physical stoop in the
shoulders;
Though you ought to be free as the winds
and the waves.
You've the gait and the manners of run-
away slaves; 600
Though you brag of your New World, you
don't half believe in it;
And as much of the Old as is possible weave
in it;
Your goddess of freedom, a tight, buxom
girl,
With lips like a cherry and teeth like a
pearl.
With eyes bold as Here's, and hair floating
free.
And full of the sun as the spray of the sea.
Who can sing at a husking or romp at a
shearing.
Who can trip through the forests alone
without fearing.
Who can drive home the cows with a song
through the grass.
Keeps glancing aside into Europe's cracked
glass, 610
Hides her red hands in gloves, pinches up
her lithe waist.
And makes herself wretched with trans-
marine taste;
She loses her fresh country charm when she
takes
Any mirror except her own rivers and lakes.
"You steal Englishmen's books and think
Englishmen's thought,
With their salt on her tail your wild eagle
is caught;
Your literature suits its each whisper and
motion
To what will be thought of it over the
ocean;
The cast clothes of Europe your statesman-
ship tries
And mumbles again the old blarneys and
lies; — 620
Forget Europe wholly, your veins throb
with blood.
To which the dull current in hers is but mud;
672
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Let licr siucr, let her say your experiment
• fails.
In her voice there's a tremble e'en now while
she rails,
And your shore will soon be in the nature
of things
Covered thick with gilt drift-wood of cast-
away kings,
Where alone, as it were in a Longfellow's
Her fugitive pieces will find themselves
safe.
O my friends, thank your god, if you have
one, that he
'Twixt the Old World and you set the gulf
of a sea; 630
Be strong-backed, brown-handed, upright
as your pines.
By the scale of a hemisphere shape your
designs.
Be true to yourselves and this new nine-
teenth age,
As a statue by Powers, or a picture by Page,
Plough, sail, forge, build, carve, paint, make
all over new,
To your own New-World instincts contrive
to be true,
Keep your ears open wide to the Future's
first call.
Be whatever you will, but yourselves first
of all,
Stand fronting the dawn on Toil's heaven-
scaling peaks,
And become my new race of more practical
Greeks. 640
Hem! your likeness at present, I shudder
to tell o't,
Is that you have your slaves, and the Greek
had his helot."
Here Miranda^ came up, and said,
"Phoebus! you know
That the infinite Soul has its infinite woe.
As I ought to know, having lived cheek by
jowl.
Since the day I was born, with the Infinite
Soul;
1 Margaret Fuller. Lowell wrote to Brlggs, while
he was at work on the Fable: " I think I shall say noth-
ing about Margaret Fuller (though she offer so fair a
target), because she has done me an ill-natured turn,
I shall revenge myself amply upon her by writing bet-
ter. She is a very foolish, conceited woman, who has
I myself introduced, I myself, 1 alone.
To my Land's better life authors solely my
own,
Who the sad heart of earth on their shoulders
have taken.
Whose works sound a depth by Life's (]uict
unshaken, 6150
Such as Shakespeare, for instance, the Bible,
and Bacon,
Not to mention my own works; Time's
nadir is fleet.
And, as for myself, I'm quite out of con-
ceit —
"Quite out of conceit! I'm enchanted
to hear it,"
Cried Apollo aside. "Who'd have thought
she was near it?
To be sure, one is apt to exhaust those
commodities
One uses too fast, yet in this case as odd
it is
As if Neptune should say to his turbots and
whitings,
'I'm as much out of salt as Miranda's own
writings'
(Which, as she in her own happy manner
has said, 660
Sound a depth, for 'tis one of the functions
of lead).
She often has asked me if I could not find
A place somewhere near me that suited her
mind;
I know but a single one vacant, which she
With her rare talent that way, would fit to
aT.
And it would not imply any pause or
cessation
In the work she esteems her peculiar voca-
tion,—
got together a great deal of information, but not enough
knowledge to save her from being ill-tempered. How-
ever, the temptation may be too strong for me. It
certainly would have been if she had never said any-
thing about me. Even Maria thinks I ought to give
her a line or two." In the end Lowell gave her much
more than a line or two — there are some 20 lines con-
cerning her immediately preceding the passage printed
above — and scarcely concealed the resentment which
animated him. That he realized this is shown by the
fact that he asked Briggs, after it was too late, to omit
the following four lines:
"There is one thing she owns in her own single right.
It is native and genuine — namely, her spite;
Though, when acting as censor, she privately blows
A censer of vanity 'neath her own nose."
A FABLE FOR CRITICS
673
She may enter on duty to-day, if she chooses,
And remain Tirmg-woman for life to the
Muses."
"There comes Poe with his raven, like
Barnaby Rudge, 670
Three fifths of him genius and two fifths
sheer fudge,
Who talks like a book of iambs and pen-
tameters.
In a way to make people of common sense
damn meters.
Who has written some things quite the best
of their kind,
But the heart somehow seems all squeezed
out by the mind,
Who — But hey-day! What's this?
Messieurs Mathews and Poe,
You mustn't fling mud-balls at Longfellow
so.
Does it make a man worse that his char-
acter's such
As to make his friends love him (as you
think) too much?
Why, there is not a bard at this moment
alive 680
More willing than he that his fellows should
thrive;
While you are abusing him thus, eveVi now
He would help either one of you out of a
slough;
You may say that he's smooth and all that
till you're hoarse.
But remember that elegance also is force;
After polishing granite as much as you will.
The heart keeps its tough old persistency
still;
Deduct all you can, that still keeps you at
bay;
Why, he'll live till men weary of Collins and
Gray.
I'm not over-fond of Greek meters in
English, 690
To me rhyme's a gain, so it be not too jing-
lish.
And your modern hexameter verses are no
more
Like Greek ones than sleek Mr. Pope is like
Homer;
As the roar of the sea to the coo of a pigeon
is.
So, compared to your moderns, sounds old
Melesigenes;
I may be too partial, the reason, perhaps,
o't is
That I've heard the old blind man recite his
own rhapsodies.
And my ear with that music impregnate
may be,
Like the poor exiled shell with the soul of
the sea,
Or as one can't bear Strauss when his nature
is cloven 700
To its deeps within deeps by the stroke of
Beethoven;
But, set that aside, and/tis truth that I
speak.
Had Theocritus written in English, not
Greek,
I believe that his exquisite sense would scarce
change a line
In that rare, tender, virgin-like pastoral
Evangeline.
That's not ancient nor modern, its place is
apart
Where time has no sway, in the realm of
pure Art,
'Tis a shrine of retreat from Earth's hubbub
and strife
As quiet and chaste as the author's own life.
''There's Holmes, who is matchless among
you for wit; 710
A Leyden-jar always full-charged, from
which flit
The electrical tingles of hit after hit;
In long poems 'tis painful sometimes, and
invites
A thought of the way the new Telegraph
writes.
Which pricks down its little sharp sentences
spitefully
As if you got more than you'd title to right-
fully.
And you find yourself hoping its wild father
Lightning
Would flame in for a second and give you a
fright'ning.
He has perfect sway of what / call a sham
meter,
But many admire it, the English pen-
tameter, 720
And Campbell, I think, wrote most com-
monly worse.
With less nerve, swing, and fire in the same
kind of verse,
574
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Nor e'er achieved aught in't so worthy of
praise
As the tribute of Hohnes to the grand
Marseillaise.
You went crazy last year over Bulwer's
New Timon; —
Why, if B., to the day of his dying, should
rhyme on,
Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon
tomes,
He could ne'er reach the best point and vigor
of Holmes.
His are just the fine hands, too, to weave
you a lyric
Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with
satyric 730
In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the
toes
That are trodden upon are your own or your
foes'.
"There is Lowell, who's striving Parnassus
to climb
With a whole bale of isms tied together with
rhyme.
He might get on alone, spite of brambles
and boulders.
But he can't with that bundle he has on his
shoulders,
The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh
reaching
Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing
and preaching;
His lyre has some chords that would ring
pretty well,
But he'd rather by half make a drum of the
shell, 740
And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem,
At the head of a march to the last new
Jerusalem."
:tt ***** *
Here the critic came in and a thistle
presented — ^
From a frown to a smile the god's features
relented,
As he stared at his envoy, who, swelling with
pride,
To the god's asking look, nothing daunted,
replied, —
» Turn back now to page — goodness only knows
what,
And take a fresh hold on the thread of my plot.
(Lowell's note.)
"You're surprised, 1 suppose, I was absent
so long.
But your godship respecting the lilies was
wrong;
I hunted the garden from one end to t'other.
And got no reward but vexation and
bother, 750
Till, tossed out with weeds in a corner to
wither.
This one lily I found and made haste to bring
hither."
"Did he think I had given him a book to
review.''
I ought to have known what the fellow
would do,"
Muttered Phoebus aside, "for a thistle will
pass
Beyond doubt for the queen of all flowers
with an ass;
He has chosen in just the same way as he'd
choose
His specimens out of the books he reviews;
And now, as this offers an excellent text,
ril give 'em some brief hints on criticism
next." 760
So, musing a moment, he turned to the
crowd.
And, clearing his voice, spoke as follows
aloud: —
"My friends, in the happier days of the
muse.
We were luckily free from such things as
reviews;
Then naught came between with its fog to
make clearer
The heart of the poet to that of his hearer;
Then the poet brought heaven to the people,
and they
Felt that they, too, were poets in hearing
his lay;
Then the poet was prophet, the past in his J
soul
Precreated the future, both parts of one
whole; 770 I
Then for him there was nothing too great or
too small, J
For one natural deity sanctified all;
Then the bard owned no clipper and meter of
moods
Save the spirit of silence that hovers and
broods
A FABLE FOR CRITICS
67s
O'er the seas and the mountains, the rivers
and woods;
He asked not earth's verdict, forgetting the
clods,
His soul soared and sang to an audience of
gods;
'Twas for them that he measured the
thought and the Hne,
And shaped for their vision the perfect
design,
With as glorious a foresight, a balance as
true, 780
As swung out the worlds in the infinite blue;
Then a glory and greatness invested man's
heart.
The universal, which now stands estranged
and apart.
In the free individual molded, was Art;
Then the forms of the Artist seemed thrilled
with desire
For something as yet unattained, fuller,
higher,
As once with her lips, lifted hands, and eyes
listening.
And her whole upward soul in her coun-
tenance glistening,
Eurydice stood — like a beacon unfired,
Which, once touched with flame, will leap
heav'nward inspired — 790
And waited with answering kindle to mark
The first gleam of Orpheus that pained the
red Dark.
Then painting, song, sculpture did m.ore than
relieve
The need that men feel to create and
believe.
And as, in all beauty, who listens with love
Hears these words oft repeated — 'beyond
and above,'
So these seemed to be but the visible sign
Of the grasp of the soul after things more
divine;
They were ladders the Artist erected to
climb
O'er the narrow horizon of spaca and of
time, 800
And we see there the footsteps by which men
had gained
To the one rapturous glimpse of the never-
attained.
As shepherds could erst sometimes trace in
the sod
The last spurning print of a sky-cleaving
god.
** But now, on the poet's dis-privacied
moods
With do this and do that the pert critic
intrudes;
While he thinks he's been barely fulfilling
his duty
To interpret 'twixt men and their own sense
of beauty.
And has striven, while others sought honor
or pelf,
To make his kind happy as he was him-
self, 810
He finds he's been guilty of horrid offenses
In all kinds of moods, numbers, genders, and
tenses;
He's been ob and jw^jective, what Kettle
calls Pot,
Precisely, at all events, what he ought not.
You have done this, says one judge; done
that, says another;
You should have done this, grumbles one;
that, says t'other;
Never mind what he touches, one shrieks
out Taboo!
And while he is wondering what he shall do.
Since each suggests opposite topics for song.
They all shout together youre right! and
you re wrong
820
"Nature fits all her children with some-
thing to do,
He who would write and can't write, can
surely review,
Can set up a small booth as critic and sell
us his
Petty conceit and his pettier jealousies;
Thus a lawyer's apprentice, just out of his
teens.
Will do for the Jeffrey of six magazines;
Having read Johnson's lives of the poets half
through.
There's nothing on earth he's not com-
petent to;
He reviews with as much nonchalance as h«^
whistles, —
He goes through a book and just picks out
the thistles; 830
It matters not whether he blame or com-
mend.
If he's bad as a foe, he's far worse as a
friend:
Let an author but write what's above his
poor scope,
He goes to work gravely and twists up a rope.
676
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
And, irnitinu; the world to see punishment
done,
Han<;s himself up to bleach m the wind and
the sun;
'Tis delij^htful to see, when a man comes
alon<2;
Who has anything in him peculiar and
strong.
Every cockboat that swims clear its fierce
(pop) gundeck at him,
And make as he passes its ludicrous Peck
at him — " 840
Here Miranda came up and began, "As
to that — "
Apollo at once seized his gloves, cane, and
hat,
And, seeing the place getting rapidly cleared,
I, too, snatched my notes and forthwith
disappeared.
THE WASHERS OF THE
SHROUD 1
Along a river-side, I know not where,
I walked one night in mystery of dream;
A chill creeps curdhng yet beneath my
hair.
To think what chanced me by the pallid
gleam
Of a moon-wraith that waned through
haunted air.
Pale fireflies pulsed within the meadow-
mist
Their halos, wavering thistledowns of light;
The loon, that seemed to mock some goblin
tryst,
Laughed; and the echoes, huddling in
affright.
Like Odin's hounds, fled baying down the
night. 10
1 Written early in October, 1861. Lowell wrote to
Charles Eliot Norton that he composed it in two days'
time, though it had been "in his head" before, in order
to get it in the issue of the Atlantic for November. He
added: "I owe it to you, for the hint came from one
of those books of Souvestre's you lent me — the Breton
legends. ... I began it as a lyric, but it would be too
aphoristic for that, and finally flatly refused to sing
at any price. So I submitted, took to pentameters,
and only hope the thoughts are good enough to be
preserved in the ice of the colder and almost glacier-
slow measure."
Then all was silent, till there smote my ear
A movement m the stream that checked my
breath:
Was it the slow plash of a wading deer?
But something said, "This water is of Death!
The Sisters wash a shroud, — ill thing to
hear!"
I, looking then, beheld the ancient Three
Known to the Greek's and to the North-
man's creed.
That sit in shadow of the mystic Tree,
Still crooning, as they weave their endless
brede.
One song: "Time was, Time is, and Time
shall be." 20
No wrinkled crones were they, as I had
deemed.
But fair as yesterday, to-day, to-morrow,
To mourner, lover, poet, ever seemed;
Something too high for joy, too deep for
sorrow.
Thrilled m their tones, and from their faces
gleamed.
"Still men and nations reap as they have
strawn,"
So sang they, working at their task the
while;
"The fatal raiment must be cleansed ere
dawn:
For Austria? Italy? the Sea-Queen's isle?
O'er what quenched grandeur must our
shroud be drawn? 30
"Or is it for a younger, fairer corse.
That gathered States like children round his
knees.
That tamed the wave to be his posting-
horse.
Feller of forests, linker of the seas,
Bridge-builder, hammerer, youngest son of
Thor's?
"What make we, murmur'st thou? and
what are we?
When empires must be wound, we bring the
shroud.
The time-old web of the implacable Three:
Is it too coarse for him, the young and proud ? J
Earth's mightiest deigned to wear it, — Why "
not he? 40
J
THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD
677
"Is there no hope?" I moaned, "so strong,
so fair!
Our Fowler whose proud bird would brook
erewhile
No rival's swoop in all our western air!
Gather the ravens, then, in funeral file
For him, life's morn yet golden in his hair?
"Leave me not hopeless, ye unpitying
dames!
I see, half seeing. Tell me, ye who scanned
The stars. Earth's elders, still must noblest
aims
Be traced upon oblivious ocean-sands?
Must Hesper join the wailing ghosts of
names?" 50
"When grass-blades stiffen with red battle-
dew.
Ye deem we choose the victor and the slain:
Say, choose we them that shall be leal and
true
To the heart's longing, the high faith of
brain?
Yet there the victory lies, if ye but knew.
"Three roots bear up Dominion: Knowledge,
Will,—
These twain are strong, but stronger yet the
third, —
Obedience, — 'tis the great tap-root that still,
Knit round the rock of Duty, is not stirred.
Though Heaven-loosed tempests spend their
utmost skill. 60
"Is the doom sealed for Hesper? 'Tis
not we
Denounce it, but the Law before all time:
The brave makes danger opportunity;
The waverer, paltering with the chance
sublime.
Dwarfs it to peril: which shall Hesper be?
"Hath he let vultures climb his eagle's seat
To make Jove's bolts purveyors of their
maw?
Hath he the Many's plaudits found more
sweet
Than Wisdom? held Opinion's wind for
Law?
Then let him harken for the doomster's
feet ! 70
" Rough are the steps, slow-hewn in flintiest
rock,
States climb to power by; slippery those
with gold
Down which they stumble to eternal mock:
No chafFerer's hand shall long the scepter
hold,
Who, given a Fate to shape, would sell the
block.
"We sing old Sagas, songs of weal and woe,
Mystic because too cheaply understood;
Dark sayings are not ours; men hear and
know.
See Evil weak, see strength alone in Good,
Yet hope to stem God's fire with walls of
tow. 80
"Time Was unlocks the riddle of Time Is,
That offers choice of glory or of gloom;
The solver makes Time Shall Be surely his.
But hasten. Sisters! for even now the tomb
Grates its slow hinge and calls from the
abyss."
"But not for him," I cried, "not yet for
him.
Whose large horizon, westering, star by star
Wins from the void to where on Ocean's rim
The sunset shuts the world with golden
bar.
Not yet his thews shall fail, his eye grow
dim! 90
"His shall be larger manhood, save for
those
That walk unblenching through the trial-
fires;
Not sufl^ering, but faint heart, is worst of
woes,
And he no base-horn son of craven sires,
Whose eye need blench confronted with his
foes.
"Tears may be ours, but proud, for those
who win
Death's royal purple in the foeman's lines;
Peace, too, brings tears; and mid the battle-
din.
The wiser ear some text of God divines,
For the sheathed blade may rust with darker
sin. 100
67S
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"God, j^ivc us peace! not such as lulls to
sleep.
But sword on thigh, and brow with purpose
knit!
And let our Ship of State to harbor sweep,
Her ports all up, her battle-lanterns lit,
And her leashed thunders gathering for their
an(
pas-
leap!
So cried I with clenched hands
sionate pain,
Thinking of dear ones by Potomac's side;
Again the loon laughed mocking, and again
The echoes bayed far down the night and
died.
While waking I recalled my wandering
brain. no
THE BIGLOW PAPERS ^
SECOND SERIES
THE COURTIN'
God makes sech nights, all white an* still
Fur 'z you can look or listen.
Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill,
All silence an' all glisten.
Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown
An' peeked in thru' the winder,
An' there sot Huldy all alone,
'ith no one nigh to bender.
1 This series of Big/otv Papers was begun in 1862 and
was published as a volume in 1866. The several num-
bers had been printed in the Atlantic. To the volume
Lowell prefixed a long introduction concerning the
Yankee dialect, in the course of which he made the
following explanation: "The only attempt I had ever
made at anything like a pastoral (if that may be called
an attempt which was the result almost of pure acci-
dent) was in The Courtin . While the introduction to
the First Series was going through the press, I received
word from the printer that there was a blank page left
which must be filled. I sat down at once and impro-
vised another fictitious 'notice of the press,' in which,
because verse would fill up space more cheaply than
prose, I inserted an extract from a supposed ballad of
Mr. Biglow. I kept no copy of it, and the printer, as
directed, cut it oflF when the gap was filled. Presently
I began to receive letters asking for the rest of it. . . .
I had none. . . . Afterward, being asked to write it
out as an autograph for the Baltimore Sanitary Com-
mission Fair, I added other verses, into some of which
I infused a little more sentiment in a homely way, and
after a fashion completed it by sketching in the charac-
ters and making a connected story. Most likely I
have spoiled it, but I shall put it at the end of this
Introduction, to answer once for all those kindly
importunings."
A fireplace filled the room's one side
With half a cord o' wood in — 10
Ihere warn't no stoves (tell comfort died)
To bake ye to a puddin'.
Ihe wa'nut logs shot sparkles out
Towards the pootiest, bless her,
An' leetle flames danced all about
The chiny on the dresser.
Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung.
An' in amongst 'em rusted
The ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther Young
Fetched back from Concord busted. 20
The very room, coz she was in,
Seemed warm from floor to ceilin'.
An' she looked full ez rosy agin
Ez the applies she was peelin'.
'T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look
On sech a blessed cretur,
A dogrose blushin' to a brook
Ain't modester nor sweeter.
He was six foot o' man, A i,
Clear grit an' human natur'; 30
None could n't quicker pitch a ton
Nor dror a furrer straighter.
He 'd sparked it with full twenty gals,
Hed squired 'em, danced 'em, druv 'em.
Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells —
All is, he could n't love 'em.
But long o' her his veins 'ould run
All crinkly like curled maple.
The side she breshed felt full o' sun
Ez a south slope in Ap'il. 40
She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing
Ez hisn in the choir;
My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring.
She knozved the Lord was nigher.
An' she 'd blush scarlit, right in prayer.
When her new meetin'-bunnet
Felt somehow thru' its crown a pair
O' blue eyes sot upun it.
Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some!
She seemed to 've gut a new soul, 50
For she felt sartin-sure he 'd come,
Down to her very shoe-sole.
THE BIGLOW PAPERS, SECOND SERIES
679
She heered a foot, an' knowed it tu,
A-raspin' on the scraper, —
All ways to once her feelin's flew
Like sparks in burnt-up paper.
He kin' o' I'itered on the mat,
Some doubtfle o' the sekle,
His heart kep' goin' pity-pat,
But hern went pity Zekle. 60
An' yit she gin her cheer a jerk
Ez though she wished him furder,
An' on her apples kep' to work,
Parin' away like murder.
"You want to see my Pa, I s'pose?"
"Wal ... no ... I come designin'" —
"To see my Ma? She's sprinklin' clo'es
Agin to-morrer's i'nin'."
To say why gals acts so or so.
Or don't, 'ould be presumin'; 70
Mebby to mean yes an' say no
Comes nateral to women.
He stood a spell on one foot fust.
Then stood a spell on t' other,
An' on which one he felt the wust
He could n't ha' told ye nuther.
Says he, "I'd better call agin";
Says she, "Think likely. Mister":
Thet last word pricked him like a pin,
An' . . . Wal, he up an' kist her. 80
When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips,
Huldy sot pale ez ashes.
All kin' o' smily roun' the lips
An' teary roun' the lashes.
For she was jes' the quiet kind
Whose naturs never vary.
Like streams that keep a summer mind
Snowhid in Jenooary.
The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued
Too tight for all expressin', 90
Tell mother see how metters stood,
An' gm 'em both her blessin'.
Then her red come back like the tide
Down to the Bay o' Fundy,
An' all I know is they was cried
In meetin' come nex' Sunday.
NO. VI. SUNTHIN' IN THE PAS-
TORAL LINE
TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
Jaalam, 17th May, 1862.
Gentlemen, — At the special request of Mr.
Biglow, I intended to enclose, together with his
own contribution (into which, at my suggestion,
he has thrown a little more of pastoral sentiment
than usual), some passages from my sermon on
the day of the National Fast, from the text, "Re-
member them that are in bonds, as bound with
them," Hebrews, xiii, 3. But I have not leisure
sufficient at present for the copying of them, even
were I altogether satisfied with the production as
it stands. I should prefer, I confess, to contribute
the entire discourse to the pages of your respect-
able miscellany, if it should be found acceptable
upon perusal, especially as I find the difficulty in
selection of greater magnitude than I had antici-
pated. What passes without challenge in the
fervor of oral delivery, cannot always stand the
colder criticism of the closet. I am not so great
an enemy of Eloquence as my friend Mr. Biglow
would appear to be from some passages in his
contribution for the current month. I would not,
indeed, hastily suspect him of covertly glancing at
myself in his somewhat caustic animadversions,
albeit some of the phrases he girds at are not en-
tire strangers to my lips. I am a more hearty
admirer of the Puritans than seems now to be the
fashion, and believe, that, if they Hebraized a
little too much in their speech, they showed
remarkable practical sagacity as statesmen and
founders. But such phenomena as Puritanism
are the results rather of great religious than of
merely social convulsions, and do not long survive
them. So soon as an earnest conviction has
cooled into a phrase, its work is over, and the
best that can be done with it is to bury it. ItCy
missa est. I am inclined to agree with Mr. Biglow
that we cannot settle the great political questions
which are now presenting themselves to the
nation by the opinions of Jeremiah or Ezekiel as
to the wants and duties of the Jews in their time,
nor do I believe that an entire community with
their feelings and views would be practicable or
even agreeable at the present day. At the same
time I could wish that their habit of subordinating
the actual to the moral, the flesh to the spirit, and
this world to the other, were more common.
They had found out, at least, the great military
secret that soul weighs more than body. — But I
am suddenly called to a sick-bed in the household
of a valued parishioner.
With esteem and respect.
Your obedient servant.
Homer Wilbur.
68o
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Oncf. p;it a stiiell o' musk into a draw,
An' it clings hold like precerdents in law:
Your gra'ma'am put it there, — when, good-
ness knows, —
To jes' this-worldify her Sunday-clo'es;
But the old chist wun't sarve her gran'-
son's wife
(For, 'thout new funnitoor ,wut good in life?),
An' so ole clawfoot, from the precinks dread
O' the spare chamber, slinks into the shed.
Where, dim with dust, it fust or last subsides
To holdin' seeds an' fifty things besides; lo
But better days stick fast in heart an' husk,
An' all you keep in 't gits a scent o' musk.
Jes' so with poets: wut they've airly read
Gits kind o' worked into their heart an'
head.
So 's 't they can't seem to write but jest on
sheers
With furrin countries or played-out ideers,
Nor hev a feelin', ef it doos n't smack
O' wut some critter chose to feel 'way back:
This makes 'em talk o' daisies, larks, an'
things,
Ez though we 'd nothin' here that blows an'
sings 20
(Why, I'd give more for one live bobolink
Than a square mile o' larks in printer's
ink),—
This makes 'em think our fust o' May is
May,
Which 't ain't, for all the almanicks can say.
0 little city-gals, don't never go it
Blind on the word o' noospaper or poet!
They 're apt to puff, an' May-day seldom
looks
Up in the country ez it doos in books;
They 're no more like than hornets'-nests an'
hives.
Or printed sarmons be to holy lives. 30
I, with my trouses perched on cowhide boots,
Tuggin' my foundered feet out by the roots,
Hev seen ye come to fling on April's hearse
Your muslin nosegays from the milliner's,
Puzzlin' to find dry ground your queen to
choose,
An' dance your throats sore in morocker
shoes :
1 've seen ye an' felt proud, thet, come wut
would.
Our Pilgrim stock wuz pethed with hardi-
hood.
Pleasure doos make us Yankees kind o'
winch,
Ez though 't wuz sunthin' paid for by the
inch; 40
But yit we du contrive to worry thru,
Ef Dooty tells us thet the thing's to du.
An' kerry a hollerday, if we set out,
Ez stiddily ez though 't wuz a redoubt.
I, country-born an' bred, know where to
find
Some blooms thet make the season suit the
mind,
An' seem to metch the doubtin' bluebird's
notes, —
Half-vent'rin' liverworts in furry coats,
Bloodroots, whose rolled-up leaves ef you
oncurl.
Each on 'em 's cradle to a baby-pearl, — 50
But these are jes' Spring's pickets; sure
ez sin,
The rebble frosts 'II try to drive 'em in;
For half our May 's so awfully like Mayn't,
't would rile a Shaker or an evrige saint;
Though I own up I like our back'ard
springs
Thet kind o' haggle with their greens 'an
things.
An' when you 'most give up, 'uthout more
words
Toss the fields full o' blossoms, leaves, an'
birds:
Thet 's Northun natur', slow an' apt to
doubt.
But when it doos git stirred, ther' 's no gin-
out! 60
Fust come the blackbirds clatt'rin' in tall
trees.
An' settlin' things in windy Congresses, —
Queer politicians, though, for Ell be skinned
Ef all on 'em don't head aginst the wind,
'fore long the trees begin to show belief, —
The maple crimsons to a coral-reef,
Then safFern swarms swing off from all the
willers
So plump they look like yaller caterpillars.
Then gray hossches'nuts leetle hands unfold
Softer 'n a baby's be at three days old: 70
Thet 's robin-redbreast's almanick; he knows
Thet arter this ther' 's only blossom-snows;
So, choosin' out a handy crotch an' spouse,
He goes to plast'rin' his adobe house.
THE BIGLOW PAPERS, SECOND SERIES
68 1
Then seems to come a hitch, — things lag
behind,
Till some fine mornin' Spring makes up her
mind,
An' ez, when snow-swelled rivers cresh their
dams
Heaped-up with ice thet dovetails in an'
jams,
A leak comes spirtin' thru some pin-hole
cleft.
Grows stronger, fercer, tears out right an'
left, 80
Then all the waters bow themselves an'
come,
Suddin, in one gret slope o' shedderin' foam,
Jes' so our Spring gits everythin' in tune
An' gives one leap from Aperl into June:
Then all comes crowdin' in; afore you
think.
Young oak-leaves mist the side-hill woods
with pink;
The catbird in the laylock-bush is loud;
The orchards turn to heaps o' rosy cloud;
Red-cedars blossom tu, though few folks
know it.
An' look all dipt in sunshine like a poet; 90
The lime-trees pile their solid stacks o' shade
An' drows'ly simmer with the bees' sweet
trade;
In ellum-shrouds the flashin' hangbird
clings
An' for the summer vy'ge his hammock
slings;
All down the loose-walled lanes in archin'
bowers
The barb'ry droops its strings o' golden
flowers.
Whose shrinkin' hearts the school-gals love
to try
With pins, — they '11 worry yourn so, boys,
bimebyl
But I don't love your cat'logue style, — do
you ? —
Ez ef to sell off Natur' by vendoo; 100
One word with blood in 't 's twice ez good ez
two:
'nufF sed, June's bridesman, poet o' the
year,
Gladness on wings, the bobolink, is here;
Half-hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings.
Or climbs aginst the breeze with quiverin'
wings.
Or, givin' way to 't in a mock despair,
Runs down, a brook o' laughter, thru the air.
I ollus feel the sap start in my veins
In Sprmg, with curus heats an' prickly pains,
Thet drive me, when I git a chance, to
walk no
Off by myself to hev a privit talk
With a queer critter thet can't seem to 'gree
Along o' me like most folks, — Mister Me.
Ther' 's times when I'm unsoshle ez a stone,
An' sort o' suffercate to be alone, —
I'm crowded jes' to think thet folks are
An' can't bear nothin' closer than the sky;
Now the wind 's full ez shifty in the mind
Ez wut it is ou'-doors, ef I ain't blind,
An' sometimes, in the fairest sou'west
weather, 120
My innard vane pints east for weeks to-
gether.
My natur' gits all goose-flesh, an' my sins
Come drizzlin' on my conscience sharp ez
pins:
Wal, et sech times I jes' slip out o' sight
An' take it out in a fair stan'-up fight
With the one cuss I can't lay on the shelf,
The crook'dest stick in all the heap, —
Myself.
'T wuz so las' Sabbath arter meetin'-time:
Findin' my feelin's wouldn't noways rhyme
With nobody's, but off the hendle flew 130
An' took things from an east-wind pint o'
view,
I started off to lose me in the hills
Where the pines be, up back o' 'Siah's
Mills:
Pines, ef you're blue, are the best friends I
know.
They mope an' sigh an' sheer your feelin's
so, —
They hesh the ground beneath so, tu, I
swan.
You half-forgit you've gut a body on.
Ther' 's a small school'us' there where four
roads meet.
The door-steps hollered out by little feet.
An' side-posts carved with names whose
owners grew 140
To gret men, some on 'em, an' deacons, tu;
't ain't used no longer, coz the town hez
gut
A high-school, where they teach the Lord
knows wut:
Three-story larnin' 's pop'lar now; I guess
We thriv' ez wal on jes' two stories less,
682
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
For it strikes me tlier' 's sech a thing ez
sinnin'
By overloadin' children's underpinnin':
Wal, here it wuz I larned my A B C,
An' it 's a kind o' favorite spot with me.
We 're curus critters: Now ain't jes' the
minute 150
Thet ever fits us easy while we 're in it;
Long ez 't wuz futur', 't would be perfect
bliss, —
Soon ez it's past, thet time's wuth ten o'
this;
An' yit there ain't a man thet need be told
Thet Now 's the only bird lays eggs o' gold.
A knee-high lad, I used to plot an' plan
An' think 't wuz life's cap-sheaf to be a man;
Now, gittin' gray, there 's nothin' I enjoy
Like dreamin' back along into a boy:
So the ole school'us' is a place I choose 160
Afore all others, ef I want to muse;
I set down where I used to set, an' git
My boyhood back, an' better things with
it,—
Faith, Hope, an' sunthin', ef it is n't Cherrity,
It 's want o' guile, an' thet 's ez gret a
rerrity, —
While Fancy's cushin', free to Prince and
Clown,
Makes the hard bench ez soft ez milk-
weed-down.
Now, 'fore I knowed, thet Sabbath arter-
noon
When I sot out to tramp myself in tune,
I found me in the school'us' on my seat,
Drummin' the march to No-wheres with
my feet. 171
Thinkin' o' nothin', I 've heerd ole folks say
Is a hard kind o' dooty in its way:
It 's thinkin' everythin' you ever knew,
Or ever hearn, to make your feelin's blue.
I sot there tryin' thet on for a spell:
I thought o' the Rebellion, then o' Hell,
Which some folks tell ye now is jest a metter-
for
(A the'ry, p'raps, it wun't feel none the
better for);
I thought o' Reconstruction, wut we'd
win 180
Patchin' our patent self-blow-up agin:
I thought ef this 'ere milkin' o' the wits.
So much a month, warn't givin' Natur'
fits, —
Ef folks warn't druv, findin' their own milk
fail.
To work the cow thet hez an iron tail.
An' ef idees 'thout ripenin' in the pan
Would send up cream to humor ary man:
From this to thet I let my worryin' creep,
1 ill finally I must ha' fell asleep.
Our lives in sleep are some like streams thet
glide 190
'twixt flesh an' sperrit boundin' on each
side.
Where both shores' shadders kind o' mix
an' mingle
In sunthin' thet ain't jes' like either single;
An' when you cast off moorin's from To-
day,
An' down towards To-morrer drift away.
The imiges thet tengle on the stream
Make a new upside-down'ard world o' dream:
Sometimes they seem like sunrise-streaks an'
warnin's
O' wut '11 be in Heaven on Sabbath-mornin's,
An', mixed right in ez ef jest out o' spite,
Sunthin' thet says your supper ain't gone
right. 201
I 'm gret on dreams, an' often when I wake,
I 've lived so much it makes my mem'ry
ache,
An' can't skurce take a cat-nap in my cheer
'thout hevin' 'em, some good, some bad, all
queer.
Now I wuz settin' where V d ben, it seemed.
An' ain't sure yit whether I r'ally dreamed.
Nor, ef I did, how long I might ha' slep'.
When I hearn some un stompin' up the step,
An' lookin' round, ef two an' two make
four, 210
I see a Pilgrim Father in the door.
He wore a steeple-hat, tall boots, an' spurs
With rowels to 'em big ez ches'nut-burs.
An' his gret sword behind him sloped away
Long 'z a man's speech thet dunno wut to
say. —
"Ef your name 's Biglow, an' your given-
name
Hosee," sez he, "it 's arter you I came;
I 'm your gret-gran'ther multiplied by
three." —
"My wut?'* sez I. — "Your gret-gret-gret,"
sez he:
"You would n't ha' never ben here but for
me. ^.20
THE HIGLOW PAPERS, SECOND SERIES
683
Two hundred an' three year ago this May
The ship I come in sailed up Boston Bay;
I 'd been a cunnle in our Civil War, —
But wut on airth hev you gut up one for?
Coz we du things in England, 't ain't for
you
To git a notion you can du 'em tu:
I 'm told you write in public prints: ef
true,
It 's nateral you should know a thing or
two. —
"Thet air 's an argymunt I can't endorse, —
't would prove, coz you wear spurs, you kep'
a horse: 230
For brains," sez I, 'Svutever you may thinks
Ain't boun' to cash the drafs o' pen-an'-
ink, —
Though mos' folks write ez ef they hoped
jes' quickenin'
The churn w-ould argoo skim-milk into
thickenin';
But skim-milk ain't a thing to change its
view
O' wut it 's meant for more 'n a smoky flue.
But du pray tell me, 'fore we furder go.
How in all Natur' did you come to know
'bout our affairs," sez I, "in Kingdom-
Come.''" —
"Wal, I w^orked round at sperrit-rappin*
some, 240
An' danced the tables till their legs wuz
gone,
In hopes o' larnin' wut wuz goin' on,"
Sez he, ''but mejums lie so like all-split
Thet I concluded it wuz best to quit.
But, come now, ef you wun't confess to
knowin'.
You 've some conjectures how the thing 's
a-gom . —
"Gran'ther," sez I, "a vane warn't never
known
Nor asked to hev a jedgment of its own;
An' yit, eft ain't gut rusty in the jints,
It 's safe to trust its say on certin pints:
It knows the wind's opinions to a T, 241
An' the w^nd settles wut the weather 'II
be."
"I never thought a scion of our stock
Could grow the wood to make a weather-
cock;
When I wuz younger 'n you, skurce more 'n
a shaver.
No airthly wind," sez he, "could make me
waver!
(Ez he said this, he clinched his jaw an'
forehead,
Hitchin' his belt to bring his sword-hilt
forrard.) —
"Jes so it wuz with me," sez I, "I swow,
When / wuz younger 'n wut you see me
now, — 250
Nothin' from Adam's fall to Huldy's
bonnet,
Thet I warn't full-cocked with my jedgment
on it;
But now I 'm gittin' on in life, I find
It 's a sight harder to make up my
mind, —
Nor I don't often try tu, when events
Will du it for me free of all expense.
The moral question 's ollus plain enough, —
It' s jes' the human-natur' side thet 's
tough;
Wut 's best to think may n't puzzle me nor
you,—
The pinch comes in decidin' wut to du;
Ef you read History, all runs smooth ez
grease, 261
Coz there the men ain't nothin' more 'n
idees, —
But come to make it, ez we must to-day,
Th' idees hev arms an' legs an' stop the
way:
I t's easy fixin' things in facts an' figgers, —
They can't resist, nor warn't brought up
with niggers;
But come to try your the'ry on, — why,
then
Your facts an' figgers change to ign'ant
men
Actin' ez ugly — " — "Smite 'em hip an'
thigh!"
Sez gran'ther, "and let every man-child
die! 270
Oh for three weeks o' Crommle an' the
Lord!
Up, Isr'el, to your tents an' grind the
sword!" —
"Thet kind o' thing worked wal in ole
Judee,
But you forgit how long it 's ben A. D.;
You think thet 's ellerkence, — I call it
shoddy,
A thing," sez I, "wun't cover soul nor
body;
I like the plain all-wool o' commonsense,
Thet warms ye now, an' will a twelve month
hence.
684
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
You took to follerin' where the Prophets
beckoned,
An', fust you knowed on, back come Charles
the Second; 280
Now wut I want 's to hev all zve pain stick,
An' not to start Millennium too quick;
We hain't to punish only, but to keep,
An' the cure 's gut to go a cent'ry deep."
"Wal, milk-an'-water ain't the best o'
glue,"
Sez he, "an' so you '11 find before you 're
thru;
Ef reshness venters sunthin', shilly-shally
Loses ez often wut 's ten times the vally.
Thet ex of ourn, when Charles's neck gut
split,
Opened a gap thet ain't bridged over yit: 290
Slav'ry 's your Charles, the Lord hez gin the
ex—"
"Our Charles," sez I, "hez gut eight million
necks.
The hardest question ain't the black man's
right,
The trouble is to 'mancipate the white;
One 's chained in body an' can be sot free,
But t' other 's chained in soul to an idee:
It 's a long job, but we shall worry thru it;
Ef bagnets fail, the spellin'-book must du
it."
"Hosee," sez he, "I think you 're goin' to
fail:
The rattlesnake ain't dangerous in the
tail; 300
This 'ere rebellion 's nothin but the rettle, —
You '11 stomp on thet an' think you 've won
the battle;
It 's Slavery thet 's the fangs an 'thinkin'
head.
An' ef you want selvation, cresh it dead, —
An' cresh it suddin, or you '11 lam by waitm'
Thet Chance wun't stop to listen to de-
batin'!" —
"God's truth!" sez I, — "an' ef / held the
club.
An' knowed jes' where to strike, — but there's
the rub!" —
"Strike soon," sez he, "or you '11 be deadly
ailin', —
Folks thet 's afeared to fail are sure o' fail-
in'; 310
God hates your sneakin' creturs thet believe
He '11 settle things they run away an' leave!"
He brought his foot down fercely, ez he spoke.
An' give me sech a startle thet I woke.
ODE RECITED AT THE
HARVARD COMMEMORATION 1
21 July, 1865
Weak-winged is song,
Nor aims at that clear-ethered height
Whither the brave deed climbs for light:
We seem to do them wrong,
Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearse
Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler
verse.
Our trivial song to honor those who come
With ears attuned to strenuous trump and
drum.
And shaped in squadron-strophes their de-
sire.
Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and
fire: 10
Yet sometimes feathered words are strong,
A gracious memory to buoy up and save
From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common
grave
Of the un venturous throng.
II
To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes back
Her wisest Scholars, those who understood
The deeper teaching of her mystic tome.
And offered their fresh lives to make it
good:
1 Written immediately before the service in com-
memoration of the Harvard dead in the Civil War (held
on the date given above), as Lowell explains in the fol-
lowing passage from a letter written in 1886 to R. W.
Gilder: "The passage about Lincoln was not in the
Ode as originally recited, but added immediately after.
More than eighteen months before, however, I had
written about Lincoln in the North American Review —
an article which pleased him. I did divine him earlier
than most men of the Brahmin caste. The Ode itself
was an improvization. Two days before the Com-
memoration I had told my friend Child that it was
impossible — that I was dull as a door-mat. But the
next day something gave me a jog and the whole thing
came out of me with a rush. I sat up all night writing
it out clear, and took it on the morning of the day to
Child. 'I have something, but don't yet know what
it is, or whether it will do. Look at it and tell me.'
He went a little way apart with it under an elm-tree in
the college yard. He read a passage here and there,
brought it back to me, and said, 'Do? I should think
so! Don't you be scared.' And I wasn't, but virtue
enough had gone out of me to make me weak for a fort-
night after."
ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION
685
No lore of Greece or Rome,
No science peddling with the names of
things, 20
Or reading stars to find inglorious fates,
Can lift our life with wings
Far from Death's idle gulf that for the many-
waits,
And lengthen out our dates
With that clear fame whose memory sings
In manly hearts to come, and nerves them
and dilates:
Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all!
Not such the trumpet-call
Of thy diviner mood.
That could thy sons entice 30
From happy homes and toils, the fruitful nest
Of those half-virtues which the world calls
best,
Into War's tumult rude;
But rather far that stern device
The sponsors chose that round thy cradle
stood
In the dim, unventured wood,
The Veritas! that lurks beneath
The letter's unprolific sheath,
Life of whate'er makes life worth living,
Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food, 40
One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the
giving.
Ill
Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil
Amid the dust of books to find her,
Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,
With the cast mantle she hath left behind
her.
Many in sad faith sought for her.
Many with crossed hands sighed for her;
But these, our brothers, fought for her,
At life's dear peril wrought for her.
So loved her that they died for her, 50
Tasting the raptured fleetness
Of her divine completeness:
Their higher instinct knew
Those love her best who to themselves are
true,
And what they dare to dream of, dare to do;
They followed her and found her
Where all may hope to find,
Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind.
But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round
her.
1 The word is inscribed on three open books on the
seal of Harvard University.
Where faith made whole with deed 60
Breathes its awakening breath
Into the lifeless creed.
They saw her plumed and mailed.
With sweet, stern face unveiled.
And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in
death.
IV
Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides
Into the silent hollow of the past;
What is there that abides
To make the next age better for the last?
Is earth too poor to give us 70
Something to live for here that shall out-
live us?
Some more substantial boon
Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's
fickl
e moon r
The little that we see
From doubt is never free;
The little that we do
Is but half-nobly true;
With our laborious hiving
What men call treasure, and the gods call
dross, 79
Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving,
Only secure in every one's conniving,
A long account of nothings paid with loss.
Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen
wires.
After our little hour of strut and rave.
With all our pasteboard passions and desires,
Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires.
Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave.
But stay! no age was e'er degenerate.
Unless men held it at too cheap a rate.
For in our likeness still we shape our
fate. 90
Ah, there is something here
Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer,
Something that gives our feeble light
A high immunity from Night,
Something that leaps life's narrow bars
To claim its birthright with the hosts of
heaven;
A seed of sunshine that can leaven
Our earthy dullness with the beams of
stars.
And glorify our clay
With light from fountains elder than the
Day; 100
A conscience more divine than we,
A gladness fed with secret tears.
6^6
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
A vexing, forward-reaching sense
Of some more noble permanence;
A light across the sea,
Which haunts the soul and will not let it be,
Still beaconing from the heights of undegen-
erate years.
Whither leads the path
To ampler fates that leads?
Not down through flowery meads, no
To reap an aftermath
Of youth's vainglorious weeds,
But up the steep, amid the wrath
And shock of deadly-hostile creeds.
Where the world's best hope and stay
By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way.
And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds.
Peace hath her not ignoble wreath,
Ere yet the sharp, decisive word
Light the black lips of cannon, and the
sword 1 20
Dreams in its easeful sheath;
But some day the live coal behind the
thought,
Whether from Baal's stone obscene,
Or from the shrine serene
Of God's pure altar brought,
Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and pen
Learns with what deadly purpose it was
fraught.
And, helpless in the fiery passion caught.
Shakes all the pillared state with shock of
men:
Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed 130
Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued.
And cries reproachful: "Was it, then, my
praise.
And not myself was loved? Prove now thy
truth;
I claim of thee the promise of thy youth;
Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase.
The victim of thy genius, not its mate!"
Life may be given in many ways.
And loyalty to Truth be sealed
As bravely in the closet as the field.
So bountiful is Fate; 140
But then to stand beside her.
When craven churls deride her.
To front a lie in arms and not to yield,
This shows, methinks, God's plan
And measure of a stalwart man.
Limbed like the old heroic breeds,
Who stands self-poised on manhood's
solid earth,
Not forced to frame excuses for his birth.
Fed from within with all the strength he
needs.
VI
Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 150
Whom late the Nation he had led.
With ashes on her head.
Wept with the passion of an angry grief:
Forgive me, if from present things I turn
To speak what in my heart will beat and
burn.
And hang my wreath on his world-honored
urn.
Nature, they say, doth dote,
And cannot make a man
Save on some worn-out plan.
Repeating us by rote; 160
For him her Old-World molds aside she threw.
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast
Of the unexhausted West,
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new.
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and
true.
How beautiful to see
Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed.
Who loved his charge, but never loved to
lead;
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, J
Not lured by any cheat of birth, 170
But by his clear-grained human worth.
And brave old wisdom of sincerity!
They knew that outward grace is dust;
They could not choose but trust
In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill.
And supple-tempered will
That bent like perfect steel to spring again
and thrust.
His was no lonely mountain-peak of
mind.
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors
blind; 180
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined,
Fruitful and friendly for all human kind.
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest
stars.
Nothing of Europe here.
Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still.
Ere any. names of Serf and Peer
Could Nature's equal scheme deface
And thwart her genial will;
ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION
687
Here was a type of the true elder race,
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us
face to face. 190
I praise him not; it were too late;
And some innative weakness there must be
In him who condescends to victory
Such as the Present gives, and cannot
wait,
Safe in himself as in a fate.
So always firmly he:
He knew to bide his time,
And can his fame abide,
Still patient in his simple faith sublime,
Till the wise years decide. 200
Great captains, with their guns and drums.
Disturb our judgment for the hour.
But at last silence comes;
These all are gone, and, standing like a
tower.
Our children shall behold his fame,
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeeing
man,
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not
blame.
New birth of our new soil, the first Ameri-
can.
VII
Long as man's hope insatiate can discern
Or only guess some more inspiring goal 210
Outside of Self, enduring as the pole,
Along whose .course the flying axles burn
Of spirits bravely-pitched, earth's manlier
brood;
Long as below we cannot find
The meed that stills the inexorable mind;
So long this faith to some ideal Good,
Under whatever mortal names it masks.
Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal mood
That thanks the Fates for their severer
tasks,
Feeling its challenged pulses leap, 220
While others skulk in subterfuges cheap.
And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it
asks.
Shall win man's praise and woman's
love.
Shall be a wisdom that we set above
All other skills and gifts to culture dear,
A virtue round whose forehead we in-
wreathe
Laurels that with a living passion breathe
When other crowns grow, while we twine
them, sear.
What brings us thronging these high rites
to pay,
And seal these hours the noblest of our
year, 230
Save that our brothers found this better
?
wayi
VIII
We sit here in the Promised Land
That flows with Freedom's honey and milk;
But 'twas they won it, sword in hand.
Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk.
We welcome back our bravest and our
best; —
Ah me! not all! some come not with the
rest.
Who went forth brave and bright as any here!
I strive to mix some gladness with my strain,
But the sad strings complain, 240
And will not please the ear:
I sweep them for a paean, but they wane
Again and yet again
Into a dirge, and die away, in pain.
In these brave ranks I only see the gaps,
Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf
wraps,
Dark to the triumph which they died to gain:
Either may others greet the living.
For me the past is unforgiving;
I with uncovered head 250
Salute the sacred dead.
Who went, and who return not. — Say not so!
'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay.
But the high faith that failed not by the way;
Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave;
No ban of endless night exiles the brave;
And to the saner mind
We rather seem the dead that stayed behind.
Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow!
For never shall their aureoled presence
lack: 260
I see them muster in a gleaming row.
With ever-youthful brows that nobler show;
We find in our dull road their shining track;
In every nobler mood
We feel the orient of their spirit glow,
Part of our life's unalterable good.
Of all our saintlier aspiration;
They come transfigured back.
Secure from change in their high-hearted
ways.
Beautiful evermore, and with the rays 270
Of morn on their white Shields of Expecta-
tion!
688
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
IX
But is there hope to save
Even this ethereal essence from the grave ?
What ever 'scaped Obhvion's subtle wrong
Save a few clarion names, or golden threads
of song?
Before my musing eye
The mighty ones of old sweep by,
Disvoiced now and insubstantial things.
As noisy once as we: poor ghosts of kings,
Shadows of empire wholly gone to dust, 280
And many races, nameless long ago,
To darkness driven by that imperious gust
Of ever-rushing Time that here doth blow:
O visionary world, condition strange,
Where naught abiding is but only Change,
Where the deep-bolted stars themselves still
shift and range!
Shall we to more continuance make pre-
tense?
Renown builds tombs; a life-estate is Wit;
And, bit by bit,
The cunning years steal all from us but
woe; 290
Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest
sow.
But, when we vanish hence,
Shall they lie forceless in the dark below,
Save to make green their little length of
sods.
Or deepen pansies for a year or two,
Who now to us are shining-sweet as gods?
Was dying all they had the skill to do?
That were not fruitless: but the Soul resents
Such short-lived service, as if blind events
Ruled without her, or earth could so en-
dure; 3C0
She claims a more divine investiture
Of longer tenure than Fame's airy rents;
Whate'er she touches doth her nature share;
Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air.
Gives eyes to mountains blind.
Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the wind.
And her clear trump sings succor everywhere
By lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind;
For soul inherits all that soul could dare:
Yea, Manhood hath a wider span 310
And larger privilege of life than man.
The single deed, the private sacrifice,
So radiant now through proudly-hidden tears
Is covered up erelong from mortal eyes
With thoughtless drift of the deciduous
years;
But that high privilege that makes all men
peers,
That leap of heart whereby a people rise
Up to a noble anger's height.
And, flamed on by the F'ates, not shrink,
but grow more bright.
That swift validity in noble veins, 320
Of choosing danger and disdaining shame.
Of being set on flame
By the pure fire that flies all contact base.
But wraps its chosen with angelic might,
These are imperishable gains.
Sure as the sun, medicinal as light.
These hold great futures in their lusty reins
And certify to earth a new imperial race.
Who now shall sneer?
Who dare again to say we trace 330
Our lines to a plebeian race?
Roundhead and Cavalier!
Dumb are those names erewhile in battle
loud;
Dream-footed as the shadow of a cloud.
They flit across the ear:
That is best blood that hath most iron in't,
To edge resolve with, pouring without stint
For what makes manhood dear.
Tell us not of Plantagenets,-
Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods
crawl • 340
Down from some victor in a border-brawl!
How poor their outworn coronets.
Matched with one leaf of that plain civic
wreath
Our brave for honor's blazon shall bequeath,
Through whose desert a rescued Nation
sets
Her heel on treason, and the trumpet hears
Shout victory, tingling Europe's sullen ears
With vain resentments and more vain re-
grets!
XI
Not in anger, not in pride,
Pure from passion's mixture rude, 350
Ever to base earth allied.
But with far-heard gratitude.
Still with heart and voice renewed.
To heroes living and dear martyrs dead.
The strain should close that consecrates our
brave.
AN EMBER PICTURE
689
Lift the heart and hft the head!
Lofty be its mood and grave,
Not without a martial ring,
Not without a prouder tread
And a peal of exultation: 360
Little right has he to sing
Through whose heart in such an hour
Beats no march of conscious power,
Sweeps no tumult of elation!
'Tis no Man we celebrate,
By his country's victories great,
A hero half, and half the whim of Fate,
But the pith and marrow of a Nation
Drawing force from all her men.
Highest, humblest, weakest, all, 370
For her time of need, and then
Pulsing it again through them,
Till the basest can no longer cower.
Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall.
Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem.
Come back, then, noble pride., for 'tis her
dower!
How could poet ever tower.
If his passions, hopes, and fears.
If his triumphs and his tears.
Kept not measure with his people? 380
Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and
waves!
Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking
steeple!
Banners, advance with triumph, bend your
staves!
And from every mountain-peak
Let beacon-fire to answering beacon
speak,
Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he,
And so leap on in light from sea to sea.
Till the glad news be sent
Across a kindling continent,
Makmg earth feel more firm and air breathe
braver: 390
**Be proud! for she is saved, and all have
helped to save her!
She that lifts up the manhood of the
poor.
She of the open soul and open door,
With room about her hearth for all man-
kind!
The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more;
From her bold front the helm she doth
unbind.
Sends all her handmaid armies back to
spin.
And bids her navies, that so lately hurled
Their crashing battle, hold their thun-
ders in.
Swimming like birds of calm along the
unharmful shore. 400
No challenge sends she to the elder world,
That looked askance and hated; a light
scorn
Plays o'er her mouth, as round her
mighty knees
She calls her children back, and waits
the morn
Of nobler day, enthroned between her sub-
ject seas."
XII
Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found
release!
Thy God, in these distempered days.
Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His
ways.
And through thine enemies hath wrought thy
peace!
Bow down in prayer and praise! 410
No poorest in thy borders but may now
Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised
brow.
O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more!
Smoothing thy gold of war-disheveled hair
O'er such sweet brows as never other wore,
And letting thy set lips.
Freed from wrath's pale eclipse.
The rosy edges of their smile lay bare,
What words divine of lover or of poet
Could tell our love and make thee know
it, 420
Among the Nations bright beyond compare?
What were our lives without thee?
What all our lives to save thee?
We reck not what we gave thee;
We will not dare to doubt thee.
But ask whatever else, and we will dare!
AN EMBER PICTURE 1
How strange are the freaks of memory!
The lessons of life we forget,
While a trifle, a trick of color.
In the wonderful web is set, —
Set by some mordant of fancy.
And, spite of the wear and tear
Of time or distance or trouble,
Insists on its right to be there.
1 1 Written in 1867.
690
JAMKS RUSSELL LOWELL
A chance had brought us together;
Our talk was of matters-of-course; 10
We were nothing, one to the other,
But a sliort half-hour's resource.
We spoke of French acting and actors,
And their easy, natural way:
Of the weather, for it was raining
As we drove home from the play.
We debated the social nothings
W^e bore ourselves so to discuss;
The thunderous rumors of battle
Were silent the while for us. 20
Arrived at her door, we left her
With a drippingly hurried adieu.
And our wheels went crunching the gravel
Of the oak-darkened avenue.
As we drove away through the shadow,
The candle she held in the door
From rain-varnished tree-trunk to tree-trunk
Flashed fainter, and flashed no more; —
Flashed fainter, then wholly faded
Before we had passed the wood; 30
But the light of the face behind it
Went with me and stayed for good.
The vision of scarce a moment.
And hardly marked at the time,
It comes unbidden to haunt me.
Like a scrap of ballad-rhyme.
Had she beauty? Well, not what they call so;
You may find a thousand as fair;
And yet there's her face in my memory
With no special claim to be there. 40
As I sit sometimes in the twilight.
And call back to life in the coals
Old faces and hopes and fancies
Long buried (good rest to their souls!),
Her face shines out in the embers;
I see her holding the light,
And hear the crunch of the gravel
And the sweep of the rain that night.
*Tis a face that can never grow older.
That never can part with its gleam,
'Tis a gracious possession forever,
For is it not all a dream .^
50
LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL
IN ITALY AND ELSEW^HERE ^
IV. A FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC
Byron hit the white, which he often shot
very wide of in his Italian Guide Book, when
he called Rome "my country." But it is a
feeling which comes to one slowly, and is
absorbed into one's system during a long
residence. Perhaps one does not feel it till
one has gone away, as things always seem
fairer when we look back at them, and it is
out of that inaccessible tower of the past that
Longing leans and beckons. However it be.
Fancy gets a rude shock at entering Rome,
which it takes her a great while to get over.
She has gradually made herself believe that
she is approaching a city of the dead, and has
seen nothing on the road from Civita Vecchia
to disturb that theory. Milestones, with
"Via Aurelia" carved upon them, have con-
firmed it. It is eighteen hundred years ago
with her, and on the dial of time the shadow
has not yet trembled over the line that marks
the beginning of the first century. She
arrives at the gate, and a dirty, blue man,
with a cocked hat and a white sword-belt,
asks for her passport. Then another man, as
like the first as one spoon is like its fellow,
and having, like him, the look of being run in
a mold, tells her that she must go to the
custom-house. It is as if a ghost, who had
scarcely recovered from the jar of hearing
Charon say, "I'll trouble you for your
obolus, if you please," should have his port-
manteau seized by the Stygian tide-waiters
to be searched. Is there anything, then, con-
traband of death.'' asks poor Fancy of her-
self.
But it is the misfortune (or the safeguard)
of the English mind that Fancy is always an
outlaw, liable to be laid by the heels wherever
Constable Common Sense can catch her. She
submits quietly as the postilion cries, " Yee-
ipf" cracks his whip, and the rattle over the
pavement begins, struggles a moment when
the pillars of the colonnade stalk ghostly by
in the moonlight, and finally gives up all for
' First published in Graham s Magazine in 1854, the
fruit of a period of about 15 months spent by Lowell
and his wife in Europe in 1 851 -1852. The Journal is
printed in 4 parts, the three preceding the one given
above being entitled: At Sea, In the Mediterranean, and
Italy.
LEAVES FROM MY JOl RNAL IN ITALY AND ELSEWHERE 691
lost when she sees Bernini's angels polking
on their pedestals along the sides of the
Ponte Sant' Angelo with the emblems of the
Passion in their arms.
You are in Rome, of course; the sbirro 1 said
so, the doganiere"^ bowed it, and the postilion
swore it; but it is a Rome of modern houses,
muddy streets, dingy cajjes^ cigar-smokers,
and French soldiers, the manifest junior of
Florence. And yet full of anachronisms, for
in a little while you pass the column of Anto-
ninus, find the Dogana^ in an ancient temple
whose furrowed pillars show through the
recent plaster, and feel as if you saw the
statue of Minerva in a Paris bonnet. You
are driven to a hotel where all the barbarian
languages are spoken in one wild conglomer-
ate by the Commissionnaire, have your dinner
wholly in French, and wake the next morning
dreaming of the Tenth Legion, to see a regi-
ment of Chasseurs de Vincennes trotting by.
For a few days one undergoes a tremen-
dous recoil. Other places have a distinct
meaning. London is the visible throne of
King Stock; Versailles is the apotheosis of
one of Louis XIV's cast periwigs; Florence
and Pisa are cities of the Middle Ages; but
Rome seems to be a parody upon itself. The
ticket that admits you to see the starting of
the horses at carnival has S. P. Q. R. at the
top of it, and you give the custode a paul for
showing you the wolf that suckled Romulus
and Remus. The Senatus seems to be a score
or so of elderly gentlemen in scarlet, and the
Populusque Romanus a swarm of nasty
friars.
But there is something more than mere
earth in the spot where great deeds have
been done. The surveyor cannot give the
true dimensions of Marathon or Lexington,
for they are not reducible to square acres.
Dead glory and greatness leave ghosts behind
them, and departed empire has a metem-
psychosis, if nothing else has. Its spirit
haunts the grave, and waits, and waits till
at last it finds a body to its mind, slips into
it, and historians moralize on the fluctuation
of human affairs. By and by, perhaps,
enough observations will have been recorded
to assure us that these recurrences are firma-
mental, and historionomers will have meas-
1 Policeman.
* Custom-house officer.
' Custom-bureau.
ured accurately the sidereal years of races.
When that is once done, events will move
with the quiet of an orrery, and natrons will
consent to their peridynamis and apodynamis
with planetary composure.
Be this as it may, you become gradually
aware of the presence of this imperial ghost
among the Roman ruins. You receive hints
and startles of it through the senses first, as
the horse always shies at the apparition
before the rider can see it. Then, little by
little, you become assured of it, and seem
to hear the brush of its mantle through some
hall of Caracalla's baths, or one of those
other solitudes of Rome. And those soli-
tudes are without a parallel; for it is not the
mere absence of man, but the sense of his
departure, that makes a profound loneliness.
Musing upon them, you cannot but feel the
shadow of that disembodied empire, and,
remembering how the foundations of the
Capitol were laid where a human head was
turned up, you are impelled to prophesy that
the Idea of Rome will incarnate itself again
as soon as an Italian brain is found large
enough to hold it, and to give unity to those
discordant members.
But, though I intend to observe no regular
pattern in my Roman mosaic, which will
resemble more what one finds in his pockets
after a walk, — a pagan cube or two from the
palaces of the Caesars, a few Byzantine bits,
given with many shrugs of secrecy by a lay-
brother at San Faolofuori le muruy^ and a few
more (quite as ancient) from the manufac-
tory at the Vatican, — it seems natural to
begin what one has to say of Rome with
something about St. Peter's; for the saint sits
at the gate here as well as in Paradise.
It is very common for people to say that
they are disappointed in the first sight of
St. Peter's; and one hears much the same
about Niagara. I cannot help thinking that
the fault is in themselves; and that if the
church and the cataract were in the habit of
giving away their thoughts with that rash
generosity which characterizes tourists, they
might perhaps say of their visitors, "Well,
if yow are those Men of whom we have heard
so much, we are a little disappointed, to tell
the truth!" The refined tourist expects
somewhat too much when he takes it for
Beyond the walls (of the city).
692
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
granted that St. Peter's will at once decorate
him with the order of imagination, just as
Victoria knights an alderman when he pre-
sents an address. Or perhaps he has been
getting up a little architecture on the road
from Florence, and is discomfited because
he does not know whether he ought to be
pleased or not, which is very much as if he
should wait to be told whether it was fresh
water or salt which makes the exhaustless
grace of Niagara's emerald curve, before he
benignly consented to approve. It would be
wiser, perhaps, for him to consider whether,
if Michael Angelo had had the building of
him, his own personal style would not have
been more impressive.
It is not to be doubted that minds are of
as many different orders as cathedrals, and
that the Gothic imagination is vexed and
discommoded in the vain endeavor to flatten
its pinnacles, and fit itself into the round
Roman arches. But if it be impossible for a
man to like everything, it is quite possible
for him to avoid being driven mad by what
does not please him; nay, it is the imperative
duty of a wise man to find out what that
secret is which makes a thing pleasing to
another. In approaching, St. Peter's, one
must take his Protestant shoes off his feet,
and leave them behind him, in the Piazza
Rusticucci. Otherwise the great Basilica,
with those outstretching colonnades of Bra-
mante, will seem to be a bloated spider lying
in wait for him, the poor heretic fly. As he
lifts the heavy leathern flapper over the door,
and is discharged into the interior by its
impetuous recoil, let him disburthen his mind
altogether of stone and mortar, and think
only that he is standing before the throne of
a dynasty which, even in its decay, is the
most powerful the world ever saw. Mason-
work is all very well in itself, but it has
nothing to do with the affair at present in
hand.
Suppose that a man in pouring down a
glass of claret could drink the South of
France, that he could so disintegrate the
wine by the force of imagination as to taste
in it all the clustered beauty and bloom of
the grape, all the dance and song and sun-
burnt jollity of the vintage. Or suppose that
in eating bread he could transubstantiate it
with the tender blade of spring, the gleam-
flitted corn-ocean of summer, the royal
autumn, with its golden beard, and the merry
funerals of harvest. This is what the great
poets do for us, we cannot tell how, with their
fatally-chosen words, crowding the happy
veins of language again with all the life and
meaning and music that had been dribbling
away from them since Adam. And this is
what the Roman Church does for religion,
feeding the soul not with the essential reli-
gious sentiment, not with a drop or two of
the tincture of worship, but making us feel
one by one all those original elements of which
worship is composed; not bringing the end
to us, but making us pass over and feel
beneath our feet all the golden rounds of the
ladder by which the climbing generations
have reached that end; not handing us dryly
a dead and extinguished Q. E. D., but letting
it rather declare itself by the glory with which
it interfuses the incense-clouds of wonder and
aspiration and beauty in which it is veiled.
The secret of her power is typified in the mys-
tery of the Real Presence. She is the only
church that has been loyal to the heart and
soul of man, that has clung to her faith in the
imagination, and that would not give over
her symbols and images and sacred vessels
to the perilous keeping of the iconoclast
Understanding. She has never lost sight of
the truth, that the product human nature is
composed of the sum of flesh and spirit, and
has accordingly regarded both this world and
the next as the constituents of that other
world which we possess by faith. She knows
that poor Panza, the body, has his kitchen
longings and visions, as well as Quixote, the
soul, his ethereal, and has wit enough to
supply him with the visible, tangible raw
material of imagination. She is the only
poet among the churches, and, while Protes-
tantism is unrolling a pocket surveyor's-plan,
takes her votary to the pinnacle of her temple,
and shows him meadow, upland, and tillage,
cloudy heaps of forest clasped with the river's
jeweled arm, hillsides white with the per-
petual snow of flocks, and, beyond all, the
interminable heave of the unknown ocean.
Her empire may be traced upon the map by
the boundaries of races; the understanding is
her great foe; and it is the people whose
vocabulary was incomplete till they had in-
vented the archword Humbug that defies
her. With that leaden bullet John Bull can
bring down Sentiment when she flies her
LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL IN ITALY AND ELSEWHERE
693
highest. And the more the pity for John Bull.
One of these days some one whose eyes
are sharp enough will read in the Times a
standing advertisement, "Lost, strayed, or
stolen from the farmyard of the subscriber
the valuable horse Pegasus. Probably has
on him part of a new plough-harness, as that is
also missing. A suitable reward, /?/c. J. Bull."
Protestantism reverses the poetical pro-
cess I have spoken of above, and gives not
even the bread of life, but instead of it the
alcohol, or distilled intellectual result. This
was very well so long as Protestantism con-
tinued to protest; for enthusiasm sublimates
the understanding into imagination. But
now that she also has become an establish-
ment, she begins to perceive that she made
a blunder in trusting herself to the intellect
alone. She is beginning to feel her way back
again, as one notices in Puseyism, and other
such hints. One is put upon reflection when
one sees burly Englishmen, who dine on beef
and porter every day, marching proudly
through St. Peter's on Palm Sunday, with
those frightfully artificial palm-branches in
their hands. Romanism wisely provides for
the childish in men.
Therefore I say again, that one must lay
aside his Protestantism in order to have a
true feeling of St. Peter's. Here in Rome is
the laboratory of that mysterious enchant-
ress, who has known so well how to adapt
herself to all the wants, or, if you will, the
weaknesses of human nature, making the
retirement of the convent-cell a merit to
the solitary, the scourge or the fast a piety to
the ascetic, the enjoyment of pomp and music
and incense a religious act in the sensual, and
furnishing for the very soul itself a confidante
in that ear of the dumb confessional, where
it may securely disburthen itself of its sins
and sorrows. And the dome of St. Peter's is
the magic circle within which she works her
most potent incantations. I confess that
I could not enter it alone without a kind of
awe.
But, setting entirely aside the effect of this
church upon the imagination, it is wonderful,
if one consider it only materially. Michael
Angelo created a new world in which every-
thing was colossal, and it might seem that he
built this as a fit temple for those gigantic
figures with which he peopled it to worship
iin. Here his Moses should be high-priest,
the service should be chanted by his proph-
ets and sibyls, and those great pagans should
be brought hither from San Lorenzo in
Florence, to receive baptism.
However unsatisfactory in other matters,
statistics are of service here. I have seen a
refined tourist who entered, Murray in hand,
sternly resolved to have St. Peter's look
small, brought to terms at once by being
told that the canopy over the high altar
(looking very like a four-post bedstead) was
ninety-eight feet high. If he still obstinates
himself, he is finished by being made to
measure one of the marble putti,^ which look
like rather stoutish babies, and are found to
be six feet, every sculptor's son of them. This
ceremony is the more interesting, as it enables
him to satisfy the guide of his proficiency in
the Italian tongue by calling them putty at
every convenient opportunity. Otherwise
both he and his assistant terrify each other
into mutual unintelligibility with that lingua
franca of the English-speaking traveler, which
is supposed to bear some remote aflinity to
the French language, of which both parties
are as ignorant as an American Ambassador.
Murray gives all these little statistical
nudges to the Anglo-Saxon imagination; but
he knows that its finest nerves are in the
pocket, and accordingly ends by telling you
how much the church cost. I forget how
much it is; but it cannot be more, I fancy,
than the English national debt multiplied
into itself three hundred and sixty-five times.
If the pilgrim, honestly anxious for a sensa-
tion, will work out this little sum, he will be
sure to receive all that enlargement of the
imaginative faculty which arithmetic can
give him. Perhaps the most dilating fact,
after all, is that this architectural world has
also a separate atmosphere, distinct from
that of Rome by some ten degrees, and un-
varying through the year.
I think that, on the whole, Jonathan gets
ready to be pleased with St. Peter's sooner
than Bull. Accustomed to our lath and
plaster expedients for churches, the portable
sentry-boxes of Zion, mere solidity and per-
manence are pleasurable in themselves; and
if he get grandeur also, he has Gospel
measure. Besides, it is easy for Jonathan to
travel. He is one drop of a fluid mass, who
Boys.
694
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
knows where liis home is to-day, but can
make no puess of where it may be to-
morrow. Even in a form of government
he only takes lodgmgs for the nip;ht, and is
ready to pay his bill and be oft in the morn-
ing. He should take his motto from liishop
Golias's " Mi/ii est propositum in tahernd
vioriy'^ though not m the sufistic sense of that
misunderstood Churchman. But Hull can
seldom be said to travel at all, since the first
step of a true traveler is out of himself. He
plays cricket and hunts foxes on the Cam-
pagna, makes entries in his betting-book
while the Pope is giving his benediction, and
points out Lord Calico to you awfully during
the Sistine Miserere. If he let his beard
grow, it always has a startled air, as if it
suddenly remembered its treason to Sheffield,
and only makes him look more English than
ever. A masquerade is impossible to him,
and his fancy balls are the solemnest facts in
the world. Accordingly, he enters St. Peter's
with the dome of St. Paul's drawn tight over
his eyes, like a criminal's cap, and ready for
instant execution rather than confess that the
English Wren had not a stronger wing than
the Italian Angel. I like this in Bull, and it
renders him the pleasantest of traveling-
companions; for he makes you take England
along with you, and thus you have tw^o
countries at once. And one must not forget
in an Italian inn that it is to Bull he owes the
clean napkins and sheets, and the privilege
of his morning bath. Nor should Bull him-
self fail to remember that he ate with his
fingers till the Italian gave him a fork.
Browning has given the best picture of
St. Peter's on a festival-day, sketching it
with a few verses in his large style. And
doubtless it is the scene of the grandest spec-
tacles which the world can see in these latter
days. Those Easter pomps, where the
antique w'orld marches visibly before you in
gilded mail and crimson doublet, refresh the
eyes, and are good so long as they continue
to be merely spectacle. But if one think for
a moment of the servant of the servants of
the Lord in cloth of gold, borne on men's
shoulders, or of the children receiving the
blessing of their Holy Father, with a regi-
ment of French soldiers to protect the father
from the children, it becomes a little sad.
1 1 intend to die in a tavern.
If one would feel the full meaning of those
ceremonials, however, let him consider the
coincidences between the Romish and the
Buddhist forms of worship, and remembering
that the Pope is the direct heir, through the
Pontifex Maximus, of rites that were ancient
when the Etruscans were modern, he will look
with a feeling deeper than curiosity upon
forms which record the earliest conquests of
the Invisible, the first triumphs of mind over
muscle.
To me the noon silence and solitude of
St. Peter's were most impressive, when the
sunlight, made visible by the mist of the
ever-burning lamps in which it was entangled,
hovered under the dome like the holy dove
goldenly descending. Very grand also is
the twilight, when all outlines melt into
mysterious vastness, and the arches expand
and lose themselves in the deepening
shadow. Then, standing in the desert
transept, you hear the far-off^ vespers swell
and die like low breathings of the sea on
some conjectured shore.
As the sky is supposed to scatter its golden
star-pollen once every year in meteoric
showers, so the dome of St. Peter's has its
annual eflHorescence of fire. This illumina-
tion is the great show of Papal Rome. Just
after sunset, I stood upon the Trinita dei
Monti and saw the little drops of pale light
creeping downward from the cross and trick-
ling over the dome. Then, as the sky dark-
ened behind, it seemed as if the setting
sun had lodged upon the horizon and there
burned out, the fire still clinging to his massy
ribs. And when the change from the silver
to the golden illumination came, it was as if
the breeze had fanned the embers into flame
again.
Bitten wath the Anglo-Saxon gadfly that
drives us all to disenchant artifice, and see
the springs that fix it on, I walked down to
get a nearer look. My next glimpse was from
the bridge of Sant' Angelo; but there was no
time nor space for pause. Foot-passengers
crowding hither and thither, as they heard
the shout of Avanti! from the mile of coach-
men behind, dragoon-horses curtsying back-
ward just where there were most women and
children to be flattened, and the dome draw-
ing all eyes and thoughts the wrong way,
made a hubbub to be got out of at any
desperate hazard. Besides, one could not
LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL IN ITALY AND ELSEWHERE
695
help feeling nervously hurried; for it seemed
quite plain to everybody that this starry
apparition must be as momentary as it was
wonderful, and that we should find it van-
ished when we reached the piazza. But sud-
denly you stand in front of it, and see the
soft travertine of the front suffused with a
tremulous, glooming glow, a mildened glory,
as if the building breathed, and so transmuted
its shadow into soft pulses of light.
After wondering long enough, I went back
to the Pincio, and watched it for an hour
longer. But I did not wish to see it go out.
It seemed better to go home and leave it still
trembling, so that I could fancy a kind of per-
manence in it, and half believe I should find
it there again some lucky evening. Before
leaving it altogether, I went away to cool my
eyes with darkness, and came back several
times; and every time it was a new miracle,
the more so that it was a human piece of
faery-work. Beautiful as fire is in itself, I
suspect that part of the pleasure is meta-
physical, and that the sense of playing with
an element which can be so terrible adds to
the zest of the spectacle. And then fire is
not the least degraded by it, because it is not
utilized. If beauty were in use, the factory
would add a grace to the river, and we should
turn from the fire-writing on the wall of
heaven to look at a message printed by the
magnetic telegraph. There may be a beauty
in the use itself; but utilization is always
downward, and it is this feelmg that makes
Schiller's Pegasus in yoke so universally
pleasing. So long as the curse of work clings
to man, he will see beauty only in play. The
capital of the most frugal commonwealth in
the world burns up five thousand dollars a
year in gunpowder, and nobody murmurs.
Provident Judas wished to utilize the oint-
ment, but the Teacher would rather that it
should be wasted in poem.
The best lesson in aesthetics I ever got (and,
like most good lessons, it fell from the lips of
no regular professor) was from an Irishman
on the day the Nymph Cochituate was for-
mally introduced to the people of Boston. I
made one with other rustics in the streets,
admiring the dignitaries in coaches with as
much Christian charity as is consistent with
an elbow in the pit of one's stomach and a heel
on that toe which is your only inheritance
from two excellent grandfathers. Among
other allegorical phenomena, there came
along what I should have called a hay-cart, if
I had not known it was a triumphal car, filled
with that fairest variety of mortal grass
which with us is apt to spindle so soon into a
somewhat sapless womanhood. Thirty-odd
young maidens in white gowns, with blue
sashes and pink wreaths of French crape,
represented the United States. (How shall
we limit our number, by the way, if ever
Utah be admitted?) The ship, the printing-
press, even the wondrous train of express-
wagons, and other solid bits of civic fantasy,
had left my Hibernian neighbor unmoved.
But this brought him down. Turning to me,
as the most appreciative public for the
moment, with face of as much delight as if his
head had been broken, he cried, "Now this
is raly beautiful! Tothally regyardless uv
expinse!" Methought my shirt-sleeved lec-
turer on the Beautiful had hit at least one
nail full on the head. Voltaire but epigram-
matized the same thought when he said,
Le superfluy chose tres-necessaire.
As for the ceremonies of the Church, one
need not waste time in seeing many of them.
There is a dreary sameness in them, and one
can take an hour here and an hour there, as
it pleases him, just as sure of finding the same
pattern as he would be in the first or last yard
of a roll of printed cotton. For myself, I do
not like to go and look with mere curiosity
at what is sacred and solemn to others. To
how many these Roman shows are sacred, I
cannot guess; but certainly the Romans do
not value them much. I walked out to the
grotto of Egeria on Easter Sunday, that I
might not be tempted down to St. Peter's to
see the mockery of Pio Nono's benediction.
It is certainly Christian, for he blesses them
that curse him, and does all the good which
the waving of his fingers can do to people
who would use him despitefully if they had
the chance. I told an Italian servant she
might have the day; but she said she did not
care for it.
" But," urged I, "will you not go to receive
the blessing of the Holy Father.?'*
"No, sir."
"Do you not wish it.'"'
"Not in the least; his blessing would do
me no good. If I get the blessing of Heaven,
it will serve my turn."
6g6
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
There were three fnmihes of foreigners in
our house, and I beHeve none of the Italian
servants went to St. Peter's that day. Yet
they commonly speak kindly of Pius. I have
henrd the same phrase from several Italians
of the working-class. "He is a good man,"
they said, "but ill-led."
What one sees in the streets of Rome is
worth more than what one sees in the
churches. The churches themselves are
generally ugly. St. Peter's has crushed all
the life out of architectural genius, and all
the modern churches look as if they were
swelling themselves in imitation of the great
Basilica. There is a clumsy magnificence
about them, and their heaviness oppresses.
Their marble incrustations look like a kind
of architectural elephantiasis, and the parts
are puffy with a dropsical want of proportion.
There is none of the spring and soar which
one may see even in the Lombard churches,
and a Roman column standing near one of
them, slim and gentlemanlike, satirizes
silently their tawdry parvenu'ism. Attempts at
mere bigness are ridiculous in a city where the
Colosseum still yawns in crater-like ruin, and
where Michael Angelo made a noble church
out of a single room in Diocletian's baths.
Shall I confess it.^ Michael Angelo seems
to me, in his angry reaction against senti-
mental beauty, to have mistaken bulk and
brawn for the antithesis of feebleness. He
is the apostle of the exaggerated, the Victor
Hugo of painting and sculpture. I have a
feeling that rivalry was a more powerful
motive with him than love of art, that he had
the conscious intention to be original, which
seldom leads to anything better than being
extravagant. The show of muscle proves
strength, not power; and force for mere
force's sake in art makes one think of Milo
caught in his own log. This is my second
thought, and strikes me as perhaps some-
what niggardly toward one in whom you
cannot help feeling there was so vast a pos-
sibility. And then his Eve, his David, his
Sibyls, his Prophets, his Sonnets! Well, I
take it all back, and come round to St. Peter's
again just to hint that I doubt about domes.
In Rome they are so much the fashion that
I felt as if they were the goiter of architec-
ture. Generally they look heavy. Those on
St. Mark's in Venice are the only light ones
I ever saw, and they look almost airy, like
tents puffed out with wind. I suppose cne
must be satisfied with the interior effect,
which is certainly noble in St. Peter's. But
for impressiveness both within and without
there is nothing like a Gothic cathedral for
me, nothmg that crowns a city so nobly, or
makes such an island of twilight silence in
the midst of its noonday clamors.
Now as to what one sees in the streets, the
beggars are certainly the first things that
draw the eye. Beggary is an institution here.
The Church has sanctified it by the estab-
lishment of mendicant orders, and indeed it
is the natural result of a social system where
the non-producing class makes not only the
laws, but the ideas. The beggars of Rome
go far toward proving the diversity of origin
in mankind, for on them surely the curse of
Adam never fell. It is easier to fancy that
Adam Faurien, the first tenant of the Fool's
Paradise, after sucking his thumbs for a
thousand years, took to wife Eve Faniente^
and became the progenitor of this race, to
whom also he left a calendar in which three
hundred and sixty-five days in the year were
made feasts, sacred from all secular labor.
Accordingly, they not merely do nothing,
but they do it assiduously and almost with
religious fervor. I have seen ancient mem-
bers of this sect as constant at their accus-
tomed street-corner as the bit of broken
column on which they sat; and when a man
does this in rainy weather, as rainy weather
is in Rome, he has the spirit of a fanatic and
martyr.
It is not that the Italians are a lazy people.
On the contrary, I am satisfied that they are
industrious so far as they are allowed to be.
But, as I said before, when a Roman does
nothing, he does it in the high Roman fashion.
A friend of mine was having one of his rooms
arranged for a private theater, and sent for
a person who was said to be an expert in the
business to do it for him. After a day's trial,
he was satisfied that his lieutenant was rather
a hindrance than a help, and resolved to dis-
miss him.
"What is your charge for your day's ser-
Vices r
"Two scudi, sir."
"Two scudi! Five pauls would be too
much. You have done nothing but stand
with your hands in your pockets and get in
the way of other people."
LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL IN ITALY AND ELSEWHERE
697
"Lordship is perfectly right; but that is
my way of vvorkina;."
It is impossible for a stranger to say who
may not beg in Rome. It seems to be a sud-
den madness that may seize any one at the
sight of a foreigner. You see a very respect-
able-looking person in the street, and it is
odds but, as you pass him, his hat comes off,
his whole figure suddenly dilapidates itself,
assuming a tremble of professional weakness,
and you hear the everlasting qualche cosa per
caritd! You are in doubt whether to drop a
bajoccho into the next cardinal's hat which
offers you its sacred cavity in answer to your
salute. You begin to believe that the hat
was invented for the sole purpose of engulfing
coppers, and that its highest type is the great
Triregno itself, into which the pence of Peter
rattle.
But you soon learn to distinguish the estab-
lished beggars, and to the three professions
elsewhere considered liberal you add a fourth
for this latitude, — mendicancy. Its profes-
sors look upon themselves as a kind of guild
w^hich ought to be protected by the govern-
ment. I fell into talk with a woman who
begged of me in the Colosseum. Among
other things she complained that the
government did not at all consider the
poor.
"Where is the government that does?" I
said.
'^ Eh gid! Excellency; but this government
lets beggars from the country come into
Rome, which is a great injury to the trade of
us born Romans. There is Beppo, for exam-
ple; he is a man of property in his own town,
and has a dinner of three courses every day.
He has portioned two daughters with three
thousand scudi each, and left Rome during
the time of the Republic with the rest of the
nobility."
At first, one is shocked and pained at the
exhibition of deformities in the street. But
by and by he comes to look upon them with
;ittle more emotion than is excited by seeing
the tools of any other trade. The melan-
choly of the beggars is purely a matter of
business; and they look upon their maims as
Fortunatus purses, which will always give
them money. A withered arm they present
to you as a highwayman would his pistol;
a goiter is a life-annuity; a St. Vitus dance is
as good as an engagement as prima ballerina
at the Apollo; and to have no legs at all is to
stand on the best footing with fortune. They
are a merry race, on the whole, and quick-
witted, like the rest of their countrymen. I
believe the regular fee for a beggar is a
quattrinoy about a quarter of a cent; but they
expect more of foreigners. A friend of mine
once gave one of these tiny coins to an old
woman; she delicately expressed her resent-
ment by exclaiming, "Thanks, signoria.
God will reward even you!"
A begging friar came to me one day with
a subscription for repairing his convent.
"Ah, but I am a heretic," said I. "Un-
doubtedly," with a shrug, implying a respect-
ful acknowledgment of a foreigner's right to
choose warm and dry lodgings in the other
world as well as in this, "but your money is
perfectly orthodox."
Another favorite way of doing nothing is
to excavate the Forum. I think the Fani-
entes like this all the better, because it seems
a kind of satire upon work, as the witches
parody the Christian offices of devotion at
their Sabbath. A score or so of old men in
voluminous cloaks shift the earth from one
side of a large pit to the other, in a manner
so leisurely that it is positive repose to look
at them. The most bigoted anti-Fourierist
might acknowledge this to be attractive in-
dustry.
One conscript father trails a small barrow
up to another, who stands leaning on a long
spade. Arriving, he fumbles for his snuff-
box, and offers it deliberately to his friend.
Each takes an ample pinch, and both seat
themselves to await the result. If one should
sneeze, he receives the Felicitd! of the other;
and, after allowing the titillation to subside,
he replies, Grazia! Then follows a little con-
versation, and then they prepare to load.
But it occurs to the barrow-driver that this is
a good opportunity to fill and light his pipe;
and to do so conveniently he needs his barrow
to sit upon. He draws a few whiffs, and a
little more conversation takes place. The
barrow is now ready; but first the wielder of
the spade will fill his pipe also. This done,
more whiffs and more conversation. Then a
spoonful of earth is thrown into the barrow,
and it starts on its return. But midway it
meets an empty barrow, and both stop to go
through the snuff-box ceremonial once more,
and to discuss whatever new thing has
698
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
occurred in tlic excavation since their last
encounter. And so it goes on all day.
As I see more of material antiquity, I begin
to suspect that my interest in it is mostly
factitious. The relations of races to the
physical world (only to be studied fruitfully
on the spot) do not excite in me an interest
at all proportionate to that I feel in their
influence on the moral advance of mankind,
which one may as easily trace in his own
library as on the spot. The only useful
remark I remember to have made here is,
that, the situation of Rome being far less
strong than that of any city of the Etruscan
league, it must have been built where it is
for purposes of commerce. It is the most
defensible point near the mouth of the Tiber.
It is only as rival trades-folk that Rome and
Carthage had any comprehensible cause of
quarrel. It is only as a commercial people
that we can understand the early tendency
of the Romans toward democracy. As for
antiquity, after reading history, one is
haunted by a discomforting suspicion that
the names so painfully deciphered in hiero-
glyphic or arrow-head inscriptions are only
so many more Smiths and Browns masking
it in unknown tongues. Moreover, if we
Yankees are twitted with not knowing the
difference between big and greaty may not
those of us who have learned it turn round on
many a monument over here with the same
reproach.'' I confess I am beginning to sym-
pathize with a countryman of ours from
Michigan, who asked our Minister to direct
him to a specimen ruin and a specimen gal-
lery, that he might see and be rid of them
once for all. I saw three young Englishmen
going through the Vatican by catalogue and
number, the other day, in a fashion which
John Bull is apt to consider exclusively
American. "Number 300!" says the one
with catalogue and pencil, "have you seen
it?" "Yes," answer his two comrades, and,
checking it off, he goes on with Number 301.
Having witnessed the unavailing agonies of
many Anglo-Saxons from both sides of the
Atlantic in their effort to have the correct
sensation before many hideous examples of
antique bad taste, my heart warmed toward
my business-like British cousins, who were
doing their aesthetics in this thrifty auctioneer
fashion. Our cart-before-horse education,
which makes us more familiar with the his-
tory and literature of Greeks and Romans
than with those of our own ancestry (though
there is nothing in ancient art to match
Shakespeare or a Gothic minster), makes us
the gulls of what we call classical antiquity.
Europe were worth visiting, if only to be rid
of this one old man of the sea. In sculpture,
to be sure, they have us on the hip.
I am not ashamed to confess a singular
sympathy with what are known as the
Middle Ages. I cannot help thinking that
few periods have left behind them such
traces of inventiveness and power. Nothing
is more tiresome than the sameness of modern
cities; and it has often struck me that this
must also have been true of those ancient ones
in which Greek architecture or its derivatives
prevailed, — true at least as respects public
buildings. But medieval towns, especially
in Italy, even when only fifty miles asunder,
have an individuality of character as marked
as that of trees. Nor is it merely this origi-
nality that attracts me, but likewise the
sense that, how^ever old, they are nearer to
me in being modern and Christian. Far
enough away in the past to be picturesque,
they are still so near through sympathies of
thought and belief as to be more companion-
able. I find it harder to bridge over the gulf
of Paganism than of centuries. Apart from
any difference in the men, I had a far deeper
emotion when I stood on the Sasso di Dantey^
than at Horace's Sabine farm or by the tomb
of Virgil. The latter, indeed, interested me
chiefly by its association with comparatively
modern legend; and one of the buildings I am
most glad to have seen in Rome is the Bear
Inn, where Montaigne lodged on his arrival.
I think it must have been for some such
reason that I liked my Florentine better than
my Roman walks, though I am vastly more
contented with merely being in Rome.
Florence is more noisy; indeed, I think it the
noisiest town I was ever in. What w^ith the
continual jangling of its bells, the rattle of
Austrian drums, and the street-cries, Ancora
mi raccapriccia."^ The Italians are a vociferous
people, and most so among them the Floren-
tines. Walking through a back street one
day, I saw an old woman higgling with a
peripatetic dealer, who, at every interval
1 Tomb of Dante.
I 2 J still am horrified.
LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL IN ITALY AND ELSEWHERE
699
afforded him by the remarks of his veteran
antagonist, would tip his head on one side,
and shout, with a kind of wondering enthu-
siasm, as if he could hardly trust the evidence
of his own senses to such loveliness, 0, che
bellezza! che belle-e-ezza! The two had been
contending as obstinately as the Greeks and
Trojans over the body of Patroclus, and I
was curious to know what was the object of
so much desire on the one side and admira-
tion on the other. It was a half-dozen of
weazeny baked pears, beggarly remnant of
the day's traffic. Another time I stopped
before a stall, debating whether to buy some
fine-looking peaches. Before I had made up
my mind, the vender, a stout fellow, with a
voice like a prize-bull of Bashan, opened a
mouth round and large as the muzzle of a
blunderbuss, and let fly into my ear the fol-
lowing pertinent observation: ^^ Belle pesche!
belle pe-e-eschef" (crescendo). I stared at
him in stunned bewilderment; but, seeing
that he had reloaded and was about to fire
again, took to my heels, the exploded syl-
lables rattling after me like so many buck-
shot. A single turnip is argument enough
with them till midnight; nay, I have heard a
ruffian yelling over a covered basket, which,
I am convinced, was empty, and only carried
as an excuse for his stupendous vocalism. It
never struck me before what a quiet people
Americans are.
Of the pleasant places within easy walk of
Rome, I prefer the garden of the Villa Albani,
as being most Italian. One does not go to
Italy for examples of Price on the Pictur-
esque. Compared with landscape-gardening,
it is Racine to Shakespeare, I grant; but it
has its own charm, nevertheless. I like the
balustraded terraces, the sun-proof laurel
walks, the vases and statues. It is only in
such a climate that it does not seem inhuman
to thrust a naked statue out of doors. Not
to speak of their incongruity, how dreary do
those white figures look at Fountains Abbey
in that shrewd Yorkshire atmosphere! To
put them there shows the same bad taste
that led Prince Polonia, as Thackeray calls
him, to build an artificial ruin within a mile
of Rome. But I doubt if the Italian garden
will bear transplantation. Farther north, or
under a less constant sunshine, it is but half-
hardy at the best. Within the city, the gar-
den of the French Academy is my favorite
retreat, because little frequented; and there
is an arbor there in which I have read com-
fortably (sitting where the sun could reach
me) in January. By the way, there is some-
thing very agreeable in the way these people
have of making a kind of fireside of the sun-
shine. With us it is either too hot or too cool,
or we are too busy. But, on the other hand,
they have no such thing as a chimney-corner.
Of course I haunt the collections of art
faithfully; but my favorite gallery, after all,
is the street. There I always find something
entertaining, at least. The other day, on my
way to the Colonna Palace, I passed the
Fountain of Trevi, from which the water is
now shut off on account of repairs to the
aqueduct. A scanty rill of soapsudsy liquid
still trickled from one of the conduits, and,
seeing a crowd, I stopped to find out what
nothing or other had gathered it. One charm
of Rome is that nobody has anything in par-
ticular to do, or, if he has, can always stop
doing it on the slightest pretext. I found
that some eels had been discovered, and a
very vivacious hunt was going on, the chief
Nimrods being boys. I happened to be the
first to see a huge eel wriggling from the
mouth of a pipe, and pointed him out. Two
lads at once rushed upon him. One essayed
the capture with his naked hands, the other,
more provident, had armed himself with a
rag of woolen cloth with which to maintain
his grip more securely. Hardly had this lat-
ter arrested his slippery prize, when a ragged
rascal, watching his opportunity, snatched it
away, and instantly secured it by thrusting
the head into his mouth, and closing on it a
set of teeth like an ivory vice. But alas for
ill-got gain! Rob Roy's
Good old plan,
That he should take who has the power.
And he should keep who can,
did not serve here. There is scarce a square
rood in Rome without one or more stately
cocked hats in it, emblems of authority and
police. I saw the flash of the snow-white
cross-belts, gleammg through that dingy
crowd like the panache^ of Henri Quatre at
Ivry, I saw the mad plunge of the canvas-
shielded head-piece, sacred and terrible as
that of Gessler; and while the greedy throng
1 Plume.
700
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
were dancinq about the anp;uilliceps, each
taking his chance twitch at the undulatinj^
object of all wishes, the captor dodginti; his
head hither and thither (vuhierable, hke
Achilles, only in his 'eel, as a Cockney
tourist would say), a pair of broad blue
shoulders parted the assailants as a ship's
bows part a wave, a pair of blue arms, ter-
minating in gloves of Berlin thread, were
stretched forth, not in benediction, one hand
grasped the slippery Briseis by the waist, the
other bestowed a cuff on the jaw-bone of
Achilles, which loosened (rather by its au-
thority than its physical force) the hitherto
refractory incisors, a snuffy bandanna was
produced, the prisoner was deposited in this
temporary watch-house, and the cocked hat
sailed majestically away with the property
thus sequestered for the benefit of the state.
Gaudeant anguillce si mortuus sit homo ille,
Qui, quasi morte reus, excruciabat eas! ^
If you have got through that last sentence
without stopping for breath, you are fit to
begin on the Homer of Chapman, who, both
as translator and author, has the longest
wind (especially for a comparison), without
being long-winded, of all writers I know any-
thing of, not excepting Jeremy Taylor.
THOREAU 2
What contemporary, if he was in the
fighting period of his life (since Nature sets
limits about her conscription for spiritual
fields, as the state does in physical warfare),
will ever forget what was somewhat vaguely
called the "Transcendental Movement" of
thirty years ago? Apparently set astir by
Carlyle's essays on the "Signs of the Times,"
and on "History," the final and more imme-
diate impulse seemed to be given by Sartor
1 Eels would rejoice if that man should die who tor-
mented them as if they were condemned to death!
2 First published in North American Review, 1865.
W. C. Brownellj speaking of Lowell's reading {American
Prose Masters), says: "He read because he liked to —
not, as a rule, one guesses, as specific preparation for
work of his own. When he did, it did not always bring
him good luck. He says that he expressly read over
again, seriatim, all of Thoreau's works before writing
of him, and certainly he did so to small purpose."
The essay is a brilliant example of Lowell's manner of
writing, but, though not without value to students of
Thoreau, it sheds light rather upon its author than
upon its subject.
Resartus. At least the republication in
Boston of that wonderful Abraham a Sancta
Clara "^ sermon on Falstaff's text of the
miserable forked radish"* gave the signal for
a sudden mental and moral mutiny. Ecce
nunc tempus acceptabile!'^ was shouted on all
hands with every variety of emphasis, and
by voices of every conceivable pitch, repre-
senting the three sexes of men, women, and
Lady Mary Wortley Montagues. The name-
less eagle of the tree Ygdrasil was about to
sit at last, and wild-eyed enthusiasts rushed
from all sides, each eager to thrust under the
mystic bird that chalk egg from which the
new and fairer Creation was to be hatched
in due time. Redeunt Saturnia regna^^ — so
far was certain, though in what shape, or by
what methods, was still a matter of debate.
Every possible form of intellectual and
physical dyspepsia brought forth its gospel.
Bran had its prophets, and the presartorial
simplicity of Adam its martyrs, tailored
impromptu from the tar-pot by incensed
neighbors, and sent forth to illustrate the
"feathered Mercury," as defined by Webster
and Worcester. Plainness of speech was car-
ried to a pitch that would have taken away
the breath of George Fox; and even swearing
had its evangelists, who answered a simple
inquiry after their health with an elaborate
ingenuity of imprecation that might have
been honorably mentioned by Marlborough
in general orders. Everybody had a mission
(with a capital M) to attend to everybody-
else's business. No brain but had its private
maggot, which must have found pitiably
short commons sometimes. Not a few
impecunious zealots abjured the use of
money (unless earned by other people), pro-
fessing to live on the internal revenues of the
spirit. Some had an assurance of instant
millennium so soon as hooks and eyes should
be substituted for buttons. Communities
were established where everything was to be
common but common-sense. M^n renounced
their old gods, and hesitated only whether
to bestow their furloughed allegiance on
Thor or Budh. Conventions were held for
3 Augustinian monk and eloquent preacher (1644-
1709).
4 In Henry IV, Part 2, Act HI, Sc. ii.
5 Behold now is the acceptable time.
« The reign of Saturn {i.e., a new Golden Age) re-
turns.
THOREAU
701
every hitherto inconceivable purpose. The
belated p;ift of tongues, as among the Fifth
Monarchy men, spread like a contagion,
rendering its victims incomprehensible to all
Christian men; whether equally so to the
most distant possible heathen or not was
unexperimented, though many would have
subscribed liberally that a fair trial might be
made. It was the pentecost of Shinar. The
day of utterances reproduced the day of
rebuses and anagrams, and there was noth-
ing so simple that uncial letters and the style
of Diphilus the Labyrinth could not turn it
into a riddle. Many foreign revolutionists
out of work added to the general misunder-
standing their contribution of broken English
.in every most ingenious form of fracture.
All stood ready at a moment's notice to
reform everything but themselves. The
general motto was: —
And we'll talk with them, too.
And take upon's the mystery of things
As if we were God's spies.
Nature is always kind enough to give even
her clouds a humorous lining. I have barely
hinted at the comic side of the affair, for the
material was endless. This was the whistle
and trailing fuse of the shell, but there was
a very solid and serious kernel, full of the
most deadly explosiveness. Thoughtful men
divined it, but the generality suspected
nothing. The word "transcendental" then
was the maid of all work for those who could
not think, as "Pre-Raphaelite" has been
more recently for people of the same limited
housekeeping. The truth is, that there was
a much nearer metaphysical relation and a
much more distant sesthetic and literary
relation between Carlyle and the Apostles
of the Newness, as they were called in New
England, than has commonly been supposed.
Both represented the reaction and revolt
against Philisterei, a renewal of the old
battle begun, in modern times by Erasmus
and Reuchlin, and continued by Lessing,
Goethe, and, in a far narrower sense, by
Heine in Germany, and of which Fielding,
Sterne, and Wordsworth in different ways
have been the leaders in England. It was
simply a struggle for fresh air, in which, if
the windows could not be opened, there was
danger that panes would be broken, though
painted with images of saints and martyrs.
Light, colored by these reverend effigies,
was none the more respirable for being
picturesque. There is only one thing better
than tradition, and that is the original and
eternal life out of which all tradition takes
its rise. It was this life which the reformers
demanded, with more or less clearness of
consciousness and expression, life in politics,
life in literature, life in religion. Of what
use to import a gospel from Judaea, if we
leave behind the soul that made it possible,
the God who keeps it forever real and
present? Surely Abana and Pharpar are
better than Jordon, if a living faith be mixed
with those waters and none with these.
Scotch Presbyterianism as a motive of
spiritual progress was dead; New England
Puritanism was in like manner dead; in
other words, Protestantism had made its
fortune and no longer protested; but till
Carlyle spoke out in the Old World and
Emerson in the New, no one had dared to
proclaim, Le roi est mort: vive le roil The
meaning of which proclamation was essen-
tially this: the vital spirit has long since
departed out of this form once so kingly,
and the great seal has been in commission
long enough; but meanwhile the soul of
man, from which all power emanates and to
which it reverts, still survives in undimin-
ished royalty; God still survives, little as
you gentlemen of the Commission seem to
be aware of it, — nay, will possibly outlive
the whole of you, incredible as it may
appear. The truth is, that both Scotch
Presbyterianism and New England Puritan-
ism made their new avatar in Carlyle and
Emerson, the heralds of their formal decease,
and the tendency of the one toward Author-
ity and of the other toward Independency
might have been prophesied by whoever
had studied history. The necessity was
not so much in the men as in the principles
they represented and the traditions which
overruled them. The Puritanism of the
past found its unwilling poet in Hawthorne,
the rarest creative imagination of the
century, the rarest in some ideal respects
since Shakespeare; but the Puritanism that
cannot die, the Puritanism that made New
England what it is, and is destined to make
America what it should be, found its voice
in Emerson. Though holding himself aloof
from all active partnership in movements
702
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
of reform, lie lias been the sleeping; partner
who has siipphed a great part of their
capital.
The artistic range of Emerson is narrow,
as every well-read critic must feel at once;
and so is that of /Eschylus, so is that of
Dante, so is that of Montaigne, so is that
of Schiller, so is that of nearly every one
except Shakespeare; but there is a gauge
of height no less than of breadth, of indi-
viduality as well as of comprehensiveness,
and, above all, there is the standard of genetic
power, the test of the masculine as dis-
tinguished from the receptive minds. There
are staminate plants in literature, that make
no fine show of fruit, but without whose
pollen, quintessence of fructifying gold, the
garden had been barren. Emerson's mind
is emphatically one of these, and there is
no man to whom our aesthetic culture owes so
much. The Puritan revolt had made us
ecclesiastically and the Revolution politic-
ally independent, but we were still socially
and intellectually moored to English thought,
till Emerson cut the cable and gave us a
chance at the dangers and the glories of
blue water. No man young enough to
have felt it can forget or cease to be grateful
for the mental and moral nudge which he
received from the writings of his high-
minded and brave-spirited countryman.
That we agree with him, or that he always
agrees with himself, is aside from the ques-
tion; but that he arouses in us something
that we are the better for having awakened,
whether that something be of opposition
or assent, that he speaks always to what is
highest and least selfish in us, few Americans
of the generation younger than his own
would be disposed to deny. His oration
before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cam-
bridge, some thirty years ago, was an
event without any former parallel in our
literary annals, a scene to be always treas-
ured in the memory for its picturesqueness
and its inspiration. What crowded and
breathless aisles, what windows clustering
with eager heads, what enthusiasm of
approval, what grim silence of foregone
dissent! It was our Yankee version of a
lecture by Abelard, our Harvard parallel to
the last public appearances of Schelling.
I said that the Transcendental Movement
was the protestant spirit of Puritanism
seeking a new outlet and an escape from
forms and creeds which compressed rather
than expressed it. In its motives, its
preaching, and its results, it differed rad-
ically from the doctrine of Carlyle. 1 he
Scotchman, with all his genius, and his
humor gigantesque as that of Rabelais, has
grown shriller and shriller with years, degen-
erating sometimes into a common scold,
and emptying very unsavory vials of wrath
on the head of the sturdy British Socrates
of worldly common-sense. Ihe teaching of
Emerson tended much more exclusively to
self-culture and the independent develop-
ment of the individual man. It seemed to
many almost Pythagorean in its voluntary
seclusion from commonwealth affairs. Both
Carlyle and Emerson were disciples of
Goethe, but Emerson in a far truer sense;
and while the one, from his bias toward the
eccentric, has degenerated more and more
into mannerism, the other has clarified
steadily toward perfection of style, — exquisite
fineness of material, unobtrusive lowness of
tone and simplicity of fashion, the most
high-bred garb of expression. Whatever
may be said of his thought, nothing can be
finer than the delicious limpidness of his
phrase. If it was ever questionable whether
democracy could develop a gentleman, the
problem has been affirmatively solved at
last. Carlyle, in his cynicism and his
admiration of force in and for itself, has
become at last positively inhuman; Emer-
son, reverencing strength, seeking the
highest outcome of the individual, has
found that society and politics are also
main elements in the attainment of the
desired end, and has drawn steadily man-
ward and worldward. The two men repre-
sent respectively those grand personifications
in the drama of .^schylus, Bta and Yiparos}
Among the pistillate plants kindled to
fruitage by the Emersonian pollen, Thoreau
is thus far the most remarkable; and it is
something eminently fitting that his posthu-
mous works should be offered us by Emerson,
for they are strawberries from his own
garden. A singular mixture of varieties,
indeed, there is; — alpine, some of them, with
the flavor of rare mountain air; others
wood, tasting of sunny roadside banks or
Strength and Force {Prometheus Bound).
THOREAU
703
shy openings in the forest; and not a few
seedhngs swollen hij Mr. Emerson, in the Biographical Sketch prefixed
to the Excursions. (Lowell's note.)
come on the track of the shier sensations
that would elsewhere leave no trace. We
think greater compression would have done
more for his fame. A feeling of sameness
comes over us as we read so much. 1 rifles
are recorded with an over-minute punctual-
ity and conscientiousness of detail. He
registers the state of his personal ther-
mometer thirteen times a day. We cannot
help thinking sometimes of the man who
Watches, starves, freezes, and sweats
To learn but catechisms and alphabets
Of unconccrning things, matters of fact,
and sometimes of the saying of the Persian
poet, that "when the owl would boast, he
boasts of catching mice at the edge of a
hole." We could readily part with some
of his affectations. It was well enough for
Pythagoras to say, once for all, "When I
was Euphorbus at the siege of Troy"; not
so well for Thoreau to travesty it into
"When I was a shepherd on the plains of
Assyria." A naive thing said over again
is anything but naive. But with every
exception, there is no writing comparable
with Thoreau's in kind, that is comparable
with it in degree where it is best; where it
disengages itself, that is, from the tangled
roots and dead leaves of a second-hand
Orientalism, and runs limpid and smooth
and broadening as it runs, a mirror for
whatever is grand and lovely in both
worlds.
George Sand says neatly, that "Art is
not a study of positive reality" {actuality
were the fitter word), "but a seeking after
ideal truth." It would be doing very
inadequate justice to Thoreau if we left
it to be inferred that this ideal element
did not exist in him, and that too in larger
proportion, if less obtrusive, than his
nature-worship. He took nature as the
mountain-path to an ideal world. If the
path wind a good deal, if he record too
faithfully every trip over a root, if he botan-
ize somewhat wearisomely, he gives us now
and then superb outlooks from some jutting
crag, and brings us out at last into an
illimitable ether, where the breathing is not
difficult for those who have any true touch
of the climbing spirit. His shanty-life was
a mere impossibility, so far as his own
ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS
707
conception of it goes, as an entire independ-
ency of mankind. The tub of Diogenes had
a sounder bottom. Thoreau's experiment
actually presupposed all that complicated
civilization which it theoretically abjured.
He squatted on another man's land; he
borrows an ax; his boards, his nails, his
bricks, his mortar, his books, his lamp, his
fish-hooks, his plough, his hoe, all turn
state's evidence against him as an accom-
plice in the sin of that artificial civilization
which rendered it possible that such a
person as Henry D, Thoreau should exist
at all. Magnis tamen excidit ausis} His
aim was a noble and a useful one, in the
direction of "plain living and high think-
ing." It was a practical sermon on Emer-
son's text that "things are in the saddle
and ride mankind," an attempt to solve
Carlyle's problem (condensed from John-
son) of "lessening your denominator."
His whole life was a rebuke of the waste and
aimlessness of our American luxury, which
is an abject enslavement to tawdry uphol-
stery. He had "fine translunary things"
in him. His better style as a writer is in
keeping with the simplicity and purity of
his life. We have said that his range was
narrow, but to be a master is to be a master.
He had caught his English at its living
source, among the poets and prose-writers of
its best days; his literature was extensive
and recondite; his quotations are always
nuggets of the purest ore: there are sentences
of his as perfect as anything in the lan-
guage, and thoughts as clearly crystallized;
his metaphors and images are always fresh
from the soil; he had watched Nature like
a detective who is to go upon the stand; as
we read him, it seems as if all-out-of-doors
had kept a diary and become its own Mon-
taigne; we look at the landscape as in a
Claude Lorraine glass; compared with his,
all other books of similar aim, even White's
Selborne, seem dry as a country clergyman's
meteorological journal in an old almanac.
He belongs with Donne and Browne and
Novalis; if not with the originally creative
men, with the scarcely smaller class who are
peculiar, and whose leaves shed their in-
visible thought-seed like ferns.
> Though he dared great things, nevertheless he
died.
ON A CERTAIN CONDESCEN-
SION IN FOREIGNERS^
Walking one day toward the Village, ^
as we used to call it in the good old days,
when almost every dweller in the town had
been born in it, I was enjoying that delicious
sense of disenthrallment from the actual
which the deepening twilight brings with
it, giving as it does a sort of obscure novelty
to things familiar. The coolness, the hush,
broken only by the distant bleat of some
belated goat, querulous to be disburthened
of her milky load, the few faint stars, more
guessed as yet than seen, the sense that the
coming dark would so soon fold me in the
secure privacy of its disguise, — all things
combined in a result as near absolute peace
as can he hoped for by a man who knows
that there is a writ out against him in the
hands of the printer's devil. For the
moment, I was enjoying the blessed privi-
lege of thinking without being called on to
stand and deliver what I thought to the
small public who are good enough to take
any interest therein. I love old ways, and
the path I was walking felt kindly to the
feet it had known for almost fifty years.
How many fleeting impressions it had
shared with me! How many times I had
lingered to study the shadows of the leaves
mezzotinted upon the turf that edged it by
the moon, of the bare boughs etched with a
touch beyond Rembrandt by the same
unconscious artist on the smooth page of
snow! If I turned round, through dusky
tree-gaps came the first twinkle of evening
lamps in the dear old homestead. On
Corey's hill I could see these tiny pharoses
of love and home and sweet domestic
thoughts flash out one by one across the
blackening salt-meadow between. How
much has not kerosene added to the cheerful-
ness of our evening landscape! A pair of
night-herons flapped heavily over me toward
the hidden river. The war was ended. I
might walk townward without that aching
dread of bulletins that had darkened the
July sunshine and twice made the scarlet
leaves of October seem stained with blood.
I remembered with a pang, half-proud.
2 First published in 1869,
3 Cambridge.
7oS
lAMKS RUSSELL LOWELL
half-painful, how, so many years aj^o, I had
walked over the same path and felt round
my finder the soft pressure of a little hand
that was one day to harden with faithful
grip of saber. On how many paths, leading
to how many homes where proud Memory
does all she can to fill up the fireside gaps
with shining shapes, must not men be
walking in just such pensive mood as L^
Ah, young heroes, safe in immortal youth as
those of Homer, you at least carried your
ideal hence untarnished! It is locked for
you beyond moth or rust in the treasure-
chamber of Death.
Is not a country, I thought, that has had
such as they in it, that could give such as
they a brave joy in dying for it, worth
something, then? And as I felt more and
more the soothing magic of evening's cool
palm upon my temples, as my fancy came
home from its reverie, and my senses, with
reawakened curiosity, ran to the front
windows again from the viewless closet of
abstraction, and felt a strange charm in
finding the old tree and shabby fence still
there under the travesty of falling night,
nay, were conscious of an unsuspected new-
ness in familiar stars and the fading outlines
of hills my earliest horizon, I was conscious of
an immortal soul, and could not but rejoice
in the unwaning goodliness of the world
into which I had been born without any
merit of my own. I thought of dear Henry
Vaughan's rainbow, "Still young and fine!"
I remembered people who had to go over
to the Alps to learn what the divine silence
of snow was, who must run to Italy before
they were conscious of the miracle wrought
every day under their very noses by the
sunset, who must call upon the Berkshire
hills to teach them what a painter autumn
was, while close at hand the Fresh Pond
meadows made all oriels cheap with hues
that showed as if a sunset-cloud had been
wrecked among their maples. One might
be worse off than even in America, I thought.
There are some things so elastic that even
the heavy roller of democracy cannot flatten
them altogether down. The mind can
weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own
thoughts and dwell a hermit anyw^here. A
country without traditions, without enno-
bling associations, a scramble of parvenus,
with a horrible consciousness of shoddy
running through politics, manners, art,
literature, nay, religion itself? I confess,
it did not seem so to me there in that illimit-
able quiet, that serene self-possession of
nature, where Collins might have brooded
his Ode to Evening, or where those verses on
Solitude in Dodsley's Collection, that Haw-
thorne liked so much, might have been
composed. Traditions? Granting that we
had none, all that is worth having in them
is the common property of the soul, — an
estate in gavelkind for all the sons of Adam,
— and, moreover, if a man cannot stand on
his two feet (the prime quality of whoever
has left any tradition behind him), were it
not better for him to be honest about it at
once, and go down on all fours? And for
associations, if one have not the wit to
make them for himself out of native earth,
no ready-made ones of other men will avail
much. Lexington is none the worse to me
for not being in Greece, nor Gettysburg
that its name is not Marathon. "Blessed
old fields," I w^as just exclaiming to myself,
like one of Mrs. RadclifPe's heroes, "dear
acres, innocently secure from history, w-hich
these eyes first beheld, may you be also
those to which they shall at last slowly
darken!" when I was interrupted by a voice
w^hich asked me in German whether I was
the Herr Professor, Doctor, So-and-so?
The " Doctor" was by brevet or vaticination,
to make the grade easier to my pocket.
One feels so intimately assured that one
is made up, in part, of shreds and leavings
of the past, in part of the interpolations of
other people, that an honest man would
be slow in saying yes to such a question.
But "my name is So-and-so" is a safe
answer, and I gave it. While I had been
romancing w-ith myself, the street-lamps
had been lighted, and it was under one of
these detectives that have robbed the Old
Road of its privilege of sanctuary after
nightfall that I was ambushed by my foe.
The inexorable villain had taken my descrip-
tion, it appears, that I might have the less
chance to escape him. Dr. Holmes tells us
that we change our substance, not every
seven years, as was once believed, but with
every breath w^e draw. Why had I not the
wit to avail myself of the subterfuge, and,
like Peter, to renounce my identity, espe-
cially, as in certain moods of mind, I have
ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS
709
often more than doubted of it myself?
When a man is, as it were, his own front-
door, and is thus knocked at, why may he
not assume the right of that sacred wood
to make every house a castle, by denying
himself to all visitations? I was truly not
at home when the question was put to me,
but had to recall myself from all out-of-doors,
and to piece my self-consciousness hastily
together as well as I could before I answered
it.
I knew perfectly well what was coming.
It is seldom that debtors or good Samaritans
waylay people under gas-lamps in order to
force money upon them, so far as I have
seen or heard. I was also aware, from
considerable experience, that every for-
eigner is persuaded that, by doing this
country the favor of coming to it, he has
laid every native thereof under an obliga-
tion, pecuniary or other, as the case may
be, whose discharge he is entitled to on
demand duly made in person or by letter.
Too much learning (of this kind) had made
me mad in the provincial sense of the word.
I had begun life with the theory of giving
something to every beggar that came along,
though sure of never finding a native-born
countryman among them. In a small way,
I was resolved to emulate Hatem Tai's
tent, with its three hundred and sixty-five
entrances, one for every day in the year, — I
know not whether he was astronomer enough
to add another for leap-years. The beggars
were a kind of German-silver aristocracy;
not real plate, to be sure, but better than
nothing. Where everybody was over-
worked, they supplied the comfortable
equipoise of absolute leisure, so aesthetically
needful. Besides, I was but too conscious
of a vagrant fiber in myself, which too often
thrilled me in my solitary walks w^ith the
temptation to wander on into infinite space,
and by a single spasm of resolution to eman-
cipate myself from the drudgery of prosaic
serfdom to respectability and the regular
course of things. This prompting has been
at times my familiar demon, and I could
not but feel a kind of respectful sympathy
for men who had dared what I had only
sketched out to myself as a splendid possi-
bility. For seven years I helped maintain
one heroic man on an imaginary journey to
Portland, — as fine an example as I have
ever known of hopeless loyalty to an ideal.
I assisted another so long in a fruitless
attempt to reach Mecklenburg-Schwerin,
that at last we grinned in each other's faces
when we met, like a couple of augurs. He
was possessed by this harmless mania as
some are by the North Pole, and I shall
never forget his look of regretful compassion
(as for one who was sacrificing his higher
life to the fleshpots of Egypt) when I at
last advised him somewhat strenuously to
go to the D , whither the road was so
much traveled that he could not miss it.
General Banks, in his noble zeal for the
honor of his country, would confer on the
Secretary of State the power of imprisoning,
in case of war, all these seekers of the un-
attainable, thus by a stroke of the pen
annihilating the single poetic element in our
humdrum life. Alas! not everybody has
the genius to be a Bobbin-Boy, or doubtless
all these also would have chosen that more
prosperous line of life! But moralists, soci-
ologists, political economists, and taxes have
slowly convinced me that my beggarly
sympathies were a sin against society.
Especially was the Buckle doctrine of aver-
ages (so flattering to our free-will) persuasive
with me; for as there must be in every year
a certain number who would bestow an alms
on these abridged editions of the Wandering
Jew, the withdrawal of my quota could
make no possible difference, since some
destined proxy must always step forward
to fill my gap. Just so many misdirected
letters every year and no more! W^ould it
were as easy to reckon up the number of
men on whose backs fate has written the
wrong address, so that they arrive by mis-
take in Congress and other places where
they do not belong! May not these wan-
derers of whom I speak have been sent into
the world without any proper address at
all? Where is our Dead-Letter Office for
such? And if wiser social arrangements
should furnish us with something of the
sort, fancy (horrible thought!) how^ many a
workingman's friend (a kind of industry
in which the labor is light and the wages
heavy) would be sent thither because not
called for in the office where he at present
lies!
But I am leaving my new acquaintance
too long under the lamp-post. The same
lO
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Gano wliich had betrayed nu- to him re-
vealed to nu- a well-set yoiinp; man of about
half my own a.ije, as well dressed, so far as
I could see, as I was, and with every natural
qualification for getting his own livelihood
as good, if not better, than my own. Me
had been reduced to the painful necessity of
calling upon me by a series of crosses begin-
ning with the Haden Revolution (for which,
I own, he seemed rather young, — but per-
haps he referred to a kind of revolution
practiced every season at Baden-Baden),
continued by repeated failures in business,
for amounts which must convince me of
his entire respectability, and ending with
our Civil War. During the latter, he had
served with distinction as a soldier, taking a
main part in every important battle, with a
rapid list of which he favored me, and no
doubt would have admitted that, impartial
as Jonathan Wild's great ancestor, he had
been on both sides, had I baited him with a
few hints of conservative opinions on a
subject so distressing to a gentleman wish-
ing to profit by one's sympathy and un-
happily doubtful as to which way it might
lean. For all these reasons, and, as he
seemed to imply, for his merit in consenting
to be born in Germany, he considered himself
my natural creditor to the extent of five
dollars, which he would handsomely consent
to accept in greenbacks, though he pre-
ferred specie. The offer was certainly a
generous one, and the claim presented with
an assurance that carried conviction. But,
unhappily, I had been led to remark a
curious natural phenomenon. If I was
ever weak enough to give anything to a
petitioner of whatever nationality, it always
rained decayed compatriots of his for a
month after. Post hoc ergo propter hoc
may not always be safe logic, but here I
seemed to perceive a natural connection
of cause and effect. Now, a few days before
I had been so tickled with a paper (pro-
fessedly written by a benevolent American
clergyman) certifying that the bearer, a
hard-working German, had long "sofered
with rheumatic paints in his limps," that,
after copying the passage into my note-book,
I thought it but fair to pay a trifling hono-
rarium to the author. I had pulled the
string of the shower-bath! It had been
running shipwrecked sailors for some time.
but forthwith it began to pour Teutons,
redolent of lager-bter. I could not help
associating the apparition of my new friend
with this series of otherwise unaccount-
able phenomena. I accordingly made up
my mind to deny the debt, and modestly
did so, pleading a native bias toward
impecuniosity to the full as strong as his
own. He took a high tone with me at
once, such as an honest man would natu-
rally take with a confessed repudiator. He
even brought down his proud stomach so
far as to join himself to me for the rest of
my townward walk, that he might give me
his views of the American people, and thus
inclusively of myself.
I know not whether it is because I am
pigeon-livered and lack gall,i or whether it
IS from an overmastering sense of drollery,
but I am apt to submit to such bastings
with a patience which afterwards surprises
me, being not without my share of warmth
in the blood. Perhaps it is because I so
often meet with young persons who know
vastly more than I do, and especially with so
many foreigners whose knowledge of this
country is superior to my own. However
it may be, I listened for some time with
tolerable composure as my self-appointed
lecturer gave me in detail his opinions of
my country and its people. America, he
informed me, was without arts, science,
literature, culture, or any native hope of
supplying them. We were a people wholly
given to money-getting, and who, having
got it, knew no other use for it than to
hold it fast. I am fain to confess that I
felt a sensible itching of the biceps, and
that m}?^ fingers closed with such a grip as
he had just informed me was one of the
effects of our unhappy climate. But happen-
ing just then to be where I could avoid
temptation by dodging down a by-street,
I hastily left him to finish his diatribe to
the lamp-post, which could stand it better
than I. That young man will never know
how near he came to being assaulted by a
respectable gentleman of middle age, at the
corner of Church Street. I have never felt
quite satisfied that I did all my duty by
him in not knocking him down. But per-
haps he might have knocked me down,
and then.''
» See Hamlet, Act II, Sc. ii.
ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS
711
The capacity of indignation makes an
essential part of the outfit of every honest
man, but I am inchned to doubt whether
he is a wise one who allows hmiself to act
upon its first hints. It should be rather,
I suspect, a latent heat in the blood, which
makes itself felt in character, a steady
reserve for the brain, warming the ovum of
thought to life, rather than cooking it by a
too hasty enthusiasm in reaching the boil-
ing point. As my pulse gradually fell back
to its normal beat, I reflected that I had
been uncomfortably near making a fool of
myself, — a handy salve of euphuism for our
vanity, though it does not always make a
just allowance to Nature for her share in
the business. What possible claim had my
Teutonic friend to rob me of my composure?
I am not, I think, specially thin-skinned
as to other people's opinions of myself,
having, as I conceive, later and fuller in-
telligence on that point than anybody else
can give me. Life is continually weighing
us in very sensitive scales, and telling every
one of us precisely what his real weight is to
the last grain of dust. Whoever at fifty
does not rate himself quite as low as most
of his acquaintance would be likely to put
him, must be either a fool or a great man,
and I humbly disclaim being either. But
if I was not smarting in person from any
scattering shot of my late companion's
commination, why should I grow hot at
any implication of my country therein?
Surely her shoulders are broad enough, if
yours or mine are not, to bear up under a
considerable avalanche of this kind. It is
the bit of truth in every slander, the hint of
likeness in every caricature, that makes
us smart. "Art thou there, old True-
penny?"^ How did your blade know its
way so well to that one loose rivet in our
armor? I wondered whether Americans
were over-sensitive in this respect, whether
they were more touchy than other folks.
On the whole, I thought we were not.
Plutarch, who at least had studied phi-
losophy, if he had not mastered it, could
not stomach something Herodotus had said
of Boeotia, and devoted an essay to showing
up the delightful old traveler's malice and
French editors leave out of
ill-breeding.
Montaigne's Travels some remarks of his
about France, for reasons best known to
themselves. Pachydermatous Deutschland,
covered with trophies from every field of
letters, still winces under that question
which Pere Bouhours put two centuries
ago, Si vn Allemand pent etre bel-esprit?"^
John Bull grew apoplectic with angry
amazement at the audacious persiflage of
Piickler-Muskau. To be sure, he was a
prince, — but that was not all of it, for a
chance phrase of gentle Hawthorne sent
a spasm through all the journals of England.
Then this tenderness is not peculiar to us?
Console yourself, dear man and brother,
whatever else you may be sure of, be sure
at least of this, that you are dreadfully
like other people. Human nature has a
much greater genius for sameness than for
originality, or the world would be at a sad
pass shortly. The surprising thing is that
men have such a taste for this somewhat
musty flavor, that an Englishman, for
example, should feel himself defrauded,
nay, even outraged, when he comes over
here and finds a people speaking what he
admits to be something like English, and
yet so very different from (or, as he would
say, to) those he left at home. Nothing,
I am sure, equals my thankfulness when I
meet an Englishman who is not like every
other, or, I may add, an American of the
same odd turn.
Certainly it is no shame to a man that he
should be as nice about his country as
about his sweetheart, and who ever heard
even the friendliest appreciation of that
unexpressive she that did not seem to fall
infinitely short? Yet it would hardly be
wise to hold every one an enemy who could
not see her with our own enchanted eyes.
It seems to be the common opinion of
foreigners that Americans are too tender
upon this point. Perhaps we are; and if
so, there must be a reason for it. Have
we had fair play? Could the eyes of what
is called Good Society (though it is so
seldom true either to the adjective or noun)
look upon a nation of democrats with any
chance of receiving an undistorted image?
Were not those, moreover, who found in the
old order of things an earthly paradise.
1 See Hamlet, Act I, Sc. v.
2 If a German can be a man of wit?
712
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
pnyinu; tliem (luarterly dividcncls for the
wisdom of their ancestors, with the punc-
tuality of the seasons, unconsciously bribed
to misunderstand if not to misrepresent us?
Whether at war or at peace, there we were,
a standing; menace to all earthly paradises
of that kind, fatal underminers of the very
credit on which the dividends were based,
all the more hateful and terrible that our
destructive ap;ency was so insidious, workinji;
invisible in the elements, as it seemed, active
while they slept, and coming upon them in
the darkness like an armed man. Could
Laius have the proper feelings of a father
toward CEdipus, announced as his destined
destroyer by infallible oracles, and felt to
be such by every conscious fiber of his soul?
For more than a century the Dutch were the
laughing-stock of polite Europe. They
were butter-firkins, swillers of beer and
schnaps, and their vroiizvs from whom Hol-
bein painted the ail-but loveliest of Ma-
donnas, Rembrandt the graceful girl who
sits immortal on his knee in Dresden, and
Rubens his abounding goddesses, were the
synonyms of clumsy vulgarity. i Even so
late as Irving the ships of the greatest
navigators in the world were represented
as sailing equally well stern-foremost. That
the aristocratic Venetians should have
Riveted with gigantic piles
Thorough the center their new-catched miles,
was heroic. But the far more marvelous
achievement of the Dutch in the same kind
was ludicrous even to republican Marvell.
Meanwhile, during that very century of
scorn, they were the best artists, sailors,
merchants, bankers, printers, scholars, juris-
consults, and statesmen in Europe, and the
genius of Motley has revealed them to us,
earning a right to themselves by the most
heroic struggle in human annals. But,
alas! they were not merely simple burghers
who had fairly made themselves High
Mightinesses, and could treat on equal
terms with anointed kings, but their com-
1 "The great artists probably did not figure in
[Lowell's] selected list of great men, which besides was
further contracted to include mainly the poets — the
poets and Abraham Lincoln, one might say. He is not
even at the pains to keep their nationality in mind and
— in On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners — makes
Holbein and Rubens fellow-countrymen of Rem-
brandt." (W. C. Brownell, American Prose Masters.)
monwealth carried in its bosom the germs
of democracy. They even unmuzzled, at
least after dark, that dreadful mastiff, the
Press, whose scent is, or ought to be, so
keen for wolves in sheep's clothing and for
certain other animals in lions' skins. They
made fun of Sacred Majesty, and, what
was worse, managed uncommonly well
without it. In an age when periwigs made
so large a part of the natural dignity of
man, people with such a turn of mind were
dangerous. How could they seem other
than vulgar and hateful?
In the natural course of things we suc-
ceeded to this unenviable position of general
butt. The Dutch had thriven under it
pretty well, and there was hope that we
could at least contrive to worry along.
And we certainly did in a very redoubtable
fashion. Perhaps we deserved some of the
sarcasm more than our Dutch predecessors
in office. We had nothing to boast of in
arts or letters, and were given to bragging
overmuch of our merely material pros-
perity, due quite as much to the virtue of
our continent as to our own. There was
some truth in Carlyle's sneer, after all. -Till
we had succeeded in some higher way than
this, we had only the success of physical
growth. Our greatness, like that of enor-
mous Russia, was greatness on the map, —
barbarian mass only; but had we gone
down, like that other Atlantis, in some vast
cataclysm, we should have covered but a
pin's point on the chart of memory, com-
pared with those ideal spaces occupied by
tiny Attica and cramped England. At the
same time, our critics somewhat too easily
forgot that material must make ready the
foundation for ideal triumphs, that the arts
have no chance in poor countries. But it
must be allowed that democracy stood for a
great deal in our shortcoming. The Edin-
burgh Review never would have thought of
asking, **Who reads a Russian book? "2 and
England was satisfied with iron from Sweden
without being impertinently inquisitive
after her painters and statuaries. Was it
that they expected too much from the mere
miracle of Freedom? Is it not the highest
2 "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an
American book.'' or goes to an American play.^ or looks
at an American picture or statue?" — Sydney Smith, in
the issue of the Edinburgh Review for January, 1820.
ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS
713
art of a Republic to make men of flesh and
blood, and not the marble ideals of such?
It may be fairly doubted whether we have
produced this higher type of man yet.
Perhaps it is the collective, not the in-
dividual, humanity that is to have a chance
of nobler development among us. We shall
see. We have a vast amount of imported
ignorance, and, still worse, of native ready-
made knowledge, to digest before even the
preliminaries of such a consummation can
be arranged. We have got to learn that
statesmanship is the most complicated of all
arts, and to come back to the apprenticeship-
system too hastily abandoned. At present,
we trust a man with making constitutions
on less proof of competence than we should
demand before we gave him our shoe to
patch. We have nearly reached the limit
of the reaction from the old notion, which
paid too much regard to birth and station
as qualifications for office, and have touched
the extreme point in the opposite direction,
putting the highest of human functions up
at auction to be bid for by any creature
capable of going upright on two legs. In
some places, we have arrived at a point at
which civil society is no longer possible,
and already another reaction has begun,
not backwards to the old system, but toward
fitness either from natural aptitude or special
training. But will it always be safe to let
evils work their own cure by becoming
unendurable.^ Every one of them leaves
its taint in the constitution of the body-
politic, each in itself, perhaps, trifling, yet
all together powerful for evil.
But whatever we might do or leave un-
done, we were not genteel, and it was un-
comfortable to be continually reminded
that, though we should boast that we were
the Great West till we were black in the
face, it did not bring us an inch nearer to the
world's West-End. 1 That sacred enclosure
of respectability was tabooed to us. The
Holy Alliance did not inscribe us on its
visiting-list. The Old World of wigs and
orders and liveries would shop with us, but
we must ring at the area-bell, and not
venture to awaken the more august clamors
of the knocker. Our manners, it must be
granted, had none of those graces that
1 Fashionable quarter of London. '
Stamp the caste of Vere de Vere, in whatever
museum of British antiquities they may be
hidden. In short, we were vulgar.
This was one of those horribly vague
accusations, the victim of which has no
defense. An umbrella is of no avail against
a Scotch mist. It envelops you, it pene-
trates at every pore, it wets you through
without seeming to wet you at all. Vul-
garity is an eighth deadly sin, added to the
list in these latter days, and worse than
all the others put together, since it perils
your salvation in ihis world, — far the more
important of the two in the minds of most
men. It profits nothing to draw nice dis-
tinctions between essential and conventional,
for the convention in this case is the essence,
and you may break every command of the
decalogue with perfect good-breeding, nay,
if you are adroit, without losing caste. We,
indeed, had it not to lose, for we had never
gained it. *' Hozv am I vulgar .f"' asks the
culprit, shudderingly. "Because thou art
not like unto Us," answers Lucifer, Son of
the Morning, and there is no more to be
said. The god of this world may be a
fallen angel, but he has us there! We were
as clean, — so far as my observation goes, I
think we were cleaner, morally and physi-
cally, than the English, and therefore, of
course, than everybody else. But we did
not pronounce the diphthong ou as they
did, and we said eether and not eyther., follow-
ing therein the fashion of our ancestors,
who unhappily could bring over no English
better than Shakespeare's; and we did not
stammer as they had learned to do from
the courtiers, who in this way flattered the
Hanoverian king, a foreigner among the
people he had come to reign over. Worse
than all, we might have the noblest ideas
and the finest sentiments in the world, but
we vented them through that organ by
which men are led rather than leaders,
though some physiologists would persuade
us that Nature furnishes her captains with a
fine handle to their faces that Opportunity
may get a good purchase on them for drag-
ging them to the front.
This state of things was so painful that
excellent people were not wanting who
gave their whole genius to reproducing here
the original Bull, whether by gaiters, the
cut of their whiskers, by a factitious brutality
714
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
in tluir ren
intended in this contingency, it was also re-
solved to notify the Governor of South Car-
olina that he might expect an attempt would
be made to provision the fort; and that, if the
attempt should not be resisted, there would
be no effort to throw in men, arms, or am-
munition, without further notice, or in case of
an attack upon the fort. This notice was
accordingly given; whereupon the fort was
attacked and bombarded to its fall, without
even awaiting the arrival of the provision-
ing expedition.
It is thus seen that the assault upon and
reduction of Fort Sumter was in no sense a
matter of self-defense on the part of the as-
sailants. They well knew that the garrison
in the fort could by no possibility commit
aggression upon them. They knew — they
were expressly notified — that the giving of
bread to a few brave and hungry men of the
garrison was all which would on that occa-
sion be attempted, unless themselves, by re-
sisting so much, should provoke more. They
knew that this government desired to keep
7}o
AHRAIIAM LINCOLN
the parrlson in rlic fort, not to ;iss;iil tlu'Mi,
but mcrtlv to maintain visible possession,
and thus to preserve the Union from actual
and immediate dissolution — trusting, as
hereinbefore stated, to time, discussion, and
the ballot-box for final adjustment; and they
assailed and reduced the fort for precisely the
reverse object — to drive out the visible au-
thority of the Federal L^nion, and thus force
it to immediate dissolution. That this was
their object the Executive well understood;
and having said to them in the inaugural
address, "You can have no conflict without
being yourselves the aggressors," he took
pains not only to keep this declaration good,
but also to keep the case so free from the
power of ingenious sophistry that the world
should not be able to misunderstand it. By
the affair at Fort Sumter, with its surround-
ing circumstances, that pomt was reached.
Then and thereby the assailants of the gov-
ernment began the conflict of arms, without
a gun in sight or in expectancy to return
their fire, save only the few in the fort sent to
that harbor years before for their own protec-
tion, and still ready to give that protection in
whatever was lawful. In this act, discardmg
all else, they have forced upon the country
the distinct issue, "immediate dissolution or
blood. "
And this issue embraces more than the
fate of the United States. It presents to the
whole family of man the question whether
a constitutional republic or democracy — a
government of the people by the same peo-
ple— can or cannot maintain its territorial
integrity against its own domestic foes. It
presents the question whether discontented
individuals, too few in number to control ad-
ministration according to organic law in any
case, can alwajs, upon the pretenses made in
this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbi-
trarily without any pretense, break up their
government, and thus practically put an end
to free government upon the earth. It forces
us to ask: "Is there, in all republics, this in-
herent and fatal weakness.'" "Must a gov-
ernment, of necessity, be too strong for the
liberties of its own people, or too w^eak to
maintain its own existence.'"
So viewing the issue, no choice was left
but to call out the war power of the govern-
ment; and so to resist force employed for its
destruction, by force for its preservation.
1 he call was n^ade, and the response of the
country was most gratifymg, surpassing in
unanimity and spirit the most sanguine ex-
pectation. Yet none of the states com-
monly called slave states, except Delaware,
gave a regiment through regular state organ-
ization. A few regiments have been organ-
ized within some others of those states by
individual enterprise, and received into the
government service. Of course the seceded
states, so called (and to which Texas had
been joined about the time of the inaugu-
ration), gave no troops to the cause of the
Union. I he border states, so called, were
not uniform in their action, some of them
being almost for the Union, while in others —
as Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and
Arkansas — the Union sentiment was nearly
repressed and silenced. The course taken in
Virginia was the most remarkable — perhaps
the most important. A convention elected
by the people of that state to consider the
very question of disrupting the Federal
Union was in session at the capital of Vir-
ginia when Fort Sumter fell. To this body
the people had chosen a large majority of
professed Union men. Almost immediately
after the fall of Sumter, many members of
that majority went over to the original dis-
union minority, and with them adopted an
ordinance for withdrawing the state from
the Union. Whether this cliange was
wrought by their great approval of the
assault upon Sumter or their great resent-
ment at the government's resistance to that
assault is not definitely known. Although
they submitted the ordinance for ratification
to a vote of the people, to be taken on a day
then somewhat more than a month distant,
the convention and the legislature (which
was also in session at the same time and
place), with leading men of the state not
members of either, mimediately commenced
acting as if the state were already out of the
Union. They pushed military preparations
vigorously forward all over the state. They
seized the United States armory at Harper's
Ferry, and the navy-yard at Gosport, near
Norfolk. They received — perhaps invited —
into their state large bodies of troops, with
their warlike appointments, from the so-
called seceded states. They formally entered
into a treaty of temporary alliance and co-
operation with the so-called "Confederate
MESSAGE TO CONGRESS IN SPECIAL SESSION
731
States," and sent members to their congress
at Montgomery. And, finally, they per-
mitted the insurrectionary government to
be transferred to their capital at Richmond.
The people of Virginia have thus allowed
this giant insurrection to make its nest with-
in her borders; and this government has no
choice left but to deal with it where it finds it.
And it has the less regret as the loyal citizens
have, in due form, claimed its protection.
1 hose loyal citizens this government is bound
to recognize and protect, as being Virginia.
In the border states, so called — in fact,
the Middle States — there are those who favor
a policy which they call "armed neutrality";
that is, an arming of those states to prevent
the Union forces passing one way, or the dis-
union the other, over their soil. This would
be disunion completed. Figuratively speak-
ing, it would be the building of an impassable
wall along the line of separation — and yet
not quite an impassable one, for under the
guise of neutrality it would tie the hands of
Union men and freely pass supplies from
among them to the insurrectionists, which it
could not do as an open enemy. At a stroke
it would take all the trouble off the hands of
secession, except only what proceeds from
the external blockade. It would do for the
disunionists that which, of all things, they
most desire — feed them well, and give them
disunion without a struggle of their own. It
recognizes no fidelity to the Constitution,
no obligation to maintain the Union; and
while very many who have favored it are
doubtless loyal citizens, it is, nevertheless,
very injurious in effect.
Recurring to the action of the government,
it may be stated that at first a call was made
for 75,000 militia, and, rapidly following this,
a proclamation was issued for closing the
ports of the insurrectionary district by pro-
ceedings in the nature of blockade. So far
all was believed to be strictly legal. At this
point the insurrectionists announced their
purpose to enter upon the practice of pri-
vateering.
Other calls were made for volunteers to
serve for three years, unless sooner discharged,
and also for large additions to the regular
army and navy. These measures, whether
strictly legal or not, were ventured upon,
under what appeared to be a popular demand
and a public necessity; trusting then, as now,
that Congress would readily ratify them. It
is believed that nothing has been done be-
yond the constitutional competency of Con-
gress.
Soon after the first call for militia, it was
considered a duty to authorize the command-
ing general in proper cases, according to his
discretion, to suspend the privilege of the
writ of habeas corpus, or, in other w^ords, to
arrest and detain, without resort to the ordi-
nary processes and forms of law, such indi-
viduals as he might deem dangerous to the
public safety. This authority has purposely
been exercised but very sparingly. Never-
theless, the legality and propriety of what
has been done under it are questioned, and
the attention of the country has been called
to the proposition that one who has sworn
to "take care that the laws be faithfully
executed" should not himself violate them.
Of course some consideration was given to
the questions of power and propriety before
this matter was acted upon. The whole of
the laws which were required to be faith-
fully executed were being resisted and failing
of execution in nearly one-third of the states.
Must they be allowed to finally fail of execu-
tion, even had it been perfectly clear that
by the use of the means necessary to their
execution some single law, made in such
extreme tenderness of the citizen's liberty
that, practically, it relieves more of the
guilty than of the innocent, should to a very
limited extent be violated.'* To state the
question more directly, are all the laws but
one to go unexecuted, and the government
itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?
Even in such a case, would not the official
oath be broken if the government should be
overthrown, when it was believed that dis-
regarding the single law would tend to pre-
serve it? But it was not believed that this
question was presented. It was not believed
that any law was violated. The provision of
the Constitution that "the privilege of the
writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended,
unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion,
the public safety may require it," is equiva-
lent to a provision — is a provision — that
such privilege may be suspended when, in
case of rebellion or invasion, the public
safety does require it. It was decided that
we have a case of rebellion, and that the
public safety does require the qualified sus-
ir-
ABRAHAM LINXOLN
pension of the privilege of the writ which
was authorized to be made. Now it is in-
sisted that Congress, and not the Executive,
is vested with this power, l^ut the Constitu-
tion itself is silent as to which or who is to
exercise the power; and as the provision was
plainly made for a dangerous emergency, it
cannot be believed the framers of the instru-
ment intended that in every case the danger
should run its course until Congress could be
called together, the very assembling of which
might be prevented, as was intended in this
case, by the rebellion.
No more extended argument is now
offered, as an opinion at some length will
probably be presented by the Attorney
General. Whether there shall be any legis-
lation upon the subject, and if any, what, is
submitted entirely to the better judgment of
Congress.
The forbearance of this government had
been so extraordinary and so long continued
as to lead some foreign nations to shape their
action as if they supposed the early destruc-
tion of our National Union was probable.
While this, on discovery, gave the Executive
some concern, he is now happy to say that
the sovereignty and rights of the United
States are now everywhere practically
respected by foreign powers; and a general
sympathy with the country is manifested
throughout the world.
The reports of the Secretaries of the
Treasury, War, and the Navy will give the
information in detail deemed necessary and
convenient for your deliberation and action;
while the Executive and all the departments
will stand ready to supply omissions, or to
communicate new facts considered important
for you to know.
It is now recommended that you give the
legal means for making this contest a short
and decisive one: that you place at the con-
trol of the government for the work at
least four hundred thousand men and
$400,000,000. That number of men is about
one-tenth of those of proper ages within the
regions where, apparently, all are willing to
engage; and the sum is less than a twenty-
third part of the money value owned by the
men who seem ready to devote the whole.
A debt of $600,000,000 now is a less sum
per head than was the debt of our Revolu-
tion vhen we came out of that struggle; and
the money value in the country now bears
even a greater proportion to what it was then
than does the population. Surely each man
has as strong a motive now to preserve our
liberties as each had then to establish them.
A right result at this time will be worth
more to the world than ten times the men
and ten times the money. The evidence
reaching us from the country leaves no
doubt that the material for the work is
abundant, and that it needs only the hand of
legislation to give it legal sanction, and the
hand of the Executive to give it practical
shape and efficiency. One of the greatest
perplexities of the government is to avoid
receiving troops faster than it can provide
for them. In a word, the people will save
their government if the government itself
will do its part only indifferently well.
It might seem, at first thought, to be of
little difference whether the present move-
ment at the South be called "secession" or
"rebellion." The movers, however, will
understand the difference. At the beginning
they knew they could never raise their
treason to any respectable magnitude by
any name which implies violation of law.
They knew their people possessed as much of
moral sense, as much of devotion to law and
order, and as much pride in and reverence
for the history and government of their com-
mon country as any other civilized and
patriotic people. They knew they could
make no advancement directly in the teeth
of these strong and noble sentiments. Ac-
cordingly, they commenced by an insidious
debauching of the public mind. They in-
vented an ingenious sophism which, if con-
ceded, was followed by perfectly logical steps,
through all the incidents, to the complete
destruction of the Union. The sophism
itself is that any state of the Union may con-
sistently with the National Constitution,
and therefore lawfully and peacefully, with-
draw from the Union without the consent of
the Union or of any other state. The little
disguise, that the supposed right is to be
exercised only for just cause, themselves to
be the sole judges of its justice, is too thin
to merit any notice.
With rebellion thus sugar-coated they
have been drugging the public mind of their
section for more than thirty years, until at
length they have brought many good men
MESSAGE TO CONGRESS IN SPECIAL SESSION
733
to a willingness to take up arms against the
government the day after some assemblage
of men have enacted the farcical pretense of
taking their state out of the Union, who could
have been brought to no such thing the day
before.
This sophism derives much, perhaps the
whole, of its currency from the assumption
that there is some omnipotent and sacred
supremacy pertaining to a state — to each
state of our Pederal Union. Our states have
neither more nor less power than that re-
served to them in the Union by the Consti-
tution— no one of them ever having been a
state out of the Union. ^ The original ones
passed into the Union even before they cast
off their British colonial dependence; and
the new ones each came into the Union
directly from a condition of dependence,
excepting Texas. And even Texas, in its
temporary independence, was never desig-
nated a state. The new ones only took the
designation of states on coming into the
Union, while that name was first adopted
for the old ones in and by the Declaration of
Independence. Therein the ''United Colo-
nies" were declared to be "free and indepen-
dent states"; but even then the object
plainly was not to declare their independence
of one another or of the Union, but directly
the contrary, as their mutual pledge and
their mutual action before, at the time, and
afterward, abundantly show. The express
plighting of faith by each and all of the
original thirteen in the Articles of Con-
federation, two years later, that the Union
shall be perpetual, is most conclusive. Hav-
ing never been states either in substance or
in name outside of the Union, whence this
magical omnipotence of "State Rights,"
asserting a claim of power to lawfully destroy
the Union itself? Much is said about the
"sovereignty" of the states; but the word
even is not in the National Constitution, nor,
as is believed, in any of the state constitu-
tions. What is "sovereignty" in the political
sense of the term ? Would it be far wrong
to define it "a political community without
a political superior".? Tested by this, no
one of our states except Texas ever was a
sovereignty. And even Texas gave up the
1 It has been pointed out that Lincoln here was in
wror — North Carolina and Rhode Island having been,
for a brief period, states out of the Union.
character on coming into the Union; by
which act she acknowledged the Constitu-
tion of the United States, and the laws and
treaties of the United States made in pur-
suance of the Constitution, to be for her the
supreme law of the land. The states have
their status in the Union, and they have no
other legal status. If they break from this,
they can only do so against law and by
revolution. The Union, and not themselves
separately, procured their independence and
their liberty. By conquest or purchase the
Union gave each of them whatever of inde-
pendence or liberty it has. The Union is
older than any of the states, and, in fact, it
created them as states. Originally some
dependent colonies made the Union, and, in
turn, the Union threw off their old depend-
ence for them, and made them states, such
as they are. Not one of them ever had a
state constitution independent of the Union.
Of course, it is not forgotten that all the
new states framed their constitutions before
they entered the Union — nevertheless, de-
pendent upon and preparatory to coming
into the Union.
Unquestionably the states have the powers
and rights reserved to them in and by the
National Constitution; but among these
surely are not included all conceivable
powers, however mischievous or destructive,
but, at most, such only as were known in the
world at the time as governmental powers;
and certainly a power to destroy the govern-
ment itself had never been known as a gov-
ernmental, as a merely administrative
power. This relative matter of national
powder and state rights, as a principle, is no
other than the principle of generality and
locality. Whatever concerns the whole
should be confided to the whole — to the
General Government; while whatever con-
cerns only the state should be left exclusively
to the state. This is all there is of the
original principle about it. Whether the
National Constitution in defining boundaries
between the two has applied the principle
with exact accuracy, is not to be questioned.
We are all bound by that defining, without
question.
What is now combated is the position that
secession is consistent with the Constitu-
tion— is lawful and peaceful. It is not con-
tended that there is any express law for it;
734
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
ami notliinu should ever In- implied as law
which leads to unjust or absurd conse-
quences. The nation purchased with money
the countries out of which several of these
states were formed. Ls it just that they shall
go off without leave and witiiout refundinu?
l^he nation paid very larj;e sums (in the
aggregate, I believe, nearly a hi-ndred
millions) to relieve Florida of the aboriginal
tribes. Is it just that she shall now be off
without consent or without making any
return.^ The nation is now in debt for
money applied to the benefit of these so-
called seceding .states in common with the
rest. Is it just either that creditors shall go
unpaid or the remaining states pay the
whole? A part of the present national debt
was contracted to pay the old debts of Texas.
Is it just that she shall leave and pay no
part of this herself.''
Again, if one state may secede, so may
another; and when all shall have seceded,
none is left to pay the debts. Is this quite
just to creditors? Did we notify them of
this sage view of ours when we borrowed
their money? If we now recognize this
doctrine by allowing the seceders to go m
peace, it is difficult to see what we can do
if others choose to go or to extort terms upon
which they will promise to remam.
The seceders insist that our Constitution
admits of secession. They have assumed to
make a national constitution of their own,
in which of necessity they have either dis-
carded or retained the right of secession as
they insist it exists in ours. If they have
discarded it, they thereby admit that on
principle it ought not to be in ours. If they
have retained it by their own construction
of ours, they show that to be consistent they
must secede from one another whenever they
shall find it the easiest way of settling their
debts, or effecting any other selfish or un-
just object. The principle itself is one of
disintegration, and upon which no govern-
ment can possibly endure.
If all the states save one should assert the
power to drive that one out of the Union, it
is presumed the whole class of seceder
politicians would at once deny the power and
denounce the act as the greatest outrage
upon state rights. But suppose that pre-
cisely the same act, instead of being called
"driving the one out," should be called "the
seceding of the others from that one," it
would be exactly what the seceders claim to
do, unless, indeed, they make the point that
the one, because it is a minority, may right-
fully do what the others, because they are a
majority, may not rightfully do. These
politicians are subtle and profound on the
rights of minorities. They are not partial
to that power which made the Constitution
and speaks from the preamble, calling itself
"We, the People."
It may well be questioned whether there
IS to-day a majority of the legally qualified
voters of any state, except perhaps South
Carolina, in favor of disunion. There is
much reason to believe that the Union men
are the majority in many, if not in every
other one, of the so-called seceded states.
The contrary has not been demonstrated in
any one of them. It is ventured to affirm
this even of Virginia and Tennessee; for the
result of an election held in military camps,
where the bayonets are all on one side of the
question voted upon, can scarcely be con-
sidered as demonstrating popular sentiment.
At such an election, all that large class who
are at once for the Union and against
coercion would be coerced to vote against
the Union.
It may be affirmed without extravagance
that the free institutions we enjoy have
developed the powers and improved the
condition of our whole people beyond any
example in the world. Of this we now have
a striking and impressive illustration. So
large an army as the government has .now
on foot was never before known, without a
soldier in it but who has taken his place there
of his own free choice. But more than this,
there are many single regiments w-hose
members, one and another, possess full
practical knowledge of all the arts, sciences,
professions, and whatever else, whether use-
ful or elegant, is known in the world; and
there is scarcely one from which there could
not be selected a president, a cabinet, a
congress, and perhaps a court, abundantly
competent to administer the government
itself. Nor do I say this is not true also in
the army of our late friends, now adversaries
in this contest; but if it is, so much better
the reason why the government which has
conferred such benefits on both them and
us should not be broken up. Whoever in
MESSAGE TO CONGRESS IN SPECIAL SESSION
73 5
any section proposes to abandon such a
government would do well to consider in
deference to what principle it is that he does
it — what better he is likely to get in its
stead — whether the substitute will give, or
be intended to give, so much of good to the
people. There are some foreshadowings on
this subject. Our adversaries have adopted
some declarations of independence in which,
unlike the good old one, penned by Jefferson,
they omit the words "all men are created
equal." Why.-* They have adopted a
temporary national constitution, in the pre-
amble of which, unlike our good old one,
signed by Washington, they omit "We, the
People," and substitute, "We, the deputies
of the sovereign and independent states."
Why? Why this deliberate pressing out of
view the rights of men and the authority of
the people?
This is essentially a people's contest. On
the side of the Union it is a struggle for
maintaining in the world that form and sub-
stance of government whose leading object
is to elevate the condition of men — to lift
artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear
the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to
afford all an unfettered start, and a fair
chance in the race of life. Yielding to partial
and temporary departures, from necessity,
this is the leading object of the government
for whose existence we contend.
I am most happy to believe that the plain
people understand and appreciate this. It
is worthy of note that while in this, the
government's hour of trial, large numbers of
those in the army and navy who have been
favored with the offices have resigned and
proved false to the hand which had pam-
pered them, not one common soldier or
common sailor is known to have deserted
his flag.
Great honor is due to those officers who
remained true, despite the example of their
treacherous associates; but the greatest
honor, and most important fact of all, is
the unanimous firmness of the common
soldiers and common sailors. To the last
man, so far as known, they have successfully
resisted the traitorous efforts of those whose
commands, but an hour before, they obeyed
as absolute law. This is the patriotic in-
stinct of the plain people. They understand,
without an argument, that the destroying
of the government which was made by
Washington means no good to them.
Our popular government has often been
called an experiment. Two points in it our
people have already settled — the successful
establishing and the successful administer-
ing of it. One still remains — its successful
maintenance against a formidable internal
attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them
to demonstrate to the world that those who
can fairly carry an election can also suppress
a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and
peaceful successors of bullets; and that
when ballots have fairly and constitutionally
decided, there can be no successful appeal
back to bullets; that there can be no suc-
cessful appeal, except to ballots themselves,
at succeeding elections. Such will be a great
lesson of peace: teaching men that what
they cannot take by an election, neither can
they take it by a war; teaching all the folly
of being the beginners of a w^ar.
Lest there be some uneasiness in the minds
of candid men as to what is to be the course
of the government toward the Southern
states after the rebellion shall have been
suppressed, the Executive deems it proper
to say it will be his purpose then, as ever, to
be guided by the Constitution and the laws;
and that he probably will have no different
understanding of the powers and duties of
the Federal Government relatively to the
rights of the states and the people, under
the Constitution, than that expressed in the
inaugural address.
He desires to preserve the government,
that it may be administered for all as it was
administered by the men who made it.
Loyal citizens everywhere have the right
to claim this of their government, and the
government has no right to withhold or
neglect it. It is not perceived that in giving
it there is any coercion, any conquest, or any
subjugation, in any just sense of those
terms.
The Constitution provides, and all the
states have accepted the provision, that "the
United States shall guarantee to every state
in this Union a republican form of govern-
ment." But if a state may lawfully go out of
the Union, having done so, it may also dis-
card the republican form of government;
so that to prevent its going out is an indis-
pensable means to the end of maintaining
736
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
the guaranty mentioned; and when an end
is lawful and obliiiatory, the indispensable
means to it are also lawful and obligatory.
It was with the deepest regret that the
Executive found the duty of employing the
war power in defense of the government
forced upon him. He could but perform
this duty or surrender the existence of the
government. No compromise by public
servants could, in this case, be a cure; not
that compromises are not often proper, but
that no popular government can long survive
a marked precedent that those who carry an
election can only save the government from
immediate destruction by giving up the main
point upon which the people gave the
election. The people themselves, and not
their servants, can safely reverse their own
deliberate decisions.
As a private citizen the Executive could
not have consented that these institutions
shall perish; much less could he, in betrayal
of so vast and so sacred a trust as the free
people have confided to him. He felt that he
had no moral right to shrink, nor even to
count the chances of his own life in what
might follow. In full view of his great
responsibility he has, so far, done what he
has deemed his duty. You will now, accord-
ing to your own judgment, perform yours.
He sincerely hopes that your views and your
actions may so accord with his as to assure
all faithful citizens who have been dis-
turbed in their rights of a certain and speedy
restoration to them, under the Constitution
and the laws.
And having thus chosen our course, with-
out guile and with pure purpose, let us re-
new our trust in God, and go forward
without fear and with manly hearts.
Abraham Lincoln
THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS ^
Fourscore and seven years ago our
fathers brought forth on this continent, a
new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedi-
cated to the proposition that all men are
created equal.
1 Spoken on 19 November, 1863, at the dedication
of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsyl-
vania. The chief speaker of the day was Edward
Everett, an accomplished and eloquent orator, who
spoke for two hours with great effect. Lincoln had the
Now we are engaged in a great civil war,
testing whether that nation, or any nation
so conceived and so dedicated, can long
endure. We are met on a great battlefield
of that war. We have come to dedicate a
portion of that field as a final resting-place
for those who here gave their lives that that
nation might live. It is altogether fitting
and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedi-
cate— we cannot consecrate — we cannot
hallow — this ground. The brave men,
living and dead, who struggled here, have
consecrated it, far above our poor power to
add or detract. The world will little note
nor long remember what we say here, but it
can never forget what they did here. It is
for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated
here to the unfinished work which they who
fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the
great task remaining before us — that from
these honored dead we take increased de-
votion to that cause for which they gave the
last full measure of devotion; that we here
highly resolve that these dead shall not have
died in vain; that this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom; and that
government of the people, by the people,
for the people, shall not perish from the
earth.2
LETTER TO MRS. BIXBY »
Executive Mansion,
Washington, 21 November, 1864
Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Mass.
Dear Madam: I have been shown in the
files of the War Department a statement of
difficult task of following him. Reports concerning the
immediate effect of his few words upon his audience have
differed, but there have been no differences of critical
opinion concerning their quality. James Bryce has
said: "Words so simple and so strong could have come
only from one who had meditated so long upon the
primal facts of American history and popular govern-
ment that the truths those facts taught him had be-
come like the truths of mathematics in their clearness,
their breadth, and their precision."
- It has been pointed out that Theodore Parker, in
the course of an address to the New England Anti-
Slavery Convention of 1850, said: "A democracy, that
is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for
all the people."
3 This letter, like the Gettysburg Address, has become
a classic. "I do not know where the nobility of self-
sacrifice for a great cause, and of the consolation which
SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS
737
the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that
you are the mother of five sons who have
died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel
how weak and fruitless must be any words of
mine which should attempt to beguile you
from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But
I cannot refrain from tendering to you the
consolation that may be found in the thanks
of the republic they died to save. I pray that
our Heavenly Father may assuage the
anguish of your bereavement, and leave you
only the cherished memory of the loved and
lost, and the solemn pride that must be
yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon
the altar of freedom.
Yours very sincerely and respectfully,
Abraham Lincoln
SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS '
Fellow-Countrymen: At this second
appearing to take the oath of the presidential
office, there is less occasion for an extended
address than there was at the first. Then a
statement, somewhat in detail, of a course
to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper.
Now, at the expiration of four years, during
which public declarations have been con-
stantly called forth on every point and phase
of the great contest which still absorbs .the
attention and engrosses the energies of the
nation, little that is new could be presented.
The progress of our arms, upon which all else
chiefly depends, is as well known to the public
as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably
satisfactory and encouraging to all. With
high hope for the future, no prediction in
regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four
years ago, all thoughts were anxiously
directed to an impending civil war. All
dreaded it — all sought to avert it. While
the inaugural address was being delivered
from this place, devoted altogether to saving
the Union without war, insurgent agents
were in the city seeking to destroy it without
war — seeking to dissolve the Union, and
divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties
the thought of a sacrifice so made should bring, is set
forth with such simple and pathetic beauty. Deep
must be the fountains from which there issues so pure
a stream," (James Bryce.)
1 Spoken on 4 March, 1865.
deprecated war; but one of them would
make war rather than let the nation survive;
and the other would accept war rather than
let it perish. And the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were
colored slaves, not distributed generally over
the Union, but localized in the southern part
of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar
and powerful interest. All knew that this
interest was, somehow, the cause of the war.
To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this
interest was the object for which the in-
surgents would rend the Union, even by
war; while the government claimed no right
to do more than to restrict the territorial
enlargement of it.
Neither party expected for the war the
magnitude or the duration which it has
already attained. Neither anticipated that
the cause of the conflict might cease with, or
even before, the conflict itself should cease.
Each looked for an easier triumph, and a
result less fundamental and astounding.
Both read the same Bible, and pray to the
same God; and each invokes His aid against
the other.
It may seem strange that any men should
dare to ask a just God's assistance in wring-
ing their bread from the sweat of other men's
faces; but let us judge not, that we be not
judged. The prayers of both could not be
answered — that of neither has been answered
fully.
The Almighty has his own purposes.
''Woe unto the world because of offenses!
for it must needs be that offenses come;
but woe to that man by whom the offense
Cometh."^ If we shall suppose that Ameri-
can slavery is one of those offenses which, in
the providence of God, must needs come, but
which, having continued through His ap-
pointed time. He now wills to remove, and
that He gives to both North and South this
terrible war, as the woe due to those by
whom the offense came, shall we discern
therein any departure from those divine
attributes which the believers in a living
God always ascribe to Him.'' Fondly do we
hope — fervently do we pray — that this
mighty scourge of war may speedily pass
away. Yet, if God wills that it continue
until all the wealth piled by the bondman's
2 St. Matthew, xviii, 7.
738
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
two liumlrrd ;nul Hfty years of unrrciiiitctl
toil sIkiII he Mink, ami until every drop of
blood drawn with tiu- lasli shall he paid by
anotlur drawn with the sword, as was said
three thousand years ap,o, so still it nuist be
said, *' rhe jiid^nients of the Lord are true
and righteous altogether." ^
1 Psalm xix, 9.
With malice toward none; with charity for
all; with hrinness in the rip;ht, as God gives
us to see the right, let us strive on to finish
the work we are in; to bind up the nation's
wounds; to care for him who shall have
borne the battle, and for his widow, and his
orphan — to do all which may achieve and
cherish a just and lasting peace afiiong our-
selves, and with all nations.
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY (1814-1877)
Motley was born at Dorchester (now a part of Boston), Massachusetts, on 15 April, 1814. He
was precocious, and gifted almost from infancy with an irrepressible desire of self-expression. He
entered Harvard at thirteen, a strikingly handsome boy with brilliant powers. He cared little, how-
ever, for academic rank to be gained only by following prescribed courses, and once was rusticated for
negligence. At his graduation in 183 1 he was elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa, despite the fact
that he was not strictly entitled to the honor, because it seemed impossible to withhold that recog-
nition of his high capacity. Motley now spent two years in the study of law in Germany, at Gottin-
gen and Berlin, forming what was to be a life-long friendship with Bismarck, and also traveled to
other parts of Europe. Upon his return to Boston he continued to study the law, but he never really
entered the profession. He was already a writer, and into writing his best efforts went, now as later,
though it was some years before it became clear that he was to be an historian. He wrote at this
time for Willis's American Monthly and contributed verse to a paper called The Anti-Masonic Mirror.
In 1837 he married Mary Benjamin, who proved a perfect companion. In 1839 he published his first
book, a semi-autobiographic narrative, or novel, entitled Morton's Hope. It was a complete failure.
In 1841 he went to St. Petersburg as Secretary to the American Legation, but returned after only a tew
months of service. Apparently it was not long after this that he began to consider history as a pos-
sible field of work, and as early as 1846 he was collecting material bearing on Holland, but, nevertheless,
he continued for several years to try his hand in other ways. He wrote several weighty papers for the
North American Review — Peter the Great (1845), Balzac (1847), and The Policy of the Puritans (1849)
— and in 1849 he published another attempt at fiction, Merry Mount, which, while an improvement
upon Morton s Hope, was not a success and did not deserve to be one. He had strong political convic-
tions and some inclination towards public life, and in 1849 he was a member of the Massachusetts
House of Representatives. One term, however, was enough to show him that his talents were not those
of a politician.
Before this. Motley had definitely determined to devote himself to the history of Holland, and
had settled for his work upon the period of conflict between the Netherlands and Spain. He then had
heard of Prescott's design of writing the History of Philip II, and had been much cast down. "It
seemed to me," he later wrote, "that I had nothing to do but to abandon at once a cherished dream,
and probably to renounce authorship. For I had not first made up my mind to write a history, and
then cast about to take up a subject. My subject had taken me up, drawn me on, and absorbed me
into itself. It was necessary for me, it seemed, to write the book I had been thinking much of, even
if it were destined to fall dead from the press, and I had no inclination or interest to write any other."
Fearing, however, that even if he did risk the danger of being entirely overshadowed by Prescott's
work upon a subject which partially coincided with his own, Prescott himself might be displeased, he
went to Prescott and talked the situation over with him. The result relieved all his fears. It may be
reported in Prescott's own words, from a letter written to Bancroft in July, 1847: "Working over the
same soil will produce two crops so different that one cannot interfere with the demand for the other.
... I feel this so strongly that when a clever writer asked me the other day if I had any objection to
his treating the War of the Netherlands, the cream of my subject, I told him 'none in the world, though
he could not expect me to give him my manuscripts to work with.'" {Correspondence, ed. R. Wolcott,
663.) Prescott did offer Motley the use of his books, but withheld his manuscripts at the suggestion
of George Ticknor. Accordingly, Motley proceeded with the task he had taken up in love. From 1851
to 1855 he carried on investigations abroad, and in the latter year The Rise of the Dutch Republic was
published in three volumes in London (New York, 1856), though it had to be printed at Motley's own
expense. It was an immediate and great success, and proved that the author had now entered upon
his true line of work. He returned to America for the winter of 1856-1857, but then went back to
Europe, continuing to labor at his next book. The History of the United Netherlands from the Death of
William the Silent to the Synod of Dort, the first two volumes of which were published in i860.
In 1861, however, the outbreak of the Civil War turned Motley aside from history. He was in
London, and found universal misunderstanding there of the causes of the War, which impelled him to
write two important letters on the subject to the London Times. He soon returned to America, but
739
740
JOHN LornRop moilky
was at once ortcrcJ, because of his letters, the post of Minister to Austria. This he accepted, and held
until 1S67, when he resigned the post in some anger, because he felt insulted by seeming suspicions
concerning his loyalty to IVesident Johnson. He now had managed, amidst diplomatic duties, to
complete the remaining two volumes of The History of the United Netherlands^ and they were published
in 186S. In that year also Motley returned to America, but in 1869 was appointed Minister to Eng-
land—only to be recalled suddenly in 1870, as far as is known from no real fault of his own, but because
President Grant wished to annoy Senator Sumner. The effect of this humiliating experience can be
seen in Motley's next work. The Life and Death of John of Barneveld (1874), which was written with
constant reference, sometimes forced, to American affairs, and with evident thought of the author's
trouble with Grant. He had hoped to complete his work by writing the history of the Thirty Years'
War, but was not able to do so. Mrs. Motley died in 1874, and he did no work after that. He himself
died in England on 29 May, 1877.
Motley's histories, like Prescott's, are no longer valuable to scholars. Unlike Prescott, Motley
worked from no large background of general preparation. Again unlike Prescott, he worked in the
light of a general conception of historical development, with which, too, his feelings were deeply
involved. In the Preface to The Rise of the Dutch Republic he declared: "The maintenance of the right
by the little provinces of Holland and Zealand in the sixteenth, by Holland and P^ngland united in the
seventeenth, and by the United States of America in the eighteenth centuries, forms but a single chapter
in the great volume of human fate; for the so-called revolutions of Holland, England, and America
are all links of one chain." This may be in a sense true, but Motley was too ready to see analogies
which were more apparent than real. His researches were thorough and his methods scholarly, and
in this he had some advantage over Prescott, in being able to sift his sources where they were depos-
ited. On the whole, however, the differences between Motley's work and Prescott's result from dif-
ferences of temperament, style, and background; and of the work of both men it must be said that
subsequent research has shown it to be faulty in many matters of detail. But Motley's work retains
its worth not merely because of its vividness and its brilliant style; it was in its large outlines soundly
conceived, and can still give the general reader or student a truer picture of the great events of which
it treats than can be obtained from the study of many fragmentary monographs.
THE RISE OF THE DUTCH
REPUBLIC
PART II
ADMINISTRATION OF THE DUCHESS
MARGARET
1559-1567
Chapter I
Biographical sketch and portrait of Margaret of
Parma — The state council — Berlaymont — Vig-
lius — Sketch of William the Silent — Portrait of
Anthony Perrenot, afterwards Cardinal Gran-
velle — General view of the political, social, and
religious condition of the Netherlands — Habits
of the aristocracy — Emulation in extravagance
— Pecuniary embarrassments — Sympathy for
the Reformation, steadily increasing among the
people, the true cause of the impending revolt —
Measures of the government — Edict of 1550
described — Papal Bulls granted to Philip for
increasing the number of Bishops in the Neth-
erlands— Necessity for retaining the Spanish
troops to enforce the policy of persecution.
Margaret of Parma, newly appointed
Regent of the Netherland.s, was the natural
daughter of Charles the Fifth, and his eldest-
born child. Her mother, of a respectable
family called Van der Genst, in Oudenarde,
had been adopted and brought up by the
distinguished house of Hoogstraaten. Pecu-
liar circumstances, not necessary to relate
at length, had palliated the fault to which
Margaret owed her imperial origin, and
gave the child almost a legitimate claim
upon its father's protection. The claim
was honorably acknowledged. Margaret
was in her infancy placed by the Emperor
in the charge of his paternal aunt, Margaret
of Savoy, then Regent of the provinces.
Upon the death of that princess, the child
was entrusted to the care of the Emperor's
sister, Mary, Queen Dowager of Hungary,
who had succeeded to the government, and
who occupied it until the abdication. The
huntress-queen communicated her tastes to
her youthful niece, and Margaret soon out-
rivaled her instructress. The ardor with
which she pursued the stag, and the coura-
geous horsemanship which she always dis-
played, proved her, too, no degenerate
descendant of Mary of Burgundy. Her
education for the distinguished position in
which she had somewhat surreptitiously been
placed was at least not neglected in this
THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC
741
particular. When, soon after the memor-
able sack of Rome, the Pope and the Em-
peror had been reconciled, and it had been
decided that the Medici family should be
elevated upon the ruins of Florentine liberty,
Margaret's hand was conferred in marriage
upon the pontiff's nephew Alexander. The
wretched profligate who was thus selected
to mate with the Emperor's eldest-born
child and to appropriate the fair demesnes
of the Tuscan republic, was nominally the
offspring of Lorenzo de Medici by a Moorish
slave, although generally reputed a bastard
of the Pope himself. The nuptials were
celebrated with great pomp at Naples,
where the Emperor rode at the tournament
in the guise of a Moorish warrior. At
Florence splendid festivities had also been
held, which were troubled with omens
believed to be highly unfavorable. It hardly
needed, however, preternatural appearances
in heaven or on earth to proclaim the mar-
riage ill-starred which united a child of twelve
years with a worn-out debauchee of twenty-
seven. Fortunately for Margaret, the fune-
real portents proved true. Her husband,
within the first year of their wedded life,
fell a victim to his own profligacy, and was
assassinated by his kinsman, Lorenzino de
Medici. Cosmo, his successor in the tyranny
of Florence, was desirous of succeeding to
the hand of Margaret, but the politic
Emperor, thinking that he had already done
enough to conciliate that house, was inclined
to bind to his interests the family which
now occupied the papal throne. Margaret
was accordingly a few years afterwards
united to Ottavio Farnese, nephew of Paul
the Third. It was still her fate to be un-
equally matched. Having while still a
child been wedded to a man of more than
twice her years, she was now, at the age of
twenty, united to an immature youth of
thirteen. She conceived so strong an aver-
sion to her new husband, that it became
impossible for them to live together in peace.
Ottavio accordingly went to the wars, and
in 1 541 accompanied the Emperor in his
memorable expedition to Barbary.
Rumors of disaster by battle and tempest
reaching Europe before the results of the
expedition were accurately known, reports
that the Emperor had been lost in a storm,
and that the young Ottavio had perished
with him, awakened remorse in the bosom
of Margaret. It seemed to her that he had
been driven forth by domestic inclemency
to fall a victim to the elements. When,
however, the truth became known, and it
was ascertained that her husband, although
still living, was lying dangerously ill in the
charge of the Emperor, the repugnance
which had been founded upon his extreme
youth changed to passionate fondness. His
absence, and his faithful military attend-
ance upon her father, caused a revulsion in
her feelings, and awakened her admiration.
When Ottavio, now created Duke of Parma
and Piacenza, returned to Rome, he was
received by his wife with open arms. Their
union was soon blessed with twins, and but
for a certain imperiousness of disposition
which Margaret had inherited from her
father, and which she was too apt to exercise
even upon her husband, the marriage would
have been sufl&ciently fortunate.
Various considerations pointed her out to
Philip as a suitable person for the office of
Regent, although there seemed some mystery
about the appointment which demanded
explanation. It was thought that her birth
would make her acceptable to the people;
but perhaps, the secret reason with Philip
was, that she alone of all other candidates
would be amenable to the control of the
churchman in whose hand he intended
placing the real administration of the
provinces. Moreover, her husband was
very desirous that the citadel of Piacenza,
still garrisoned by Spanish troops, should
be surrendered to him. Philip was disposed
to conciliate the Duke, but unwilling to
give up the fortress. He felt that Ottavio
would be flattered by the nomination of his
wife to so important an office, and be not
too much dissatisfied at finding himself
relieved for a time from her imperious
fondness. Her residence in the Netherlands
would guarantee domestic tranquillity to
her husband, and peace in Italy to the
King. Margaret would be a hostage for
the fidelity of the Duke, who had, moreover,
given his eldest son to Philip to be educated
in his service.
She was s^bout thirty-seven years of age
when she arrived in the Netherlands, with
the reputation of possessing high talents,
and a proud and energetic character. She
74^
JOHN LOrilROI' MOTLEY
was an iMirhiisiastic Catholic, and had sat
at the feet of Lo\'ola, who had heen lier
confessor and spiritual ^uide. vSlie felt a
greater h»)rror for heretics than for any-
other species of malefactors, and looked
up to her father's hloody edicts as if they
had heen special revelations from on high.
She was most strenuous in her observance
of Roman rites, and was accustomed to
wash the feet of twelve virgins every holy
week, and to endow them in marriage
afterwards. Her acquirements, save that
of the art of horsemanship, were not re-
markable.
Carefully educated in the Machiavellian
and Medicean school of politics, she was
versed in that "dissimulation," to which
liberal Anglo-Saxons give a shorter name,
but which formed the main substance of
statesmanship at the court of Charles and
Philip. In other respects her accomplish-
ments were but meager, and she had little
acquaintance with any language but Italian.
Her personal appearance, which was mascu-
line, but not without a certain grand and
imperial fascination, harmonized with the
opinion generally entertained of her char-
acter. The famous moustache upon her
upper lip was supposed to indicate authority
and virility of purpose, an impression which
was confirmed by the circumstance that
she was liable to severe attacks of gout, a
disorder usually considered more appropriate
to the sterner sex.
Such were the previous career and public
reputation of the Duchess Margaret. It
remains to be unfolded whether her character
and endowments, as exemplified in her new
position, were to justify the choice of Philip.
The members of the state council, as
already observed, were Berlaymont, Viglius,
Arras, Orange, and Egmont.
The first was, likewise, chief of the finance
department. Most of the Catholic writers
described him as a noble of loyal and highly
honorable character. Those of the Prot-
estant party, on the contrary, uniformly
denounced him as greedy, avaricious, and
extremely sanguinary. That he was a
brave and devoted soldier, a bitter papist,
and an inflexible adherent to the royal cause,
has never been disputed. The Baron him-
self, with his four courageous and accom-
plished sons, were ever in the front ranks to
defend the crown against the nation. I^
must be confessed, however, that fanatical
loyalty loses most of the romance with
which genius and poetry have so often
hallowed the sentiment, when the "legiti-
mate" prince for whom the sword is drawn
is not only an alien in tongue and blood,
but filled with undisguised hatred for the
land he claims to rule.
Viglius van Aytta van Zuichem was a
learned Frisian, born, according to some
writers, of "boors' degree, but having no
inclination for boorish work." According to
other authorities, which the president him-
self favored, he was of noble origin; but,
whatever his race, it is certain that whether
gentle or simple, it derived its first and only
historical illustration from his remarkable
talents and acquirements. These in early
youth were so great as to acquire the com-
mendation of Erasmus. He had studied in
Louvain, Paris, and Padua, had refused the
tutorship of Philip when that prince was
still a child, and had afterwards filled a
professorship at Ingolstadt. After rejecting
several offers of promotion from the Em-
peror, he had at last accepted in 1542 a seat
in the council of Mechlin, of which body he
had become president in 1545. He had
been one of the peace commissioners to
France in 1558, and was now president of
the privy council, a member of the state
council, and of the inner and secret com-
mittee of that board, called the Consulta.
Much odium was attached to his name for
his share in the composition of the famous
edict of 1550. The rough draught was
usually attributed to his pen, but he com-
plained bitterly, in letters written at this
time, of injustice done him in this respect,
and maintained that he had endeavored,
without success, to induce the Emperor to
mitigate the severity of the edict. One
does not feel very strongly inclined to accept
his excuses, however, when his general
opinions on the subject of religion are re-
membered. He was most bigoted in precept
and practice. Religious liberty he regarded
as the most detestable and baleful of doc-
trines; heresy he denounced as the most
unpardonable of crimes.
From no man's mouth flowed more bitter
or more elegant commonplaces than from
that of the learned president against those
THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC
743
blackest of malefactors, the men who
claimed within their own walls the right to
worship God according to their own con-
sciences. For a common person, not learned
in law or divmity, to enter into his closet,
to shut the door, and to pray to Him who
seeth in secret, was, in his opinion, to open
wide the gate of destruction for all the
land, and to bring in the Father of Evil at
once to fly away with the whole population,
body and soul. "If every man," said he
to Hopper, "is to believe what he likes in his
own house, we shall have hearth gods and
tutelar divinities again, the country will
swarm with a thousand errors and sects,
and very few there will be, I fear, who will
allow themselves to be enclosed in the sheep-
fold of Christ. I have ever considered this
opinion," continued the president, "the
most pernicious of all. They who hold it
have a contempt for all religion, and are
neither more nor less than atheists. This
vague, fireside liberty should be by every
possible means extirpated; therefore did
Christ institute shepherds to drive his
wandering sheep back into the fold of the
true Church; thus only can we guard the
lambs against the ravening wolves, and
prevent them being carried away from the
flock of Christ to the flock of Belial. Liberty
of religion, or of conscience, as they call it,
ought never to be tolerated."
This was the cant with which Viglius
was ever ready to feed not only his faithful
Hopper, but all the world beside. The
president was naturally anxious that the
fold of Christ should be entrusted to none
but regular shepherds, for he looked forward
to taking one of the most lucrative crooks
into his own hand, when he should retire
from his secular career.
It is now necessary to say a few introduc-
tory words concerning the man, w4io, from
this time forth, begins to rise upon the
history of his country with daily increasing
grandeur and influence. William of Nassau,
Prince of Orange, although still young in
years, is already the central personage
about whom the events and the characters
of the epoch most naturally group them-
selves; destined as he is to become more
and more with each succeeding year the
vivifying source of light, strength, and
national life to a whole people.
The Nassau family first emerges into
distinct existence in the middle of the
eleventh century. It divides itself almost
as soon as known into two great branches.
The elder remained in Germany, ascended
the imperial throne in the thirteenth century
in the person of Adolph of Nassau and gave
to the country many electors, bishops,
and generals. The younger and more
illustrious branch retained the modest
property and petty sovereignty of Nassau
Dillenbourg, but at the same time trans-
planted itself to the Netherlands, where it
attained at an early period to great power
and large possessions. The ancestors of
William, as Dukes of Gueldres, had begun
to exercise sovereignty in the provinces four
centuries before the advent of the house of
Burgundy. That overshadowing family
afterwards numbered the Netherland Nas-
saus among its most stanch and powerful
adherents. Engelbert the Second w^as dis-
tinguished in the turbulent councils and
in the battle-fields of Charles the Bold, and
was afterwards the unwavering supporter
of Maximilian, in court and camp. Dying
childless, he was succeeded by his brother
John, whose two sons, Henry and William
of Nassau, divided the great inheritance
after their father's death. William suc-
ceeded to the German estates, became a
convert to Protestantism, and introduced
the Reformation into his dominions. Henry,
the eldest son, received the family posses-
sions and titles in Luxembourg, Brabant,
Flanders and Holland, and distinguished
himself as much as his uncle Engelbert, in
the service of the Burgundo-Austrian house.
The confidential friend of Charles the Fifth,
whose governor he had been in that Em-
peror's boyhood, he was ever his most
efficient and reliable adherent. It was he
whose influence placed the imperial crown
upon the head of Charles. In 1515 he
espoused Claudia de Chalons, sister of
Prince Philibert of Orange, "in order," as
he wrote to his father, "to be obedient to
his imperial Majesty, to please the King of
France, and ynore particularly for the sake of
his ozun honor and profit." His son Rene
de Nassau-Chalons succeeded Philibert.
The little principality of Orange, so pleas-
antly situated between Provence and Dau-
phiny, but in such dangerous proximity to
744
JOHN LorilROP MOTLEY
the scat of tlie "Babylonian captivity" of
the popes at Avignon, thus passed to the
family of Nassau. The title was of hij^h
anti(|uity. Already in the reign of Charle-
magne, Guillaume au Court-Nez, or "Wil-
liam with the Short Nose," had defended
the little town of Orange against the assaults
of the Saracens. The interest and authority
acquired in the demesnes thus preserved by
his valor became extensive, and in process
of time hereditary in his race. The princi-
pality became an absolute and free sover-
eignty, and had already descended, in defiance
of the Salic law, through the three distinct
families of Orange, Baux, and Chalons.
In I ^44, Prince Rene died at the Emperor's
feet in the trenches of Saint Dizier. Having
no legitimate children, he left all his titles
and estates to his cousin-german, William
of Nassau, son of his father's brother William,
who thus at the age of eleven years became
William the Ninth of Orange. For this
child, whom the future was to summon to
such high destinies and such heroic sacrifices,
the past and present seemed to have gathered
riches and power together from many
sources. He was the descendant of the
Othos, the Engelberts, and the Henries, of
the Netherlands, the representative of the
Philiberts and the Renes of France; the
chief of a house, humbler in resources and
position in Germany, but still of high rank,
and which had already done good service to
humanity by being among the first to em-
brace the great principles of the Reformation.
His father, younger brother of the Emper-
or's friend Henry, was called W'illiam the
Rich — he was, however, only rich in children.
Of these he had five sons and seven daughters
by his wife Juliana of Stolberg. She w^as a
person of most exemplary character and
unaffected piety. She instilled into the
minds of all her children the elements of
that devotional sentiment which was her
own striking characteristic, and it was
destined that the seed sown early should
increase to an abundant harvest. Nothing
can be more tender or more touching than
the letters which still exist from her hand,
written to her illustrious sons in hours of
anxiety or anguish, and to the last, recom-
mending to them with as much earnest
simplicity as if they were still little children
at her knee, to rely always in the midst of
the trials and dangers which were to beset
their paths through life, upon the great
hand of God. Among the mothers of great
men, Juliana of Stolberg deserves a fore-
most place, and it is no slight eulogy that
she was worthy to have been the mother of
William of Orange and of Lewis, Adolphus,
Henry, and John of Nassau.
At the age of eleven years, William having
thus unexpectedly succeeded to such great
possessions, was sent from his father's roof
to be educated in Brussels. No destiny
seemed to lie before the young prince but an
education at the Emperor's court, to be
followed by military adventures, embassies,
viceroyalties, and a life of luxury and
magnificence. At a very early age he came,
accordingly, as a page into the Emperor's
family. Charles recognized, with his cus-
tomary quickness, the remarkable character
of the boy. At fifteen, William was the
intimate, almost confidential friend of the
Emperor, who prided himself, above all
other gifts, on his power of reading and of
using men. The youth was so constant an
attendant upon his imperial chief that even
when interviews with the highest person-
ages, and upon the gravest affairs, were
taking place, Charles would never suffer
him to be considered superfluous or intru-
sive. There seemed to be no secrets which
the Emperor held too high for .the compre-
hension or discretion of his page. His
perceptive and reflective faculties, naturally
of remarkable keenness and depth, thus
acquired a precocious and extraordinary
development. He was brought up behind
the curtain of that great stage where the
world's dramas were daily enacted. The
machinery and the masks which produced
the grand delusions of history had no decep-
tions for him. Carefully to observe men's
actions, and silently to ponder upon their
motives, was the favorite occupation of the
Prince during his apprenticeship at court.
As he advanced to man's estate, he was
selected by the Emperor for the highest
duties. Charles, whose only merit, so far
as the provinces were concerned, was in
having been born in Ghent, and that by
an ignoble accident, was glad to employ
this representative of so many great Nether-
land houses, in the defense of the land.
Before the Prince was twenty-one he was
THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC
745
appointed general-in-chief of the army on
the French frontier, in the absence of the
Duke of Savoy. The post was coveted by
many most distinguished soldiers — the
Counts of Buren, Bossu, Lalaing, Aremberg,
Meghem, and particularly by Count Eg-
mont; yet Charles showed his extraordinary
confidence in the Prince of Orange, by
selecting him for the station, although he
had hardly reached maturity, and was
moreover absent in France. The young
Prince acquitted himself of his high com-
mand in a manner which justified his
appointment.
It was the Prince's shoulder upon which
the Emperor leaned at the abdication; the
Prince's hand which bore the imperial
insignia of the discrowned monarch to
Ferdinand, at Augsburg. With these duties
his relations with Charles were ended, and
those with Philip begun. He was with
the army during the hostilities which were
soon after resumed in Picardy; he was the
secret negotiator of the preliminary arrange-
ment with France, soon afterwards con-
firmed by the triumphant treaty of April,
1559. He had conducted these initiatory
conferences with the Constable Mont-
morency and Marshal de Saint Andre with
great sagacity, although hardly a man in
years, and by so doing he had laid Philip
under deep obligations. The King was so
inexpressibly anxious for peace that he
would have been capable of conducting a
treaty upon almost any terms. He assured
the Prince that "the greatest service he
could render him in this world was to make
peace, and that he desired to have it at any
price whatever, so eager was he to return to
Spain." To the envoy Suriano, Philip had
held the same language. "Oh, Ambassa-
dor," said he, "I wish peace on any terms,
and if the King of France had not sued for
it, I would have begged for it myself."
With such impatience on the part of the
sovereign, it certainly manifested diplomatic
abilities of a high character in the Prince,
that the treaty negotiated by him amounted
to a capitulation by France. He was one
of the hostages selected by Henry for the
due execution of the treaty, and while in
France made that remarkable discovery
which was to color his life. While hunting
with the King in the forest of Vincennes, the
Prince and Henry found themselves alone
together, and separated from the rest of the
company. The French monarch's mind
was full of the great scheme which had just
secretly been formed by Philip and himself,
to extirpate Protestantism by a general
extirpation of Protestants. Philip had been
most anxious to conclude the public treaty
with France, that he might be the sooner
able to negotiate that secret convention by
which he and his Most Christian Majesty
were solemnly to bind themselves to mas-
sacre all the converts to the new religion in
France and the Netherlands. This con-
spiracy of the two Kings against their sub-
jects was the matter nearest the hearts of
both. The Duke of Alva, a fellow hostage
with William of Orange, was the pleni-
potentiary to conduct this more important
arrangement. The French monarch, some-
what imprudently imagining that the Prince
was also a party to the plot, opened the
whole subject to him without reserve. He
complained of the constantly-increasing
numbers of sectaries in his kingdom, and
protested that his conscience would never be
easy, nor his state secure, until his realm
should be delivered of "that accursed
vermin." A civil revolution, under pretext
of a religious reformation, was his constant
apprehension, particularly since so many
notable personages in the realm, and even
princes of the blood, were already tainted
with heresy. Nevertheless, with the favor
of heaven, and the assistance of his son and
brother Philip, he hoped soon to be master
of the rebels. The King then proceeded,
with cynical minuteness, to lay before his
discreet companion the particulars of the
royal plot, and the manner in which all
heretics, whether high or humble, were to
be discovered and massacred at the most
convenient season. For the furtherance of
the scheme in the Netherlands, it was under-
stood that the Spanish regiments would be
exceedingly efficient. The Prince, although
horror-struck and indignant at the royal
revelations, held his peace, and kept his
countenance. The King was not aware
that, in opening this delicate negotiation to
Alva's colleague and Philip's plenipotentiary,
he had given a warning of inestimable value
to the man who had been born to resist the
machinations of Philip and of Alva. William
746
JOHN LOIHROP MOTLEY
of Orange cnrncd tlic siirnanic of "the
Silent," from tlie manner m which he
received these communications of Henry
without reveahng to the monarch, by word
or look, the enormous blunder which he had
committed. His purpose was fixed from
that hour. A few days afterwards he
obtained permission to visit the Netherlands,
where he took measures to excite, with all
his influence, the strongest and most general
opposition to the continued presence of the
Spanish troops, of which forces, much
against his will he had been, in conjunction
with Egmont, appointed chief. He already
felt, in his own language, that "an inquisi-
tion for the Netherlands had been resolved
upon more cruel than that of Spain; since
it would need but to look askance at an
image to be cast into the flames." Although
having as yet no spark of religious sym-
pathy for the reformers, he could not, he
said, "but feel compassion for so many
virtuous men and w^omen thus devoted to
massacre," and he determmed to save them
if he could! At the departure of Philip he
had received instructions, both patent and
secret, for his guidance as stadholder of
Holland, Friesland, and Utrecht. He was
ordered "most expressly to correct and
extirpate the sects reprobated by our Holy
Mother Church; to execute the edicts of
his Imperial Majesty, renewed by the King,
with absolute rigor. He was to see that the
judges carried out the edicts, without infrac-
tion, alterationyor moderation, since they were
there to enforce, not to make or to discuss
the law." In his secret instructions he was
informed that the execution of the edicts
was to be with all rigor, and without any
respect of persons. He was also reminded
that, whereas some persons had imagined
the severity of the law "to be only intended
against Anabaptists, on the contrary, the
edicts w^ere to be enforced on Lutherans and
all other sectaries without distinction."
Moreover, in one of his last interviews with
Philip, the King had given him the names of
several "excellent persons suspected of the
new religion," and had commanded him to
have them put to death. This, however,
he not only omitted to do, but on the con-
trary gave them warning, so that they might
eflFect their escape, "thinkmg it more neces-
sary to obey God than man."
William of Orange, at tiie dcjKirture of
the King for Spain, was m his twenty-seventh
year. He was a widower; his first wife,
Anne of Egmont, having died in 1558, after
seven years of wedlock. This lady, to whom
he had been united when they were both
eighteen years of age, was the daughter of
the celebrated general, Count de Buren, and
the greatest heiress in the Netherlands.
William had thus been faithful to the family
traditions, and had increased his possessions
by a wealthy alliance. He had two children,
Philip and Mary. The marriage had been
more amicable than princely marriages
arranged for convenience often prove. The
letters of the Prince to his wife indicate
tenderness and contentment. At the same
time he was accused, at a later period, of
"having murdered her with a dagger."
The ridiculous tale was not even credited
by those who reported it, but it is worth
mentioning, as a proof that no calumny was
too senseless to be invented concerning the
man whose character was from that hour
forth to be the mark of slander, and whose
whole life was to be its signal, although
often unavailing, refutation.
Yet we are not to regard William of
Orange, thus on the threshold of his great
career, by the light diffused from a some-
what later period. In no historical character
more remarkably than in his is the law of
constant development and progress illus-
trated. At twenty-six he is not the ^' pater
-patrice^^ the great man struggling upward
and onward against a host of enemies and
obstacles almost beyond human strength,
and along the dark and dangerous path
leading through conflict, privation, and
ceaseless labor to no repose but death. On
the contrary, his foot was hardly on the
first step of that difficult ascent which was
to rise before him all his lifetime. He
was still among the primrose paths. He was
rich, powerful, of sovereign rank. He had
only the germs within him of what was
thereafter to expand into moral and in-
tellectual greatness. He had small sympa-
thy for the religious reformation, of which
he was to be one of the most distinguished
champions. He was a Catholic, nominally,
and in outward observance. With doctrines
he troubled himself but little. He had
given orders to enforce conformity to the
TIIK RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC
747
ancient Church, not with bloodshed, yet
with comparative strictness, in his princi-
pahty of Orange. Beyond the compHance
with rites and forms, thought indispensable
in those days to a personage of such high
degree, he did not occupy himself with
theology. He was a Catholic, as Egmont
and Horn, Berlaymont and Mansfeld,
Montigny and even Brederode, were Catho-
lic. It was only tanners, dyers, and apostate
priests who were Protestants at that day
in the Netherlands. His determination to
protect a multitude of his harmless inferiors
from horrible deaths did not proceed from
sympathy with their religious sentiments,
but merely from a generous and manly
detestation of murder. He carefully averted
his mind from sacred matters. If indeed
the seed implanted by his pious parents
were really the germ of his future conversion
to Protestantism, it must be confessed that
it lay dormant a long time. But his mind
was in other pursuits. He was disposed
for an easy, joyous, luxurious, princely life.
Banquets, masquerades, tournaments, the
chase, interspersed with the routine of
official duties, civil and military, seemed
likely to fill out his life. His hospitality,
like his fortune, was almost regal. While
the King and the foreign envoys were still
in the Netherlands, his house, the splendid
Nassau palace of Brussels, was ever open.
He entertained for the monarch, who was,
or who imagined himself to be, too poor to
discharge his own duties in this respect,
but he entertained at his own expense. This
splendid household was still continued.
Twenty-four noblemen and eighteen pages
of gentle birth officiated regularly in his
family. Plis establishment was on so exten-
sive a scale that upon one day twenty-eight
master cooks were dismissed, for the purpose
of diminishing the family expenses, and
there was hardly a princely house in Ger-
many which did not send cooks to learn
their business in so magnificent a kitchen.
The reputation of his table remained un-
diminished for years. We find at a later
period that Philip, in the course of one of the
nominal reconciliations which took place
several times between the monarch and
William of Orange, wrote that, his head
cook being dead, he begged the Prince to
**make him a present of his chief cook,
Master Herman, who was understood to be
very skillful."
In this hospitable mansion, the feasting
continued night and day. From early
morning till noon, the breakfast-tables were
spread with wines and Juxurious viands in
constant succession, to all comers and at
every moment. The dinner and supper
were daily banquets for a multitude of
guests. The highest nobles were not those
alone who were entertained. Men of lower
degree were welcomed with a charming
hospitality which made them feel them-
selves at their ease. Contemporaries of all
parties unite in eulogizing the winning
address and gentle manners of the Prince.
"Never," says a most bitter Catholic
historian, "did an arrogant or indiscreet
word fall from his lips. He, upon no occa-
sion, manifested anger to his servants,
however much they might be in fault, but
contented himself with admonishing them
graciously, without menace or insult. He
had a gentle and agreeable tongue, with
which he could turn all the gentlemen at
court any way he liked. He was beloved
and honored by the whole community."
His manner was graceful, familiar, caressing,
and yet dignified. He had the good breed-
ing which comes from the heart, refined into
an inexpressible charm from his constant
intercourse, almost from his cradle, with
mankind of all ranks.
It may be supposed that this train of
living was attended with expense. More-
over, he had various other establishments in
town and country, besides his almost royal
residence in Brussels. He was ardently
fond of the chase, particularly of the knightly
sport of falconry. In the country he "con-
soled himself by taking every day a heron
in the clouds." His falconers alone cost him
annually fifteen hundred florins, after he had
reduced their expenses to the lowest possible
point. He was much in debt, even at this
early period and with his princely fortune.
"We come of a race," he wrote carelessly to
his brother Louis, "who are somewhat bad
managers in our young days, but when we
grow older, we do better, like our late
father: sicut erat in principioy et nunCy et
semper et in secula seculorumA My greatest
1 Thus it was in the beginning, is now, and always
will be for ever and ever.
74^
lOHN LOrilROP MOTLKV
ditficiilty. " lie adds, "as usual, is on account
of the falconers."
His debts already amounted, according to
Granvelle's statement, to 800,000 or 900,000
florins. He had embarrassed himself, not
only through his splendid extravagance, by
which all the world about him were made to
partake of his wealth, but by accepting the
high offices to which he had been appointed.
When general-in-chief on the frontier, his
salary was three hundred florins monthly;
"not enough," as he said, "to pay the
servants in his tent," his necessary expenses
being twenty-five hundred florins, as appears
by a letter to his wife. His embassy to
carry the crown to Ferdinand, and his
subsequent residence as a hostage for the
treaty in Paris, were also very onerous, and
he received no salary; according to the
economical system in this respect pursued
by Charles and Philip. In these two em-
bassies or missions alone, together with the
entertainments offered by him to the court
and to foreigners, after the peace at Brussels,
the Prince spent, according to his own
estimate, 1,500,000 florins. He was, how-
ever, although deeply, not desperately in-
volved, and had already taken active
measures to regulate and reduce his estab-
lishment. His revenues were vast, both in
his own right and in that of his deceased
wife. He had large claims upon the royal
treasury for service and expenditure. He
had besides ample sums to receive from the
ransoms of the prisoners of Saint Quentin
and Gravelines, having served in both
campaigns. The amount to be received by
individuals from this source may be esti-
mated from the fact that Count Horn, by no
means one of the most favored in the victori-
ous armies, had received from Leonor
d'Orleans, Due de Longueville, a ransom of
eighty thousand crowns. The sum due, if
payment were enforced, from the prisoners
assigned to Egmont, Orange, and others,
must have been very large. Granvelle
estimated the whole amount at two millions;
adding, characteristically, "that this kind of
speculation was a practice" which our good
old fathers, lovers of virtue, would not have
found laudable. In this the churchman
was right, but he might have added that the
"lovers of virtue" would have found it as
little "laudable" for ecclesiastics to dispose
of the sacred offices in their gift, for carpets,
tapestry, and annual payments of certain
percentages upon the cure of souls. If the
profits respectively gained by military and
clerical speculators in that day should be
compared, the disadvantage would hardly
be found to lie with those of the long robe.
Such, then, at the beginning of 1560, was
William of Orange; a generous, stately,
magnificent, pow^erful grandee. As a mili-
tary commander, he had acquitted himself
very creditably of highly important func-
tions at an early age. Nevertheless it was
the opinion of many persons, that he was
of a timid temperament. He was even
accused of having manifested an unseemly
panic at Philippeville, and of having only
been restrained by the expostulations of his
officers, from abandoning both that fortress
and Charlemont to Admiral Coligny, who
had made his appearance in the neighbor-
hood, merely at the head of a reconnoitering
party. If the story were true, it would be
chiefly important as indicating that the
Prince of Orange was one of the many
historical characters, originally of an excit-
able and even timorous physical organiza-
tion, whom moral courage and a strong will
have afterwards converted into dauntless
heroes. Certain it is that he was destined
to confront open danger in every form,
that his path was to lead through perpetual
ambush, yet that his cheerful confidence
and tranquil courage were to become not
only unquestionable but proverbial. It
may be safely asserted, however, that the
story was an invention, to be classed with
those fictions which made him the murderer
of his first wife, a common conspirator
against Philip's crown and person, and a
crafty malefactor in general, without a
single virtue. It must be remembered that
even the terrible Alva, who lived in harness
almost from the cradle to the grave, was,
so late as at the period with which we are
now occupied, censured for timidity, and
had been accused in youth of flat cowardice.
He despised the insinuation, which for him
had no meaning. There is no doubt too
that caution was a predominant characteris-
tic of the Prince. It was one of the chief
sources of his greatness. At that period,
perhaps at any period, he would have been
incapable of such brilliant and dashing
THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC
749
exploits as had made the name of Egmont so
famous. It had even become a proverb,
"the counsel of Orange, the execution of
Egmont," yet we shall have occasion to see
how far this physical promptness which
had been so felicitous upon the battle-field
was likely to avail the hero of Saint Quentin
in the great political combat which was
approaching.
As to the talents of the Prince, there was
no difference of opinion. His enemies never
contested the subtlety and breadth of his
intellect, his adroitness and capacity in
conducting state affairs, his knowledge of
human nature, and the profoundness of his
views. In many respects it must be con-
fessed that his surnam.e of the Silent, like
many similar appellations, was a misnomer.
William of Orange was neither "silent"
nor "taciturn," yet these are the epithets
which will be for ever associated with the
name of a man who, in private, was the
most affable, cheerful, and delightful of
companions, and who on many great public
occasions was to prove himself, both by
pen and by speech, the most eloquent man
of his age. His mental accomplishments
were considerable. He had studied history
w^th attention, and he spoke and wrote with
facility Latin, French, German, Flemish, and
Spanish.
The man, however, in whose hands the
administration of the Netherlands was in
reality placed, was Anthony Perrenot, then
Bishop of Arras, soon to be known by the
more celebrated title of Cardinal Granvelle.
He was the chief of the Consulta, or secret
council of three, by whose deliberations the
Duchess Regent was to be governed. His
father, Nicholas Perrenot, of an obscure
family in Burgundy, had been long the
favorite minister and man of business to the
Emperor Charles. Anthony, the eldest of
thirteen children, was born in 1517. He
was early distinguished for his talents. He
studied at Dole, Padua, Paris, and Louvain.
At the age of twenty he spoke seven lan-
guages with perfect facility, while his ac-
quaintance with civil and ecclesiastical laws
was considered prodigious. At the age of
twenty-three he became a canon of Liege
Cathedral. The necessary eight quarters
of gentility produced upon that occasion
have accordingly been displayed by his
panegyrists in triumphant refutation of that
theory which gave him a blacksmith for his
grandfather. At the same period, although
he had not reached the requisite age, the
rich bishopric of Arras had already been
prepared for him by his father's care. Three
years afterwards, in 1543, he distinguished
himself by a most learned and brilliant
harangue before the Council of Trent,
which display so much charmed the Emperor,
that he created him councilor of state. A
few years afterwards he rendered the un-
scrupulous Charles still more valuable
proofs of devotion and dexterity by the
part he played in the memorable imprison-
ment of the Landgrave of Hesse and the
Saxon Dukes. He was thereafter con-
stantly employed in embassies and other
offices of trust and profit.
There was no doubt as to his profound
and varied learning, nor as to his natural
quickness and dexterity. He was ready-
witted, smooth and fluent of tongue, fertile
in expedients, courageous, resolute. He
thoroughly understood the art of managing
men, particularly his superiors. He knew
how to govern under the appearance of
obeying. He possessed exquisite tact in
appreciating the characters of those far
above him in rank and beneath him in
intellect. He could accommodate himself
with great readiness to the idiosyncrasies
of sovereigns. He was a chameleon to the
hand which fed him. In his intercourse
with the King, he colored himself, as it were,
with the King's character. He was not
himself, but Philip; not the sullen, hesitat-
ing, confused Philip, however, but Philip
endowed with eloquence, readiness, facility.
The King ever found himself anticipated
with the most delicate obsequiousness,
beheld his struggling ideas change into
winged words without ceasing to be his
own. No flattery could be more adroit.
The bishop accommodated himself to the
King's epistolary habits. The silver-tongued
and ready debater substituted protocols
for conversation, in deference to a monarch
who could not speak. He corresponded
with Philip, with Margaret of Parma, with
every one. He wrote folios to the Duchess
when they were in the same palace. He
would write letters forty pages long to the
King, and send off another courier on the
750
JOHN LOTIIROP MOTLEY
same day with two or tlircc additional
dispatclu's of identical date. Such prolixity-
enchanted the Kins, whose greediness for
business epistles was insatiable. 1 he pains-
takinrj monarch toiled, pen in hand, after
his wonderful minister in vain. Philip
was only fit to be the bishop's clerk; yet he
imagined himself to be the directing and
governing power. He scrawled apostilles
in the margins to prove that he had read
with attention, and persuaded himself that
he suggested when he scarcely even com-
prehended. J he bishop gave advice and
issued instructions when he seemed to be
only receiving them. He was the substance
while he affected to be the shadow. These
tactics were comparatively easy, and likely
to be triumphant, so long as he had only
to deal with inferior intellects, like those of
Philip and Margaret. When he should
be matched against political genius and
lofty character combined, it was possible
that his resources might not prove so all-
sufficient.
His political principles were sharply
defined in reality, but smoothed over by a
conventional and decorous benevolence of
language, which deceived vulgar minds.
He was a strict absolutist. His deference
to arbitrary power was profound and slavish.
God and **the master," as he always called
Philip, he professed to serve with equal
humility. "It seems to me," said he, in a
letter of this epoch, "that I shall never be
able to fulfill the obligation of slave which
I owe to your majesty, to whom I am bound
by so firm a chain; — at any rate, I shall
never fail to struggle for that end with
sincerity."
As a matter of course, he was a firm
opponent of the national rights of the
Netherlands. He had strenuously w^arned
Philip against assembling the states-general
before his departure for the sake of asking
them for supplies. He earnestly deprecated
allowing the constitutional authorities any
control over the expenditures of the govern-
ment, and averred that this practice under
the Regent Mary had been the cause of
endless trouble. It may easily be supposed
that other rights were as little to his taste
as the claim to vote the subsidies, a privilege
which was in reality indisputable. Men
who stood forth in defense of the provincial
constitutions were, in his opinion, mere
demagogues and hypocrites; their only
motive being to curry favor with the popu-
lace. Yet these charters were, after all,
sufficiently limited. The natural rights of
man were topics which had never been
broached. Man had only natural wrongs.
None ventured to doubt that sovereignty
was heaven-born, anointed of God. The
rights of the Netherlands were special, not
general; plural, not singular; liberties, not
liberty; "privileges," not maxims. They
were practical, not theoretical; historical, not
philosophical. Still, such as they were, they
were facts, acquisitions. They had been pur-
chased by the blood and toil of brave an-
cestors; they amounted — however open to
criticism upon broad humanitarian grounds,
of which few at that day had ever dreamed
— to a solid, substantial dyke against the
arbitrary power which was ever chafing
and fretting to destroy its barriers. No
men were more subtle or more diligent in
corroding the foundation of these bulwarks
than the disciples of Granvelle. Yet one
would have thought it possible to tolerate
an amount of practical freedom so different
from the wild, social speculations which, in
later days, have made both tyrants and
reasonable lovers of our race tremble with
apprehension. The Netherlanders claimed,
mainly, the right to vote the money which
was demanded in such enormous profusion
from their painfully-acquired wealth; they
were also unwilling to be burned alive if
they objected to transubstantiation. Gran-
velle was most distinctly of an opposite
opinion upon both topics. He strenuously
deprecated the interference of the states
with the subsidies, and it was by his advice
that the remorseless edict of 1550, the
Emperor's ordinance of blood and fire,
was re-enacted, as the very first measure of
Philip's reign. Such were his sentiments
as to national and popular rights by repre-
sentation. For the people itself — "that
vile and mischievous animal called the
people" — as he expressed it, he entertained
a cheerful contempt.
His aptitude for managing men was very
great; his capacity for affairs incontestable;
but it must be always understood as the
capacity for the affairs of absolutism. He
was a clever, scheming politician, an adroit
THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC
751
manager; it remained to be seen whether
he had a claim to the character of a states-
man. His industry was enormous. He
could write fifty letters a day with his own
hand. He could dictate to half a dozen
amanuenses at once, on as many different
subjects, in as many different languages,
and send them all away exhausted.
He was already rich. His income from
his see and other livings was estimated, in
1557, at ten thousand dollars; his property
in ready money, "furniture, tapestry, and
the like," at two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars. When it is considered that, as
compared with our times, these sums repre-
sent a revenue of a hundred thousand, and
a capital of two millions and a half in addi-
tion, it may be safely asserted that the
prelate had at least made a good beginning.
Besides his regular income, moreover, he
had handsome receipts from that simony
which was reduced to a system, and which
gave him a liberal profit, generally in the
shape of an annuity, upon every benefice
which he conferred. He was, however, by
no means satisfied. His appetite was as
boundless as the sea; he was still a shame-
less mendicant of pecuniary favors and
lucrative offices. Already, in 1552, the
Emperor had roundly rebuked his greedi-
ness. "As to what you say of getting no
'merced' nor *ayuda de costa,'" said he,
"'tis merced and ayuda de costa quite
sufficient, when one has fat benefices, pen-
sions, and salaries, with which a man might
manage to support himself." The bishop,
however, was not easily abashed, and he
was, at the epoch which now occupies us,
earnestly and successfully soliciting from
Philip the lucrative abbey of Saint Armand.
Not that he would have accepted this
preferment, "could the abbey have been
annexed to any of the new bishoprics"; on
the contrary, he assured the King that
"to carry out so holy a work as the erection
of those new sees, he would willingly have
contributed even out of his own miserable
pittance." It not being considered expedi-
ent to confiscate the abbey to any particular
bishop, Philip accordingly presented it to the
prelate of Arras, together with a handsome
sum of money in the shape of an "ayuda de
costa" beside. The thrifty bishop, who
foresaw the advent of troublous times in
the Netherlands, however, took care in the
letters by which he sent his thanks, to
instruct the King to secure the money upon
crown property in Aragon, Naples, and
Sicily, as matters in the provinces were
beginning to look very precarious.
Such, at the commencement of the
Duchess Margaret's administration, were
the characters and the previous histories
of the persons into whose hands the Nether-
lands were entrusted. None of them have
been prejudged. Their characters have
been sketched, not according to subsequent
developments, but as they appeared at the
opening of this important epoch.
The aspect of the country and its in-
habitants offered many sharp contrasts, and
revealed many sources of future trouble.
The aristocracy of the Netherlands was
excessively extravagant, dissipated, and
already considerably embarrassed in cir-
cumstances. It had been the policy of the
Emperor and of Philip to confer high offices,
civil, military, and diplomatic, upon the
leading nobles, by which enormous expenses
were entailed upon them, without any
corresponding salaries. The case of Orange
has been already alluded to, and there were
many other nobles less able to afford the
expense, who had been indulged with these
ruinous honors. During the war, there had
been, however, many chances of bettering
broken fortunes. Victory brought immense
prizes to the leading officers. The ransoms
of so many illustrious prisoners as had graced
the triumphs of Saint Quentin and Grave-
lines had been extremely profitable. These
sources of wealth had now been cut off; yet,
on the departure of the King from the
Netherlands, the luxury increased instead
of diminishing. "Instead of one court,"
said a contemporary, "you would have
said that there were fifty." Nothing could
be more sumptuous than the modes of life
in Brussels. The household of Orange has
been already painted. That of Egmont was
almost as magnificent. A rivalry in hos-
pitality and in display began among the
highest nobles, and extended to those less
able to maintain themselves in the contest.
During the war there had been the valiant
emulation of the battle-field; gentlemen had
vied with each other how best to illustrate
an ancient name with deeds of desperate
7>2
JOHN LOTIIROP MOTLEY
vnl(ir, to repair the fortunes of a ruined
house with the spoils of war. 1 hey now
soui^ht to surpass each other in splendid
extravagance. It was an eager competition
who should huild the stateliest palaces, have
the greatest number of noble pages and
gentlemen in waiting, the most gorgeous
liveries, the most hospitable tables, the
most scientific cooks. There was also much
depravity as well as extravagance. 1 he
morals of high society were loose. Gaming
was practiced to a frightful extent. Drunken-
ness was a prevailing characteristic of the
higher classes. Even the Prince of Orange
himself, at this period, although never
addicted to habitual excess, was extremely
convivial in his tastes, tolerating scenes and
companions not likely at a later day to
find much favor in his sight. "We kept
Saint Martin's joyously," he wrote, at
about this period, to his brother, **and in
the most jovial company. Brederode was
one day in such a state that I thought he
would certainly die, but he has now got
over it." Count Brederode, soon after-
wards to become so conspicuous in the
early scenes of the revolt, was, in truth,
most notorious for his performances in
these banqueting scenes. He appeared to
have vowed as uncompromising hostility to
cold water as to the inquisition, and always
denounced both with the same fierce and
ludicrous vehemence. Their constant con-
nection with Germany at that period did not
improve the sobriety of the Netherland
nobles. The aristocracy of that country,
as is well known, were most "potent at
potting." "When the German finds him-
self sober," said the bitter Badovaro, "he
believes himself to be ill." Gladly, since
the peace, they had welcomed the oppor-
tunities afforded for many a deep carouse
with their Netherland cousins. The ap-
proaching marriage of the Prmce of Orange
with the Saxon princess — an episode which
will soon engage our attention — gave rise to
tremendous orgies. Count Schwartzburg,
the Prince's brother-in-law, and one of the
negotiators of the marriage, found many
occasions to strengthen the bonds of har-
mony between the countries by indulgence
of these common tastes. "I have had
many princes and counts at my table," he
wrote to Orange, "where a good deal more
was drunk than eaten. The Rhinegrave's
brother fell down dead after drinking too
much malvoisie; but we have had him
balsamed and sent home to his family."
These disorders among the higher ranks
were in reality so extensive as to justify
the biting remark of the Venetian: "The
gentlemen intoxicate themselves every day,"
said he, "and the ladies also; but much
less than the men." His remarks as to the
morality, in other respects, of both sexes
were equally sweeping, and not more com-
plimentary.
If these were the characteristics of the
most distinguished society, it may be sup-
posed that they were reproduced with more
or less intensity throughout all the more
remote but concentric circles of life, as far
as the seductive splendor of the court could
radiate. The lesser nobles emulated the
grandees, and vied with each other in splen-
did establishments, banquets, masquerades,
and equipages. Their estates, in conse-
quence, were mortgaged, deeply and more
deeply; then, after a few years, sold to the
merchants, or rich advocates and other
gentlemen of the robe, to whom they had
been pledged. The more closely ruin
stared the victims in the face, the more
heedlessly did they plunge into excesses.
Many of the nobles being thus embarrassed,
and some even desperate, in their condition,
it was thought that they were desirous of
creating disturbances in the commonwealth,
that the payment of just debts might be
avoided, that their mortgaged lands might
be wrested by main force from the low-born
individuals who had become possessed of
them, that, in particular, the rich abbey
lands held by idle priests might be appropri-
ated to the use of impoverished gentlemen,
v/ho could turn them to so much better
account. It is quite probable that interested
motives such as these were not entirely
inactive among a comparatively small class
of gentlemen. The religious reformation in
every land of Europe derived a portion of
its strength from the opportunity it afforded
to potentates and great nobles for helping
themselves to Church property. No doubt
many Netherlanders thought that their
fortunes might be improved at the expense
of the monks, and for the benefit of religion.
Even without apostacy from the mother
THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC
753
Church, they looked with longing eyes on
the wealth of her favored and indolent
children. They thought that the King
would do well to carve a round number of
handsome military commanderies out of
the abbey lands, whose possessors should be
bound to military service after the ancient
manner of fiefs, so that a splendid cavalry,
headed by the gentlemen of the country,
should be ever ready to mount and ride at
the royal pleasure, in place of a horde of lazy
epicureans, telling beads and indulging
themselves in luxurious vice.
Such views were entertained; such lan-
guage often held. These circumstances and
sentiments had their influence among the
causes which produced the great revolt now
impending. Care should be taken, however,
not to exaggerate that influence. It is a
prodigious mistake to refer this great his-
torical event to sources so insufl&cient as
the ambition of a few great nobles, and the
embarrassments of a larger number of needy
gentlemen. The Netherland revolt was not
an aristocratic, but a popular, although
certainly not a democratic movement. It
was a great episode — the longest, the dark-
est, the bloodiest, the most important
episode in the history of the religious refor-
mation in Europe. The nobles so conspicu-
ous upon the surface at the oubreak, only
drifted before a storm which they neither
caused nor controlled.
For the state of the people was very
difi^erent from the condition of the aristoc-
racy. The period of martyrdom had lasted
long and was to last longer; but there were
symptoms that it might one day be succeeded
by a more active stage of popular disease.
The tumults of the Netherlands were long
in ripening; when the final outbreak came
it would have been more philosophical to
inquire, not why it had occurred, but how
it could have been so long postponed. Dur-
ing the reign of Charles, the sixteenth cen-
tury had been advancing steadily in strength
as the once omnipotent Emperor lapsed into
decrepitude. That extraordinary century
had not daw^ned upon the earth only to
increase the strength of absolutism and
superstition. The new world had not been
discovered, the ancient world reconquered,
the printing-press perfected, only that the
inquisition might reign undisturbed over the
fairest portions of the earth, and chartered
hypocrisy fatten upon its richest lands. It
was impossible that the most energetic and
quick-witted people of Europe should not
feel sympathy with the great eff^ort made by
Christendom to shake off the incubus which
had so long paralyzed her hands and brain.
In the Netherlands, where the attachment
to Rome had never been intense, where in
the old times, the Bishops of Utrecht had
been rather Ghibellme than Guelph, where
all the earliest sects of dissenters — Wal-
denses, Lollards, Hussites — had found nu-
merous converts and thousands of martyrs,
it was inevitable that there should be a
response from the popular heart to the
deeper agitation which now reached to the
very core of Christendom.
The people were numerous, industrious,
accustomed for centuries to a state of com-
parative civil freedom, and to a lively foreign
trade, by which their minds were saved
from the stagnation of bigotry. It was
natural that they should begin to generalize,
and to pass from the concrete images pre-
sented them in the Flemish monasteries to
the abstract character of Rome itself. The
Flemings, above all their other qualities,
were a commercial nation. Commerce was
the mother of their freedom, so far as they
had acquired it, in civil matters. It was
struggling to give birth to a larger liberty,
to freedom of conscience. The provinces
were situated in the very heart of Europe.
The blood of a world-wide traflic was daily
coursing through the thousand arteries of
that w^ater-inwoven territory. There was a
mutual exchange betw^een the Netherlands
and all the world; and ideas were as liberally
interchanged as goods. Truth was im-
ported as freely as less precious merchandise.
The psalms of Marot were as current as the
drugs of Molucca or the diamonds of Borneo.
The prohibitory measures of a despotic
government could not annihilate this in-
tellectual trade, nor could bigotry devise an
effective quarantine to exclude the religious
pest which lurked in every bale of mer-
chandise, and was wafted on every breeze
from East and West.
The edicts of the Emperor had been
endured, but not accepted. The horrible
persecution under which so many thousands
had sunk had produced its inevitable result.
754
JOHN LOrilROP MO'lLEY
Fertili'.ccl bv all tins iiiiiocfnt Mood, the
soil of the Nctlurlaiuls bccainc as a watered
garden, in which liberty, civil and religious,
was to flourish perennially. The scattold
had its daily victims, but did not make a
single convert. 1 he statistics of these
crimes will perhaps never be accurately
adjusted; but those who love horrible
details may Hnd ample material. 1 he
chronicles contain the lists of these obscure
martyrs; but their names, hardly pro-
nounced in their lifetime, sound barbarously
in our ears, and will never ring through the
trumpet of fame. Yet they were men who
dared and suHered as much as men can dare
and suffer in this world, and for the noblest
cause which can inspire humanity. Fanatics
they certainly were not, if fanaticism con-
sists in show, without corresponding sub-
stance. For them all was terrible reality.
The Emperor and his edicts were realities,
the ax, the stake were realities, and the hero-
ism with which men took each other by the
hand and walked into the flames, or with
which women sang a song of triumph while
the grave-digger was shoveling the earth
upon their living faces, was a reality also.
Thus, the people of the Netherlands were
already pervaded, throughout the whole
extent of the country, with the expanding
spirit of religious reformation. It was
inevitable that sooner or later an explosion
was to arrive. Ihey were placed between
two great countries, where the new principles
had already taken root. The Lutheranism
of Germany and the Calvinism of France
had each its share in producing the Nether-
land revolt, but a mistake is often made in
estimating the relative proportion of these
several influences. 1 he Reformation first
entered the provinces, not through the
Augsburg, but the Huguenot gate. The
fiery field-preachers from the south of
France first inflamed the excitable hearts of
the kindred population of the south-western
Netherlands. The Walloons were the first
to rebel against and the first to reconcile
themselves w^ith papal Rome, exactly as
their Celtic ancestors, fifteen centuries
earlier, had been foremost in the revolt
against imperial Rome, and precipitate in
their submission to her overshadowing
power. 1 he Batavians, slower to be moved
but more steadfast, retained the impulse
which they received from the same source
which was already agitating their "Welsh"
compatriots. 1 here were already French
preachers at Valenciennes and Tournay, to
be followed, as we shall have occasion to
see, by many others. Without under-
valuing the influence of the German
Churches, and particularly of the garrison-
preaching of the German military chaplains
in the Netherlands, it may be safely asserted
that the early Reformers of the provinces
were mainly Huguenots in their belief. The
Dutch Church became, accordingly, not
Lutheran, but Calvinistic, and the founder
of the commonwealth hardly ceased to be a
nominal Catholic before he became an
adherent to the same creed.
In the meantime, it is more natural to
regard the great movement, psychologically
speaking, as a whole, whether it revealed
itself in France, Germany, the Netherlands,
England, or Scotland. The policy of govern-
ments, national character, individual in-
terests, and other collateral circumstances,
modified the result; but the great cause
was the same; the source of all the move-
ments was single. The Reformation in
Germany had been adjourned for half a
century by the Augsburg religious peace,
just concluded. It was held in suspense in
France through the Machiavellian policy
which Catherine de Medici had just adopted,
and w'as for several years to prosecute, of
balancing one party against the other, so
as to neutralize all power but her own. The
great contest was accordingly transferred to
the Netherlands, to be fought out for the rest
of the century, while the whole of Christen-
dom was to look anxiously for the result.
From the East and from the West the clouds
rolled away, leaving a comparatively bright
and peaceful atmosphere, only that they
might concentrate themselves with porten-
tous blackness over the soil of the Nether-
lands. In Germany, the princes, not the
people, had conquered Rome, and to the
princes, not the people, were secured
the benefits of the victory — the spoils of
churches, and the right to worship according
to conscience. The people had the right to
conform to their ruler's creed, or to depart
from his land. Still, as a matter of fact,
many of the princes being Reformers, a
large mass of the population had acquired
THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC
755
the privilege for their own generation and
that of their children to practice that religion
which they actually approved. This was a
fact, and a more comfortable one than the
necessity of choosing between what they
considered wicked idolatry and the stake —
the only election left to their Netherland
brethren. In France, the accidental splinter
from Montgomery's lance had deferred the
Huguenot massacre for a dozen years.
During the period in which the Queen
Regent was resolved to play her fast and
loose policy, all the persuasions of Philip
and the arts of Alva were powerless to
induce her to carry out the scheme which
Henry had revealed to Orange in the forest
of Vincennes. When the crime came at
last, it was as blundering as it was bloody;
at once premeditated and accidental; the
isolated execution of an interregal con-
spiracy, existing for half a generation, yet
exploding without concert; a wholesale
massacre, but a piecemeal plot.
The aristocracy and the masses being
thus, from a variety of causes, in this agi-
tated and dangerous condition, what were
the measures of the government?
The edict of 1550 had been re-enacted
immediately after Philip's accession to
sovereignty. It is necessary that the reader
should be made acquainted with some of
the leading provisions of this famous docu-
ment, thus laid down above all the constitu-
tions as the organic law of the land. A
few plain facts, entirely without rhetorical
varnish, will prove more impressive in this
case than superfluous declamation. The
American will judge whether the wrongs
inflicted by Laud and Charles upon his
Puritan ancestors were the severest that a
people has had to undergo, and whether the
Dutch Republic does not track its source
to the same high, religious origin as that of
our own commonwealth.
"No one," said the edict, "shall print,
write, copy, keep, conceal, sell, buy or give
in churches, streets, or other places, any
book or writing made by Martin Luther,
John Ecolampadius, Ulrich Zwinglius, Mar-
tin Bucer, John Calvin, or other heretics
reprobated by the Holy Church; . . . nor
break, nor otherwise injure the images of the
holy virgin, or canonized saints; . . . nor
in his house hold conventicles, or illegal
gatherings, or be present at any such in
which the adherents of the above-mentioned
heretics teach, baptize, and form conspira-
cies against the Holy Church and the general
welfare. . . . Moreover, we forbid," con-
tinues the edict, in name of the sovereign,
" all lay persons to converse or dispute
concerning the Holy Scriptures, openly or
secretly, especially on any doubtful or
difficult matters, or to read, teach, or expound
the Scriptures, unless they have duly studied
theology and been approved by some re-
nowned university; . . . or to preach
secretly, or openly, or to entertain any of
the opinions of the above-mentioned heretics;
. . . on pain, should any one be found to
have contravened any of the points above
mentioned, as perturbators of our state and
of the general quiet, to be punished in the
following manner." And how were they
to be punished.'' What was the penalty
inflicted upon the man or woman who
owned a hymn-book, or who hazarded the
opinion in private, that Luther was not
quite wrong in doubting the power of a
monk to sell for money the license to commit
murder or incest; or upon the parent, not
being a Roman Catholic doctor of divinity,
who should read Christ's Sermon on the
Mount to his children in his own parlor or
shop? How were crimes like these to be
visited upon the transgressor? Was it by
reprimand, fine, imprisonment, banish-
ment, or by branding on the forehead, by
the cropping of the ears or the slitting of
nostrils, as was practiced upon the Puritan
fathers of New England for their noncon-
formity? It was by a sharper chastisement
than any of these methods. The Puritan
fathers of the Dutch Republic had to
struggle against a darker doom. The edict
went on to provide:
"That such perturbators of the general
quiet are to be executed, to wit: the men
with the sword and the women to be buried
alive, if they do not persist in their errors; if
they do persist in them, then they are to
be executed with fire; all theit property in
both cases being confiscated to the crown."
Thus, the clemency of the sovereign per-
mitted the repentant heretic to be beheaded
or buried alive, instead of being burned.
The edict further provided against all
misprision of heresy by making those who
756
JOHN LOTHROP MOILEY
failed to betray the suspected liable to the
same punishment as if suspected or convicted
themselves: "we forbid," said the decree,
"all persons to lodj^e, entertain, furnish
with food, fire, or clothing, or otherwise to
favor any one holden or notoriously sus-
pected of being a heretic; . . . and any one
failing to denounce any such we ordain
shall be liable to the above-mentioned
punishments."
The edict went on to provide, "that if any
person, being not convicted of heresy or
error, but greatly suspected thereof, and
therefore condemned by the spiritual judge
to abjure such heresy, or by the secular
magistrate to make public fine and repara-
tion, shall again become suspected or tainted
with heresy — although it should not appear
that he has contravened or violated any one of
our above-mentioned commands — neverthe-
less, we do will and ordain that such person
shall be considered as relapsed, and, as such,
be punished with loss of life and property,
•without any hope of moderation or mitigation
of the above-mentioned penalties."
Furthermore, it was decreed, that "the
spiritual judges, desiring to proceed against
any one for the crime of heresy, shall request
any of our sovereign courts or provincial
councils to appoint any one of their college,
or such other adjunct as the council shall
select, to preside over the proceedings to be
instituted against the suspected. All who
know of any person tainted with heresy
are required to denounce and give them up
to all judges, oflScers of the bishops, or
others having authority on the premises,
on pain of being punished according to the
pleasure of the judge. Likew^ise, all shall
be obliged, who know of any place where
such heretics keep themselves, to declare
them to the authorities, on pain of being
held as accomplices, and punished as such
heretics themselves would be if appre-
hended."
In order to secure the greatest number of
arrests by a direct appeal to the most ig-
noble, but not the least powerful principle
of human nature, it was ordained "that the
informer, in case of conviction, should be
entitled to one-half the property of the
accused, if not more than one hundred
pounds Flemish; if more, then ten per cent.
of all such excess."
Treachery to one's friends was encour-
aged by the provision, "that if any man being
present at any secret conventicle, shall
afterwards come forward and betray his
fellow members of the congregation, he
shall receive full pardon."
In order that neither the good people of
the Netherlands, nor the judges and in-
quisitors should delude themselves with the
notion that these fanatic decrees were only
intended to inspire terror, not for practical
execution, the sovereign continued to ordain
■ — "to the end that the judges and officers
may have no reason, under pretext that the
penalties are too great and heavy and only
devised to terrify delinquents, to punish
them less severely than they deserve — that
the culprits be really punished by the pen-
alties above declared; forbidding all judges
to alter or moderate the penalties in any
manner — forbidding any one, of whatsoever
condition, to ask of us or of any one having
authority, to grant pardon, or to present any
petition in favor of such heretics, exiles, or
fugitives, on penalty of being declared for
ever incapable of civil and military office,
and of being arbitrarily punished besides."
Such were the leading provisions of this
famous edict, originally promulgated in 1550
as a recapitulation and condensation of all
the previous ordinances of the Emperor
upon religious subjects. By its style and
title it was a perpetual edict, and, according
to one of its clauses, was to be published
for ever once in every six months, in every
city and village of the Netherlands. It had
been promulgated at Augsburg, where the
Emperor was holding a diet, upon the 25th
of September. Its severity had so appalled
the Dowager Queen of Hungary, that she
had made a journey to Augsburg expressly
to procure a mitigation of some of its provi-
sions. The principal alteration which she
was able to obtain of the Emperor was,
however, in the phraseology only. As a
concession to popular prejudice, the words
"spiritual judges" were substituted for
"inquisitors" wherever that expression had
occurred in the original draft.
The edict had been re-enacted by the
express advice of the Bishop of Arras, imme-
diately on the accession of Philip. The
prelate knew the value of the Emperor's
name; he may have thought, also, that it
THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC
757
would be difficult to increase the sharpness
of the ordinances. "I advised the King,"
says Granvelle, in a letter written a few
years later, "to make no change in the
placards, but to proclaim the text drawn up
by the Emperor, republishing the whole
as the King's edict, with express insertion
of the phrase, 'Carolus,' etc. I recom-
mended this lest men should calumniate his
Majesty as wishing to introduce novelties
in the matter of religion."
This edict, containing the provisions
which have been laid before the reader, was
now to be enforced with the utmost rigor;
every official personage, from the stad-
holders down, having received the most
stringent instructions to that effect, under
Philip's own hand. This was the first gift
of Philip and of Granvelle to the Nether-
lands; of the monarch who said of himself
that he had always, "from the beginning of
his government, followed the path of clem-
ency, according to his natural disposition, so
well known to all the world"; of the prelate
who said of himself, "that he had ever com-
bated the opinion that anything could be ac-
complished by terror, death, and violence."
During the period of the French and
Papal war, it has been seen that the execu-
tion of these edicts had been permitted to
slacken. It was now resumed with re-
doubled fury. Moreover, a new measure
had increased the disaffection and dismay
of the people, already sufficiently filled
with apprehension. As an additional secu-
rity for the supremacy of the ancient religion,
it had been thought desirable that the
number of bishops should be increased.
There were but four sees in the Netherlands,
those of Arras, Cambray, Tournay, and
Utrecht. That of Utrecht was within the
archiepiscopate of Cologne; the other three
were within that of Rheims. It seemed
proper that the prelates of the Netherlands
should owe no extra-provincial allegiance.
It was likewise thought that three millions
of souls required more than four spiritual
superintendents. At any rate, whatever
might be the interest of the flocks, it was
certain that those broad and fertile pastures
would sustain more than the present number
of shepherds. The wealth of the religious
houses in the provinces was very great.
The abbey of Afflighem alone had a revenue
of fifty thousand florins, and there were
many others scarcely inferior in wealth.
But these institutions were comparatively
independent both of King and Pope. Elect-
ing their own superiors from time to time,
in nowise desirous of any change by which
their ease might be disturbed and their
riches endangered, the honest friars were
not likely to engage in any very vigorous
crusade against heresy, nor for the sake of
introducing or strengthening Spanish insti-
tutions, which they knew to be abominated
by the people, to take the risk of driving all
their disciples into revolt and apostasy.
Comforting themselves with an Erasmian
philosophy, which they thought best suited
to the times, they were as little likely as the
Sage of Rotterdam himself would have been,
to make martyrs of themselves for the sake
of extirpating Calvinism. The abbots and
monks were, in political matters, very much
under the influence of the great nobles, in
whose company they occupied the benches
of the upper house of the states-general.
Doctor Francis Sonnius had been sent on
a mission to the Pope, for the purpose of
representing the necessity of an increase in
the episcopal force of the Netherlands.
Just as the King was taking his departure,
the commissioner arrived, bringing with
him the Bull of Paul the Fourth, dated
May 1 8, 1559. This was afterwards con-
firmed by that of Pius the Fourth, in January
of the following year. The document stated
that "Paul the Fourth, slave of slaves,
wishing to provide for the welfare of the
provinces and the eternal salvation of their
inhabitants, had determined to plant in
that fruitful field several new bishoprics.
The enemy of mankind being abroad," said
the Bull, "in so many forms at that par-
ticular time, and the Netherlands, then
under the sway of that beloved son of his
holiness, Philip the Catholic, being com-
passed about with heretic and schismatic
nations, it was believed that the eternal
welfare of the land was in great danger. At
the period of the original establishment of
Cathedral churches, the provinces had been
sparsely peopled; they had now become filled
to overflowing, so that the original ecclesias-
tical arrangement did not suffice. The harvest
zvas plentiful^ but the laborers were few.*'
In consideration of these and other
758
JOHN lo'I'hrop mo I ley
reasons, tlirtc archbishoprics were accorcl-
innly appointed. 1 hat of Mechlin was to
be prmcipal, under which were constituted
six bislioprics, those, namely, of Antwerp,
Hois le Due, Rurmond, Ghent, liruges, and
\'pres. 1 hat of Cambray was second, with
the four subordinate dioceses of lournay,
Arras, Saint Onur, and Nanuir. The third
archbishopric was that of I rrecht, with the
Hve sees of Haarlem, Middelburg, Leeu-
warden, Groningen, and Deventer.
1 he nomination to these important offices
was granted to the King, subject to con-
firmation by the Pope. Moreover, it was
ordained by the Bull that "each bishop
should appoint fiine additiojial prebendaries,
who were to assist him in the matter of the
inquisition throughout his bishopric, tzvo of
zvhom were themselves to be inquisitors''
Vo sustain these two great measures,
through which Philip hoped once and for
ever to extinguish the Netherland heresy,
it was considered desirable that the Spanish
troops still remaining in the provinces
should be kept there indefinitely.
1 he force was not large, amounting hardly
to four thousand men, but they were un-
scrupulous, and admirably disciplined. As
the entering wedge, by which a military and
ecclesiastical despotism was eventually to
be forced into the very heart of the land,
they were invaluable. The moral efiect to
be hoped from the regular presence of a
Spanish standing army during a time of
peace in the Netherlands could hardly be
exaggerated. Philip was therefore deter-
mined to employ every argument and subter-
fuge to detain the troops.
AMERICAN LITERATURE
PART II
FROM MELVILLE AND WHITMAN TO THE PRESENT TIME
HERMAN MELVILLE (1819-1891)
R. L. Stevenson characteristically expressed his enthusiasm for Melville by terming him "a howl-
ing cheese." More explicitly and sensitively John Masefield has said of Moby Dick: "In that wild,
beautiful romance Melville seems to have spoken the very secret of the sea, and to have drawn into his
tale all the magic, all the sadness, all the wild joy of many waters. It stands quite alone; quite unlike
any other book known to me. It strikes a note which no other sea writer has ever struck." And
recently the London Mercury has referred to Melville as "perhaps the greatest of all American writ-
ers." These citations could be multiplied; and, though the last tells more of its writer's limitations
of knowledge or of taste than it does of Melville, still, it is a straw which, with the rest, indicates that
Melville, though a frustrated, unstable, ill-balanced man, was nevertheless a writer of genius whose
books have scarcely yet taken their deserved place in American literature.
Melville's ancestry was Dutch on his mother's side, Scotch-Irish on his father's. His paternal
grandfather was the Major Thomas Melville who inspired Holmes's poem. The Last Leaf. His father
was a merchant of New York, and there Herman was born on i August, 1819. His father died in 1832,
leaving his family almost without money. Very little is known of Herman's childhood and schooling.
In 1826, when the boy was being sent to Albany on a visit to members of his mother's family, his father
wrote: "He is very backward in speech and somewhat slow in comprehension, but you wnll find him
as far as he understands men and things both solid and profound and of a docile and amiable dispo-
sition." Beyond this somewhat extraordinary sentence, there is little or no contemporary evidence
concerning Melville's earlier years. It is known that he attended the Albany Academy, and that
with this his formal education ceased, but it is not known how long he was there. In 1834 he was
employed as a clerk in a bank, and in the following year as a clerk in his brother's fur and cap store in
Albany. During the greater part of 1836 he lived with an uncle upon the latter's farm at Pittsfield,
Massachusetts, doing farm work and possibly for a few months teaching in a nearby school. He
was unhappy, if a statement in Rcdburn may be trusted, and determined now to try to sail away from
his misery: "Sad disappointments in several plans which I had sketched for my future life, the neces-
sity of doing something for myself, united to a naturally roving disposition, had now conspired within
me to send me to sea as a sailor." In the spring of 1837 he went to New York and shipped as a com-
mon sailor on a trading vessel bound for Liverpool. The ship stayed some six weeks in Liverpool,
and he then came back with her, a bitterly disillusioned youth, though capable still — as he remained
for many a year — of cherishing other hopes equally illusory. From this time until the beginning of
1841 he taught in several schools, in Pittsfield and near Albany, and made some attempts to
write for periodicals. But he only succeeded in bringing on another fit of desperation and illusory
hope. He went to New Bedford and shipped as a sailor aboard the Acushnet, a whaler, which left
Fairhaven (across the river from New Bedford) on 3 January, 1841, bound for the Pacific Ocean. The
Acushnet's captain was brutal, and Melville found his life finally unbearable, and so deserted the ship,
with a fellow-sailor, Richard Tobias Greene, in the summer of 1842, at Nukuheva, the chief port of the
Marquesas. After a short time the two were separated, and Greene made his way back to America.
Melville, however, was taken by cannibals and was held by them some four months in loose captivity,
until he succeeded in escaping to an Australian whaler. He then visited Tahiti and others of the Soci-
ety Islands and, now in another ship, went to Honolulu. There, after a time, he became a member of
the crew of the frigate United States, and so returned to America in 1844.
Almost immediately Melville must have begun writing the books founded on his South-Sea experi-
ences which were to make him famous; — founded on those experiences, but so built up by a strange
imagination and colored by unrestrained feeling that it is impossible exactly to draw the line between
romance and reality. Typee was published in 1846. Omoo followed in 1847, and in the same year
Melville was married to Miss Elizabeth Shaw of Boston. Soon after the marriage they removed to
New York, where they lived with a brother and several sisters of Melville. In the spring of 1849 Mardi
appeared. In its preface Melville wrote: "Not long ago, having published two narratives of voyages
in the Pacific, which, in many quarters, were received with incredulity, the thought occurred to me
of indeed writing a romance of Polynesian adventure and publishing it as such, to see whether the
fiction might not, possibly, be received for a verity." This is one, though only one, reason for the
I
IIKRMAN MELVILLE
fact that Mnrdi is one of the strariKist hooks ever written. In the same year Rcdburn (based on Mel-
ville's Hrst ocean voyape) was piihhshed, hut, despite this rapidity of production and despite ^ood
sales of his books on hoth sides of the Atlantic, Melville was already findinj; his income insufficient
for the support of his family, and in the fall of 1H49 he went to England with the manuscript of his
fifth hook, hoping by his presence to make better financial arrangements with his English publisher.
At the close of his outward voyage he wrote in his Journal: "This time to-morrow I shall be on land,
and press English earth after the lapse of ten years — then a sailor, now H. M., author of Pcrdcc, II ul-
labalooy and Png-Dog,'' — a sufficient indication that Melville was not enchanted with authorship or,
at any rate, with such authorship as the demands of his public and the state of his pocketbook were
forcing upon him. Early in 1850 he returned to New York, and in this year IJ'hite-Jackct (based on
his experiences aboard the Lhiitrd States) was published. In the summer Melville and his family went
to Pittstield, and in the fall — Melville buying a house there, which he called Arrowhead — they began
a period of residence in Pittsfield which lasted untd 1863. During the first year of this period Haw-
thorne and his wife lived not far away, and the two men became friends. Differences of temperament
must have kept them from fully understanding each other, but did not close the gates to a real, if some-
what curious, friendship. When Melville published Moby Dick in 1 851, his greatest book, he dedicated
it to Hawthorne. In 1852 Pierre was published, and was a failure. Israel Potter followed in 1855, and
The Piazza Tales in 1856. In the fall of the same year Melville, for the sake of his health, which had
become seriously impaired, sailed for England, and went thence to Constantinople and Palestine,
returning in the late spring of 1857. In this year The Confidence-Man appeared, the last of Melville's
prose to be published, though when he died he left a novel, Billy Budd, in manuscript, besides ten
shorter prose pieces. He turned in following years to the writing of verse, producing one long poem,
Clarcl (published in 1876), based on his journey to Palestine, and a number of short poems, some of
which were published in 1866, under the title Battle-Pieces, while others were privately printed in 1888
and 1 891, and still others remained in manuscript until they were included, together with the hitherto
unpublished prose, in the final volumes of the Standard Edition of Melville's JVorks issued by Messrs.
Constable (London) in 1922-1924.
In the 3'ears from 1857 to i860 Melville attempted to increase his income by lecturing, without
marked success. In 1863 he purchased a house in New York and removed thither, where he remained
until his death. He was appointed an inspector of customs in 1866, and held this post until i January,
1886, living in great retirement, almost forgotten by his countrymen. He died on 28 September, 1891.
It is believed that, whatever view of life he finally arrived at, it was one which brought him a measure
of quietude and serenity in his later years. But earlier in life his portion had been different. Then,
both the manner of his life and the substance of his books had been born of a fierce, seemingly
unquenchable, romantic desire to escape from the world of reality as he found it both within him and
around him, conjoined with a belief that somewhere there awaited him a haven of perfect peace and
happiness. "I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden
seas, and land on barbarous coasts." {Moby Dick, Chap. I.) "And though essaying but a sportive
sail, I was driven from my course by a blast resistless; and, ill-provided, young, and bowed to the brunt
of things before my prime, still fly before the gale; — hard have I striven to keep stout heart. And if it
harder be than e'er before to find new climes, when now our seas have oft been circled by ten thou-
sand prows — much more the glory! . . . But fiery yearnings their own phantom-future make, and
deem it present. So, if after all these fearful, fainting trances, the verdict be, the golden haven was
not gained; — yet, in bold quest thereof better to sink in boundless deeps than float on vulgar shoals;
and give me, ye gods, an utter wreck, if wreck I do." (Mardi, Chap. CLXIX.) It was believed until
recent years, by most of those who remembered Melville at all, that utter wreck had indeed been his
lot. But it was not so. He quivered for a time under the conviction of failure, and a failure in some
sense he was, partly as a result of contemporary misunderstanding and neglect. But he burned not
with an empty, unmeaning nostalgia. His sense of life was honest and profound. Thus he spoke
through Father Mapple's sermon (Moby Dick, Chap. IX): "Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon
the waters when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to
appall! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe to him who, in this world,
courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation!
. . . But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe there is a sure delight .... Delight
is to him who, against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inex-
orable self. . . . Delight — top-gallant delight — is to him who acknowledges no law or lord but the
Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven." This was the deep, true core of Melville's romantic
passion for escape. It was born of a fierce integrity — an integrity which has given enduring substance
and worth to the workings of his powerful, astonishing imagination in Moby Dick and in Bartleby (one
of The Piazza Tales), and perhaps also in Mardi and in cloudy Pierre.
MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHITE WHALE
MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHITE
WHALE
CHAPTER XXXVP
THE QUARTER-DECK
{Enter Ahab: Then, all.)
It was not a great while after the affair
of the pipe,2 that one morning shortly after
breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, ascended
the cabin gangway to the deck. There most
sea captains usually walk at that hour, as
country gentlemen, after the same meal,
take a few turns in the garden.
Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard,
as to and fro he paced his old rounds, upon
planks so familiar to his tread, that they were
all over dented, like geological stones, with
the peculiar mark of his walk. Did you
fixedly gaze, too, upon that ribbed and
dented brow; there also, you would see still
stranger footprints — the footprints of his
one unsleeping, everpacing thought.
But on the occasion in question, those
dents looked deeper, even as his nervous
step that morning left a deeper mark. And
so full of his thought was Ahab, that at every
uniform turn that he made, now at the
mainmast and now at the binnacle, you could
almost see that thought turn in him as he
turned, and pace in him as he paced; so
completely possessing him, indeed, that it
all but seemed the inward mold of every
outer movement.
"D'ye mark him. Flask?" whispered
Stubb; "the chick that's in him pecks the
shell. 'Twill soon be out."
1 The preceding chapters introduce the reader to the
narrator of the tale, who calls himself Ishmael, and tell
of his going to Nantucket, in company with Queequeg
the harpooneer, a native of the South Sea Islands whom
he had met in New Bedford, of their joining the crew
of Captain Ahab's ship, the Pequody and of the begin-
ning of the Pequod's long voyage. As is explained in
Chap. XXXV, Ahab had lost one leg on an earlier
voyage, and he wore strapped to the stump a "barbaric
white leg" which had "been fashioned from the pol-
ished bone of the sperm whale's jaw." This leg came
to a pointed end, which accounts for what is said in
the first sentence of the second paragraph above.
2 Chap. XXX tells how Ahab resolved to smoke no
more, and tossed his pipe into the sea. He said:
"What business have I with this pipe? This thing
that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white
vapors among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-
gray locks like mine."
The hours wore on; — Ahab now shut up
within his cabin; anon, pacing the deck,
with the same intense bigotry of purpose in
his aspect.
It drew near the close of day. Suddenly
he came to a halt by the bulwarks, and
inserting his bone leg into the auger-hole
there, and with one hand grasping a
shroud, he ordered Starbuck to send every-
body aft.
"Sir!" said the mate, astonished at an
order seldom or never given on shipboard
except in some extraordinary case.
"Send everybody aft," repeated Ahab.
"Mastheads, there! come down!"
When the entire ship's company were
assembled, and with curious and not wholly
unapprehensive faces, were eyeing him,
for he looked not unlike the weather horizon
when a storm is coming up, Ahab, after
rapidly glancing over the bulwarks, and
then darting his eyes among the crew,
started from his standpoint; and as though
not a soul were nigh him resumed his heavy
turns upon the deck. With bent head and
half-slouched hat he continued to pace, un-
mindful of the wondering whispering among
the men; till Stubb cautiously whispered
to Flask, that Ahab must have summoned
them there for the purpose of witnessing a
pedestrian feat. But this did not last long.
Vehemently pausing, he cried —
"What do ye do when ye see a whale,
men!^
"Sing out for him!" was the impulsive
rejoinder from a score of clubbed voices.
"Good!" cried Ahab, with a wild approval
in his tones; observing the hearty animation
into which his unexpected question had so
magnetically thrown them.
"And what do ye next, men?'*
"Lower away, and after him!'*
"And what tune is it ye pull to, men?**
"A dead whale or a stove boat!"
More and more strangely and fiercely glad
and approving grew the countenance of the
old man at every shout; while the mariners
began to gaze curiously at each other> as if
marveling how it was that they themselves
became so excited at such seemingly pur-
poseless questions.
But, they were all eagerness again, as
Ahab, now half-revolving in his pivot-hole,
with one hand reaching high up a shroud.
HERMAN MELVILLE
and tishrly. ;ilniost convulsively grnspinp; ir,
addressed tluiii thus —
"All yc niastlicadcrs have before now
heard nie tjive orders about a wlute whale.
Look ye! d'ye see this Spanish ounce of
gold: "—holding; up a broad bright coin to
the sun — "it is a sixteen dollar piece, men.
D'ye see it? Mr. Starbuck, hand me yon
top-maul."
While the mate was getting the hammer,
Ahab, without speaking, was slowly rubbing
the gold piece against the skirts of his jacket,
as if to heighten its luster, and without using
any words was meanwhile lowly humming to
himself, producing a sound so strangely
muffled and inarticulate that it seemed the
mechanical humming of the wheels of his
vitality in him.
Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he
advanced towards the mainmast with the
hammer uplifted in one hand, exhibiting the
gold with the other, and with a high raised
voice exclaiming: "Whosoever of ye raises
me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled
brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye
raises me that white-headed whale, with
three holes punctured in his starboard fluke — •
look ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same
white whale, he shall have this gold ounce,
my boys!"
"Huzza! huzza!" cried the seamen, as
with swinging tarpaulins they hailed the act
of nailing the gold to the mast.
"It's a white whale, I say," resumed Ahab,
as he threw down the top-maul; "a white
whale. Skin your eyes for him, men; look
sharp for white water; if ye see but a bubble,
sing out."
All this while Tashtego, Daggoo, and
Queequeg had looked on with even more
intense interest and surprise than the rest,
and at the mention of the wrinkled brow
and crooked jaw, they had started as if each
was separately touched by some specific
recollection.
"Captain Ahab," said Tashtego, "that
white whale must be the same that some
call Moby Dick."
"Moby Dick?" shouted Ahab. "Do ye
know the white whale then, Tash?"
"Does he fan-tail a little curious, sir, be-
fore he goes down?" said the Gay-Header
deliberately.
"And has he a curious spout, too," said
Daggoo, "very bushy, even for a parmacetty,
and mighty quick. Captain Ahab?"
"And he ha\e one, two, tree — oh! good
many iron in him hide, too. Captain," cried
Queequeg disjointedly, "all twisketee be-
twisk, like him — him — " faltering hard for
a word, and screwing his hand round and
round as though uncorking a bottle — "like
him — him "
"Corkscrew!" cried Ahab; "aye, Quee-
queg, the harpoons lie all twisted and
wrenched in him; aye, Daggoo, his spout is a
big one, like a whole shock of wheat, and
white as a pile of our Nantucket wool after
the great annual sheep-shearing; aye,
Tashtego, and he fan-tails like a split jib in
a squall. Death and devils! men, it is
Moby Dick ye have seen — Moby Dick —
Moby Dick!"
"Captain Ahab," said Starbuck, who, with
Stubb and Flask, had thus far been eyeing
his superior with increasing surprise, but at
last seemed struck with a thought which
somewhat explained all the wonder. "Cap-
tain Ahab, I have heard of Moby Dick —
but it was not Moby Dick that took oflF thy
leg?"
"Who told thee that?" cried Ahab; then
pausing, "Aye, Starbuck; aye, my hearties
all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted
me; Moby Dick that brought me to this
dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye," he
shouted with a terrific, loud, animal sob,
like that of a heart-stricken moose; *'Aye,
aye! it was that accursed white whale that
razed me; made a poor pegging lubber of
me for ever and a day!" Then tossing both
arms, with measureless imprecations he
shouted out: "Aye, aye! and I'll chase him
round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and
round the Norway Maelstrom, and round
perdition's flames before I give him up. And
this is what ye have shipped for, men! to
chase that white whale on both sides of land,
and over all sides of earth, till he spouts
black blood and rolls fin out. What say ye,
men, w^ill ye splice hands on !t, now? I think
ye do look brave."
"Aye, aye!" shouted the harpooneers and
seamen, running closer to the excited old
man: "a sharp eye for the White Whale; a
sharp lance for Moby Dick!"
"God bless ye," he seemed to half sob and
half shout. "God bless ye, men. Steward!
MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHITE WHALE
5
go draw the great measure of grog. But
what's this long face about, Mr. Starbuck?
wilt thou not chase the white whale .^ art not
game for Moby Dick.'"'
"I am game for his crooked jaw, and for
the jaws of Death too, Captain Ahab, if it
fairly comes in the way of the business we
follow; but I came here to hunt whales, not
my commander's vengeance. How many
barrels will thy vengeance yield thee even
if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab? it will
not fetch thee much in our Nantucket
market."
"Nantucket market! Hoot! But come
closer, Starbuck; thou requirest a little lower
layer. If money's to be the measurer, man,
and the accountants have computed their
great counting-house the globe, by girdling
it with guineas, one to every three parts of
an inch; then, let me tell thee, that my
vengeance will fetch a great premium
here!''
*'He smites his chest," whispered Stubb,
"what's that for.^ methinks it rings most
vast, but hollow."
"Vengeance on a dumb brute!" cried
Starbuck, "that simply smote thee from
blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged
with a dumb thing. Captain Ahab, seems
blasphemous."
"Hark ye yet again, — the little low^er
layer. All visible objects, man, are but as
pasteboard masks. But in each event — in
the living act, the undoubted deed — there,
some unknown but still reasoning thing puts
forth the moldings of its features from be-
hind the unreasoning mask. If man will
strike, strike through the mask! How can
the prisoner reach outside except by thrust-
ing through the wall.'' To me, the white
whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Some-
times I think there's naught beyond. But
'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I
see in him outrageous strength, with an in-
scrutable malice sinewing it. That in-
scrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and
be the white whale agent, or be the white
whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon
him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man;
I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For
could the sun do that, then could I do the
other; since there is ever a sort of fair play
herein, jealousy presiding over all creations.
But not my master, man, is even that fair
play. Who's over me.^ Truth hath no con-
fines. Take off thine eye! more intolerable
than fiends' glarings is a doltish stare! So,
so; thou reddenest and palest; my heat has
melted thee to anger-glow. But look ye,
Starbuck, what is said in heat, that thing
unsays itself. There are men from whom
warm words are small indignity. I meant
not to incense thee. Let it go. Look! see
yonder Turkish cheeks of spotted tawn —
living, breathing pictures painted by the
sun. The pagan leopards — the unrecking
and unworshiping things, that live; and
seek, and give no reasons for the torrid life
they feel! The crew, man, the crew! Are
they not one and all with Ahab, in this
matter of the whale.'' See Stubb! he laughs!
See yonder Chilian! he snorts to think of it.
Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy
one tossed sapling cannot, Starbuck! And
what is it.'' Reckon it. 'Tis but to help
strike a fin; no wondrous feat for Starbuck.
What is it more.^ From this one poor hunt,
then, the best lance out of all Nantucket,
surely he will not hang back, when every
foremost hand has clutched a whetstone.''
Ah! constrainings seize thee; I see! the
billow lifts thee! Speak, but speak! — Aye,
aye! thy silence, then — that voices thee.
{Aside) Something shot from my dilated
nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. Star-
buck now is mine; cannot oppose me now,
without rebellion."
"God keep me! — keep us all!" murmured
Starbuck lowly.
But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit
acquiescence of the mate, Ahab did not hear
his foreboding invocation; nor yet the low
laugh from the hold; nor yet the presaging
vibrations of the winds in the cordage; nor
yet the hollow flap of the sails against the
masts, as for a moment their hearts sank in.
For again Starbuck's downcast eyes lighted
up with the stubbornness of life; the sub-
terranean laugh died away; the winds blew
on; the sails filled out; the ship heaved and
rolled as before. Ah, ye admonitions and
warnings! why stay ye not when ye come.''
But rather are ye predictions than warnings,
ye shadows! ^'et not so much predictions
from without, as verifications of the fore-
going things within. For with little external
to constrain us, the innermost necessities in
our being, these still drive us on.
MLRMAN MELVILLE
*' 1 lu' incisure! tlic measure!" cruel
Ahah.
Recciviiii; tlie briniininj; jicwtcr, ami turn-
ing to tlic harpooneers, he ordered them to
produce their weapons. Ihen ranging them
before him near the capstan, witli their
harpoons in their hands, while his three
mates stood at his side with their lances, and
the rest of the ship's company formed a
circle round the group; he stood for an
instant searchingly eyeing every man of his
crew. But those wild eyes met his, as the
bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves meet the
eye of their leader, ere he rushes on at their
head in the trail of the bison; but, alas!
only to fall into the hidden snare of the
Indian.
"Drinic and pass!" he cried, handing the
heavy charged flagon to the nearest seaman.
"The crew alone now drink. Round with
it, round! Short draughts — long swallows,
men; 'tis hot as Satan's hoof. So, so; it
goes round excellently. It spiralizes in ye;
forks out at the serpent-snapping eye. Well
done; almost drained. That way it went,
this way it comes. Hand it me — here's a
hollow! Men, ye seem the years; so brim-
ming life is gulped and gone. Steward,
refill!
"Attend now, my braves. I have
mustered ye all round this capstan; and
ye mates, flank me with your lances; and
ye harpooneers, stand there with your
irons; and ye, stout mariners, ring me in,
that I may in some sort revive a noble cus-
tom of my fishermen fathers before me. O
men, you will yet see that Ha! boy,
come back.^ bad pennies come not sooner.
Hand it me. Why, now, this pewter had run
brimming again, wert not thou St. Vitus'
imp — away, thou ague!
"Advance, ye mates! Cross your lances
full before me. Well done! Let me touch the
axis." So saying, with extended arm, he
grasped the three level, radiating lances at
their crossed center; while so doing, sud-
denly and nervously twitched them; mean-
while, glancing intently from Starbuck to
Stubb; from Stubb to Flask. It seemed as
though, by some nameless, interior volition,
he would fain have shocked into them the
same fiery emotion accumulated within the
Leyden jar of his own magnetic life. Fhe
three mates (jiLiiled before his strong, sus-
tained, and mystic aspect. Stubb and Flask
looked sideways from him; tiie honest eye
of Starbuck fell downright.
"In vain!" cried Ahab; "but, maybe,
'tis well. For did ye three but once take the
full-forced shock, then mine own electric
thing, that had perhaps expired from out me.
Perchance, too, it would have dropped ye
dead. Perchance ye need it not. Down
lances! And now, ye mates, I do appoint ye
three cupbearers to my three pagan kins-
men there — yon three most honorable
gentlemen and noblemen, my valiant har-
pooneers. Disdain the task? What, when
the great pope washes the feet of beggars,
using his tiara for ewer.? Oh, my sweet
cardinals! your own condescension, that
shall bend ye to it. I do not order ye; ye
will it. Cut your seizings and draw the
poles, ye harpooneers!"
Silently obeying the order, the three har-
pooneers now stood with the detached iron
part of their harpoons, some three feet long,
held, barbs up, before him.
"Stab me not with that keen steel! Cant
them; cant them over! know ye not the
goblet end? Turn up the socket! So; so,
now, ye cupbearers, advance. The irons!
take them; hold them while I fill!" Forth-
with, slowly going from one officer to the
other, he brimmed the harpoon sockets with
the fiery waters from the pewter.
"Now, three to three, ye stand. Com-
mend the murderous chalices! Bestow them,
ye who are now made parties to this in-
dissoluble league. Ha! Starbuck! but the
deed is done! Yon ratifying sun now waits
to sit upon it. Drink! ye harpooneers!
drink and swear, ye men that man the
deathful whaleboat's bow — Death to Moby
Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt
Moby Dick to his death!"
The long, barbed steel goblets were lifted;
and to cries and maledictions against the
white whale, the spirits were simultaneously
quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled,
and turned, and shivered. Once more, and
finally, the replenished pewter went the
rounds among the frantic crew; when,
waving his free hand to them, they all
dispersed; and Ahab retired within his
cabin.
MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHITE WHALE
CHAPTER XXXVII
SUNSET
{The cabin; by the stern windows. Ahab
sitting alo7ie, and gazing out.)
I LEAVE a white and turbid wake; pale
waters, paler cheeks, where'er I sail. The
envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my
track; let them; but first I pass.
Yonder, by the ever-brimming goblet's
rim, the warm waves blush like wine. The
gold brow plumbs the blue. The diver sun —
slow dived from noon, — goes down; my soul
mounts up! she wearies with her endless
hill. Is, then, the crown too heavy that I
wear? this Iron Crown of Lombardy. Yet
is it bright with many a gem; I, the wearer,
see not its far flashings; but darkly feel that
I wear that, that dazzlingly confounds. 'Tis
iron — that I know — not gold. 'Tis split,
too — that I feel; the jagged edge galls me so,
my brain seems to beat against the solid
metal; aye, steel skull, mine; the sort that
needs no helmet in the most brain-battering
fight!
Dry heat upon my brow? Oh! time was,
when as the sunrise nobly spurred me, so
the sunset soothed. No more. This lovely
light, it lights not me; all loveliness is
anguish to me, since I can ne'er enjoy.
Gifted with the high perception, I lack the
low, enjoying power; damned, most subtly
and most malignantly! damned in the
midst of Paradise! Good-night — good-night!
{Waving his handy he moves from the win-
dow.)
'Twas not so hard a task. I thought to
find one stubborn, at the least; but my one
cogged circle fits into all their various wheels,
and they revolve. Or, if you will, like so
many ant-hills of powder, they all stand
before me; and I their match. Oh, hard!
that to fire others, the match itself must
needs be wasting! What I've dared, I've
willed; and what I've willed, I'll do! They
think me mad — Starbuck does; but I'm
demoniac, I am madness maddened! That
wild madness that's only calm to compre-
hend itself! The prophecy was that I should
be dismembered; and — Aye! I lost this leg.
I now prophesy that I will dismember my
dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet
and the fulfiller one. That's more than ye,
ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot at
ye, ye cricket players, ye pugilists, ye deaf
Burkes and blinded Bendigoes! I will not
say as schoolboys do to bullies, — Take some
one of your own size; don't pommel me!
No, ye've knocked me down, and I am up
again, but ye have run and hidden. Come
forth from behind your cotton bags! I have
no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahab's
compliments to ye; come and see if you can
swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve
me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye
there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed
purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my
soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded
gorges, through the rifled hearts of moun-
tains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I
rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an
angle to the iron way!
CHAPTER XXXVIII
DUSK
{By the mainmast; Starbuck leaning against
it.)
My soul is more than matched; she's
overmanned; and by a madman! Insuf-
ferable sting, that sanity should ground
arms on such a field! But he drilled deep
down, and blasted all my reason out of me!
I think I see his impious end; but feel that
I must help him to it. Will I, nill I, the
ineff'able thing has tied me to him; tows me
with a cable I have no knife to cut. Horrible
old man! Who's over him, he cries; — aye,
he would be a democrat to all above; look,
how he lords it over all below! Oh! I plainly
see my miserable office, — to obey, rebelling;
and worse yet, to hate with touch of pity!
For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would
shrivel me up, had I it. Yet is there hope.
Time and tide flow wide. The hated whale
has the round, watery world to swim in,
as the small goldfish has its glassy globe. His
heaven-insulting purpose, God may wedge
aside. I would up-heart, were it not like
lead. But my whole clock's run down; my
heart the all-controlling weight, I have no
key to lift again.
{A burst of revelry from the forecastle.)
Oh, God! to sail with such a heathen crew
that have small touch of human mothers in
HERMAN MELVILLE
them! Whelped somewhere by the sharkish
sea. riie white whale is their demogorgon.
Hark! the infernal orgies! that revelry is
forward! mark the unfaltering silence aft!
Methinks it pictures life. Foremost through
the sparkling sea shoots on the gay, em-
battled, bantering bow, but only to drag
dark Ahab after it, where he broods within
his sternward cabin, builded over the dead
water of the wake, and further on, hunted
by its wolfish gurglings. The long howl
thrills me through! Peace! ye revelers, and
set the watch! Oh, life! 'tis in an hour like
this, with soul beat down and held to knowl-
edjge, — as wild, untutored things are forced
to feel — Oh, life! 'tis now that I do feel the
latent horror in thee! but 'tis not I! that
horror's out of me! and with the soft feeling
of the human in me, yet will I try to fight ye,
ye grim, phantom futures! Stand by me,
hold me, bind me, O ye blessed influences!
CHAPTER XXXIX
FIRST NIGHT-WATCH
FORETOP
{Stubb solus, and mending a brace.)
Ha! ha! ha! ha! hem! clear my throat!^
I've been thinking over it ever since, and
that ha-ha's the final consequence. Why so.''
Because a laugh's the wisest, easiest answer
to all that's queer; and come what will, one
comfort's always left — that unfailing com-
fort is, it's all predestinated. I heard not
all his talk with Starbuck; but to my poor
eye Starbuck then looked something as I
the other evening felt. Be sure the old
Mogul has fixed him, too. I twigged it,
knew it; had had the gift, might readily
have prophesied it — for when I clapped my
eye upon his skull I saw it. Well, Stubb,
zuise Stubb — that's my title — well, Stubb,
what of it, Stubb? Here's a carcase. I know
not all that may be coming, but be it what it
will, I'll go to it laughing. Such a waggish
leering as lurks in all your horribles! I feel
funny. Fa, la, lirra, skirra! W^hat's my
juicy little pear at home doing now? Crying
its eyes out? — Giving a party to the last
arrived harpooneers, I dare say, gay as a
frigate's pennant, and so am I — fa la! lirra,
skirra! Oh —
We'll drink to-niglit with hearts as lif^ht,
To love, as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim, on the beaker's brim.
And break on the lips while meeting.
A brave stave that — who calls? Mr. Star-
buck? Aye, aye, sir — {Aside) he's my
superior, he has his too, if I'm not mistaken.
— Aye, aye, sir, just through with this job —
coming.
CHAPTER XL
MIDNIGHT, FORECASTLE
HARPOONEERS AND SAILORS
{Foresail rises and discovers the watch stand-
ing, lounging, leaning, and lying in various
attitudes, all singing in chorus.)
Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies!
Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain!
Our captain's commanded, —
FIRST NANTUCKET SAILOR
Oh, boys, don't be sentimental; it's bad
for the digestion! Take a tonic, follow me!
{Sings, and all follozv.)
Our captain stood upon the deck,
A spy-glass in his hand,
A viewing of those gallant whales
That blew at every strand.
Oh, your tubs in your boats, my boys.
And by your braces stand,
And we'll have one of those fine whales.
Hand, bojs, over hand!
So, be cheery, my lads! may your hearts never fail!
While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale!
mate's VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK
Eight bells there, forward!
SECOND NANTUCKET SAILOR
Avast the chorus! Eight bells there! d'ye
hear, bell-boy? Strike the bell eight, thou
Pip! thou blackling! and let me call the
watch. I've the sort of mouth for that —
the hogshead mouth. So, so {thrusts his head
dozvn the scuttle). Star — bo-1-e-e-n-s, a-h-o-y!
Eight bells there below! Tumble up!
DUTCH SAILOR
Grand snoozing to-night, maty; fat night
for that. I mark this in our old Mogul's
wine; it's quite as deadening to some as
MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHITE WHALE
filliping to others. We sing; they sleep —
ay, lie down there, Hke ground-tier butts.
At 'em again! There, take this copper-
pump, and hail 'em through it. Tell 'em
to avast dreaming of their lasses. Tell 'em
it's the resurrection; they must kiss their
last, and come to judgment. That's the
way — that's it; thy throat ain't spoiled with
eating Amsterdam butter.
FRENCH SAILOR
Hist, boys! let's have a jig or two before
we ride to anchor in Blanket Bay. What say
ye^ There comes the other watch. Stand
by all legs! Pip! little Pip! hurrah with
your tambourine!
PIP {sulky and sleepy)
Don't know where it is.
FRENCH SAILOR
Beat thy belly, then, and wag thy ears.
Jig it, men, I say; merry's the word; hurrah!
Damn me, won't you dance .f" Form, now,
Indian file, and gallop into the double shuffle!
Throw yourselves! Legs! legs!
ICELAND SAILOR
I don't like your floor, maty; it's too
springy to my taste. I'm used to ice-floors.
I'm sorry to throw cold water on the subject;
but excuse me.
MALTESE SAILOR
Me too; where's your girls.? Who but a
fool would take his left hand by his right,
and say to himself, how d'ye do.^* Partners!
I must have partners!
SICILIAN SAILOR
Aye; girls and a green! — then I'll hop with
ye, yea, turn grasshopper!
LONG-ISLAND SAILOR
Well, w^ell, ye sulkies, there's plenty more
of us. Hoe corn when you may, say I. All
legs go to harvest soon. Ah! here comes
the music; now for it!
AZORE SAILOR
{ascending, and pitching the tambourine up
the scuttle)
Here you are, Pip; and there's the wind-
lass-bits; up you mount! Now, boys!
{The half of them dance to the tambourine;
some go below; some sleep or lie among the
coils of rigging. Oaths a-plenty.)
AZORE SAILOR {dancing)
Go it, Pip! Bang it, bell-boy! Rig it,
dig it, stig it, quig it, bell-boy! Make fire-
flies; break the jinglers!
PIP
Jinglers, you say? — there goes another,
dropped off; I pound it so.
CHINA SAILOR
Rattle thy teeth, then, and pound away;
make a pagoda of thyself.
FRENCH SAILOR
Merry-mad! Hold up thy hoop, Pip, till
I jump through it! Split jibs! tear your-
selves!
TASHTEGO {quietly smoking)
That's a white man; he calls that fun:
humph! I save my sweat.
OLD MANX SAILOR
I wonder whether those jolly lads bethink
them of what they are dancing over. I'll
dance over your grave, I will — that's the
bitterest threat of your night-women, that
beat head-winds round corners. O Christ!
to think of the green navies and the green-
skulled crews! Well, well; belike the whole
world's a ball, as you scholars have it; and
so 'tis right to make one ballroom of it.
Dance on, lads, you're young; I was once.
THIRD NANTUCKET SAILOR
Spell oh! — whew! this is worse than
pulling after whales in a calm — give us a
whiflP, Tash.
{They cease dancing, and gather in clusters.
Meantime the sky darkens — the wind rises.)
LASCAR SAILOR
By Brahma! boys, it'll be douse sail soon.
The sky-born, high-tide Ganges turned to
wind! Thou showest thy black brow,
Seeva!
MALTESE SAILOR
{reclining and shaking his cap)
It's the waves — the snow's caps turn to
jig it now. They'll shake their tassels soon.
10
HKRMAN MELVILLE
Now would all the waves were women, then
I'd go drown, and chassee with them ever-
more! There's naught so sweet on earth —
heaven may not match it! — as those swift
glances of warm, wild bosoms in the dance,
when the over-arboring arms hide such ripe,
burstmg grapes.
SICILIAN SAILOR (reclining)
Tell me not of it! Hark ye, lad — fleet
interlacings of the limbs — lithe swayings —
coyings — flutterings! lip! heart! hip! all
graze: unceasing touch and go! not taste,
observe ye, else come satiety. Eh, Pagan?
{Nudging.)
TAHITAN SAILOR {reclining on a mat)
Hail, holy nakedness of our dancing
girls! — the Heeva-Heeva! Ah! low-veiled,
high-palmed Tahiti! I still rest me on thy
mat, but the soft soil has slid! I saw thee
woven in the wood, my mat! green the first
day I brought ye thence; now worn and
wilted quite. Ah me! — not thou nor I can
bear the change! How then, if so be trans-
planted to yon sky? Hear I the roaring
streams from Pirohitee's peak of spears,
when they leap down the crags and drown
the villages? — The blast! the blast! Up,
spine, and meet it! {Leaps to his feet.)'
PORTUGUESE SAILOR
How the sea rolls swashing 'gainst the side!
Stand by for reefing, hearties! the winds are
just crossing swords, pell-mell they'll go
lunging presently.
DANISH SAILOR
Crack, crack, old ship! so long as thou
crackest, thou boldest! Well done! The
mate there holds ye to it stiffly. He's no
more afraid than the isle fort at Cattegat,
put there to fight the Baltic with storm-
lashed guns, on which the sea-salt cakes!
FOURTH NANTUCKET SAILOR
He has his orders, mind ye that. I heard
old Ahab tell him he must always kill a
squall, something as they burst a water-
spout with a pistol — fire your ship right into
it!
ENGLISH SAILOR
Hlood! but that old man's a grand old
cove! We are the lads to hunt him up his
whale!
ALL
Aye! aye!
OLD MANX SAILOR
How the three pines shake! Pines are
the hardest sort of tree to live when shifted
to any other soil, and here there's none but
the crew's cursed clay. Steady, helmsman!
steady. This is the sort of weather when
brave hearts snap ashore, and keeled hulls
split at sea. Our captain has his birthmark;
look yonder, boys, there's another in the
sky — lurid-like, ye see, all else pitch black.
DAGGOO
What of that? Who's afraid of black's
afraid of me! I'm quarried out of it!
SPANISH SAILOR
{Aside) He wants to bully, ah! — the old
grudge makes me touchy. {Advancing)
Aye, harpooneer, thy race is the undeniable
dark side of mankind — devilish dark at
that. No oflPense.
No
DAGGOO {grimly)
ne.
ST. JAGO S SAILOR
That Spaniard's mad or drunk. But that
can't be, or else in his one case our old
Mogul's fire-waters are somewhat long in
working.
FIFTH NANTUCKET SAILOR
What's that I saw — lightning? Yes.
SPANISH SAILOR
No; Daggoo showing his teeth.
DAGGOO {springing)
Swallow thine, manikin! White skin,
white liver!
SPANISH SAILOR {meeting him)
Knife thee heartily! big frame, small
spirit!
ALL
A row! a row! a row!
MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHITE WHALE
II
TASHTEGO {zvith a zvhiff)
A row a'low, and a row aloft — gods and
men — both brawlers! Humph!
BELFAST SAILOR
A row! arrah, a row! The Virgin be
blessed, a row! Plunge in with ye!
ENGLISH SAILOR
Fair play! Snatch the Spaniard's knife!
A ring, a ring!
OLD MANX SAILOR
Ready formed. There! the ringed
horizon. In that ring Cain struck Abel.
Sweet work, right work! No.'' Why then,
God, mad'st thou the ring.?
mate's voice FROM THE pUARTER-DECK
Hands by the halyards! in top-gallant
sails! Stand by to reef topsails!
ALL
The squall! the squall! jump, my jollies!
{They scatter.)
PIP
{shrinking under the windlass)
Jollies.? Lord help such jollies! Crish,
crash! there goes the jib-stay! Blang-
whang! God! Duck lower, Pip, here comes
the royal yard! It's worse than being in the
whirled woods, the last day of the year!
Who'd go climbing after chestnuts now?
But there they go, all cursing, and here I
don't. Fine prospects to 'em; they're on
the road to heaven. Hold on hard! Jimmini,
what a squall! But those chaps there are
worse yet — they are your white squalls,
they. White squalls? white whale, shirr!
shirr! Here have I heard all their chat just
now, and the white whale — shirr! shirr! — but
spoken of once! and only this evening — it
makes me jingle all over like my tambourine
— that anaconda of an old man swore 'em
in to hunt him! Oh, thou big white God aloft
there somewhere in yon darkness, have
mercy on this small black boy down here;
preserve him from all men that have no
bowels to feel fear!
CHAPTER XLI
MOBY DICK
I, IsHMAEL, was one of that crew; my
shouts had gone up with the rest; my oath
had been welded with theirs; and stronger
I shouted, and more did I hammer and clinch
my oath, because of the dread in my soul.
A wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling was
in me; Ahab's quenchless feud seemed mine.
With greedy ears I learned the history of that
murderous monster against whom I and all
the others had taken our oaths of violence
and revenge.
For some time past, though at intervals
only, the unaccompanied, secluded White
Whale had haunted those uncivilized seas
mostly frequented by the Sperm Whale
fishermen. But not all of them knew of his
existence; only a few of them, compara-
tively, had knowingly seen him; while the
number who as yet had actually and know-
ingly given battle to him, was small indeed.
For, owing to the large number of whale-
cruisers; the disorderly way they were
sprinkled over the entire watery circum-
ference, many of them adventurously push-
ing their quest along solitary latitudes, so
as seldom or never for a whole twelvemonth
or more on a stretch, to encounter a single
news-telling sail of any sort; the inordinate
length of each separate voyage; the irregu-
larity of the times of sailing from home; all
these, with other circumstances, direct and
indirect, long obstructed the spread through
the whole world-wide whaling fleet of the
special individualizing tidings concerning
Moby Dick. It was hardly to be doubted,
that several vessels reported to have en-
countered, at such or such a time, or on
such or such a meridian, a Sperm Whale of
uncommon magnitude and malignity, which
whale, after doing great mischief to his
assailants, had completely escaped them;
to some minds it was not an unfair presump-
tion, I say, that the whale in question must
have been no other than Moby Dick. Yet
as of late the Sperm Whale fishery had been
marked by various and not unfrequent in-
stances of great ferocity, cunning, and malice
in the monster attacked; therefore it was,
that those who by accident ignorantly gave
battle to Moby Dick; such hunters, per-
haps, for the most part, were content to
12
HERMAN MELVILLE
ascribe the peculiar terror he bred, more, as
it were, to the perils of the Sperm Whale
fishery at large, than to the individual cause.
In that way, mostly, the disastrous encoun-
ter between Ahab and the whale had hitherto
been popularly regarded.
And as for those who, previously hearing
of the White Whale, by chance caught sight
of him; in the beginning of the thing they
had every one of them, almost, as boldly and
fearlessly lowered for him, as for any other
whale of that species. But at length, such
calamities did ensue in these assaults — not
restricted to sprained wrists and ankles,
broken limbs, or devouring amputations —
but fatal to the last degree of fatality; those
repeated disastrous repulses, all accumula-
ting and piling their terrors upon Moby
Dick; those things had gone far to shake the
fortitude of many brave hunters, to whom
the story of the White Whale had eventually
come.
Nor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to
exaggerate, and still the more horrify the
true histories of these deadly encounters.
For not only do fabulous rumors naturally
grow out of the very body of all surprising
terrible events, — as the smitten tree gives
birth to its fungi; but, in maritime life, far
more than in that o{ terra firma, wild rumors
abound, wherever there is any adequate
reality for them to cling to. And as the sea
surpasses the land in this matter, so the
whale-fishery surpasses every other sort of
maritime life, in the wonderfulness and
fearfulness of the rumors which sometimes
circulate there. For not only are whalemen
as a body unexempt from that ignorance and
superstitiousness hereditary to all sailors;
but of all sailors, they are by all odds the
most directly brought into contact with
whatever is appallingly astonishing in the
sea; face to face they not only eye its greatest
marvels, but, hand to jaw, give battle to
them. Alone, in such remotest waters, that
though you sailed a thousand miles, and
passed a thousand shores, you would not
come to any chiseled hearthstone, or aught
hospitable beneath that part of the sun;
in such latitudes and longitudes, pursuing
too such a calling as he does, the whaleman
is wrapped by influences all tending to make
his fancy pregnant with many a mighty
birth.
No wonder, then, that ever gathering
volume from the mere transit over the wildest
watery spaces, the outblown rumors of the
White Whale did in the end incorporate with
tiicmsclves all manner of morbid hints, and
half-formed foetal suggestions of super-
natural agencies, which eventually invested
Moby Dick with new terrors unborrowed
from anything that visibly appears. So
that in many cases such a panic did he finally
strike, that few who by those rumors, at
least, had heard of the White Whale, few
of those hunters were willing to encounter
the perils of his jaw.
But there were still other and more vital
practical influences at work. Not even at
the present day has the original prestige of
the Sperm Whale, as fearfully distinguished
from all other species of the leviathan, died
out of the minds of the whalemen as a body.
There are those this day among them, who,
though intelligent and courageous enough in
oflfering battle to the Greenland or Right
Whale, would perhaps — either from pro-
fessional inexperience, or incompetency, or
timidity, decline a contest with the Sperm
Whale. At any rate, there are plenty of
whalemen, especially among those whaling
nations not sailing under the American flag,
who have never hostilely encountered the
Sperm Whale, but whose sole knowledge of
the leviathan is restricted to the ignoble
monster primitively pursued in the North.
Seated on their hatches, these men will
barken with a childish fireside interest and
awe, to the wild, strange tales of Southern
whaling. Nor is the pre-eminent tre-
mendousness of the great Sperm Whale any-
where more feelingly comprehended, than
on board of those prows which stem him.
And as if the now tested reality of his
might had in former legendary times thrown
its shadow before it; we find some book
naturalists — Olassen and Povelson — declar-
ing the Sperm Whale not only to be a con-
sternation to every other creature in the sea,
but also to be so incredibly ferocious as con-
tinually to be athirst for human blood. Nor
even down to so late a time as Cuvier's,
were these or almost similar impressions
effaced. For in his Natural History, the
Baron himself affirms that at sight of the
Sperm Whale, all fish (sharks included) are
"struck with the most lively terrors," and
MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHITE WHALE
13
"often in the precipitancy of their flight dash
themselves against the rocks with such vio-
lence as to cause instantaneous death." And
however the general experiences in the fishery
may amend such reports as these; yet in
their full terribleness, even to the blood-
thirsty item of Povelson, the superstitious
belief in them is, in some vicissitudes of
their vocation, revived in the minds of the
hunters.
So that overawed by the rumors and por-
tents concerning him, not a few of the fisher-
men recalled, in reference to Moby Dick,
the earlier days of the Sperm Whale fishery,
when it was oftentimes hard to induce long
practiced Right whalemen to embark in the
perils of this new and daring warfare; such
men protesting that although other levia-
thans might be hopefully pursued, yet to
chase and point lances at such an apparition
as the Sperm Whale was not for mortal
man — that to attempt it, would be inevitably
to be torn into a quick eternity. On this
head, there are some remarkable documents
that may be consulted.
Nevertheless, some there were, who even
in the face of these things were ready to give
chase to Moby Dick; and a still greater
number who, chancing only to hear of him
distantly and vaguely, without the specific
details of any certain calamity, and without
superstitious accompaniments, were suffi-
ciently hardy not to flee from the battle if
oflFered.
One of the wild suggestions referred to, as
at last coming to be linked with the White
Whale in the minds of the superstitiously
inclined, was the unearthly conceit that
Moby Dick was ubiquitous; that he had
actually been encountered in opposite lati-
tudes at one and the same instant of time.
Nor, credulous as such minds must have
been, was this conceit altogether without
some faint show of superstitious probability.
For as the secrets of the currents in the seas
have never yet been divulged, even to the
most erudite research; so the hidden ways
of the Sperm Whale when beneath the sur-
face remain, in great part, unaccountable
to his pursuers; and from time to time
have originated the most curious and con-
tradictory speculations regarding them,,
especially concerning the mystic modes
whereby, after sounding to a great depth, he
transports himself with such vast swiftness
to the most widely distant points.
It is a thing well known to both American
and English whale ships, and as well a thing
placed upon authoritative record years ago
by Scoresby, that some whales have been
captured far north in the Pacific, in whose
bodies have been found the barbs of harpoons
darted in the Greenland seas. Nor is it to
be gainsaid, that in some of these instances
it has been declared that the interval of
time between the two assaults could not have
exceeded very many days. Hence, by infer-
ence, it has been believed by some whale-
men, that the Nor'-West Passage, so long a
problem to man, was never a problem to the
whale. So that here, in the real living ex-
perience of living men, the prodigies related
in old times of the inland Strello mountain
in Portugal (near whose top there was said
to be a lake in which the wrecks of ships
floated up to the surface); and that still
more wonderful story of the Arethusa foun-
tain near Syracuse (whose waters were be-
lieved to have come from the Holy Land
by an underground passage); these fabulous
narrations are almost fully equaled by the
realities of the whaleman.
Forced into familiarity, then, with such
prodigies as these; and knowing that after
repeated, intrepid assaults, the White Whale
had escaped alive; it cannot be much matter
of surprise that some whalemen should go
still further in their superstitions; declaring
Moby Dick not only ubiquitous, but im-
mortal (for immortality is but ubiquity in
time); that though groves of spears should
be planted in his flanks, he would still swim
away unharmed; or if indeed he should ever
be made to spout thick blood, such a sight
would be but a ghastly deception; for again
in unensanguined billows hundred of leagues
away, his unsullied jet would once more be
seen.
But even stripped of these supernatural
surmisings, there was enough in the earthly
make and incontestable character of the
monster to strike the imagination with un-
wonted power. For, it was not so much his
uncommon bulk that so much distinguished
him from other sperm whales, but, as was
elsewhere thrown out — a peculiar snow-white
wrinkled forehead, and a high, pyramidical
white hump. These were his prominent
14
HERMAN MELVILLK
features; the tokens whereby, even in the
limitless, uncharted seas, he revealed his
identit\% at a long distance, to those who
knew him.
The rest of his body was so streaked, and
spotted, and marbled wMth the same shrouded
hue, that, in the end, he had gained his
distinctive appellation of the White Whale;
a name, indeed, literally justified by his vivid
aspect, when seen glidmg at high noon
through a dark blue sea, leaving a milky-
way wake of creamy foam, all spangled with
golden gleamings. Nor was it his unwonted
magnitude, nor his remarkable hue, nor yet
his deformed lower jaw, that so much in-
vested the whale with natural terror, as that
unexampled, intelligent malignity which,
according to specific accounts, he had over
and over again evinced in his assaults. More
than all, his treacherous retreats struck
more of dismay than perhaps aught else.
For, when swimming before his exulting
pursuers, with every apparent symptom of
alarm, he had several times been known to
turn round suddenly, and, bearing down
upon them, either stave their boats to
splinters, or drive them back in consterna-
tion to their ship.
Already several fatalities had attended his
chase. But though similar disasters, how-
ever little bruited ashore, were by no means
unusual in the fishery; yet in most instances,
such seemed the White Whale's infernal
forethought of ferocity, that every dis-
membering or death that he caused, was not
wholly regarded as having been inflicted by
an unintelligent agent.
Judge, then, to what pitches of inflamed,
distracted fury the minds of his more
desperate hunters were impelled, when amid
the chips of chewed boats, and the sinking
limbs of torn comrades, they swam out of
the white curds of the whale's direful wrath
into the serene, exasperating sunlight, that
smiled on, as if at a birth or a bridal.
His three boats stove around him, and
oars and men both whirling in the eddies,
one captain, seizing the line-knife from his
broken prow, had dashed at the whale, as an
Arkansas duelist at his foe, blindly seeking
with a six-inch blade to reach the fathom-
deep life of the whale. That captain was
Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly
sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath
him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab's
leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field.
No turbaned lurk, no hired Venetian or
Malay, could have smote him with more
seeing malice. Small reason was there to
doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal
encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vin-
dictiveness against the whale, all the more
fell, for that in his frantic morbidness he at
last came to identify with him, not only all
his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and
spiritual exasperations. The White Whale
swam before him as the monomaniac in-
carnation of all those malicious agencies
which some deep men feel eating in them,
till they are left living on with half a heart
and half a lung. That intangible malignity
which has been from the beginning; which
the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced
in their statue devil; — Ahab did not fall
down and worship it like them; but deli-
riously transferring its idea to the abhorred
white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated,
against it. All that most maddens and
torments; all that stirs up the lees of things;
all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the
sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle
demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to
crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and
made practically assailable in Moby Dick.
He piled upon the whale's white hump the
sum of all the general rage and hate felt by
his whole race from Adam down; and then,
as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his
hot heart's shell upon it.
It is not probable that this monomania in
him took its instant rise at the precise time
of his bodily dismemberment. Then, in
darting at the monster, knife in hand, he had
but given loose to a sudden, passionate,
corporal animosity; and when he received
the stroke that tore him, he probably felt the
agonising bodily laceration, but nothing
more. Yet, when by this collision forced to
turn towards home, and for long months of
days and weeks, Ahab and anguish lay
stretched together in one hammock, round-
ing in mid-winter that dreary, howling
Patagonian Cape; then it was, that his torn
body and gashed soul bled into one another;
and so interfusing, made him mad. That it
was only then, on the homeward voyage,
after the encounter, that the final monomania
seized him, seems all but certain from the
MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHITE WHALE
15
fact that, at intervals during the passage, he
was a raving lunatic; and, though unhmbed
of a leg, yet such vital strength yet lurked
in his Egyptian chest, and was moreover
intensified by his delirium, that his mates
were forced to lace him fast, even there, as
he sailed, raving in his hammock. In a
strait-jacket, he swung to the mad rockings
of the gales. And, when running into more
sufferable latitudes, the ship, with mild
stun-sails spread, floated across the tranquil
tropics, and, to all appearances, the old
man's delirium seemed left behind him with
the Cape Horn swells, and he came forth
from his dark den into the blessed light and
air; even then, when he bore that firm,
collected front, however pale, and issued his
calm orders once again; and his mates
thanked God the direful madness was now
gone; even then, Ahab, in his hidden self,
raved on. Human madness is oftentimes a
cunning and most feline thing. When you
think it fled, it may have but become trans-
figured into some still subtler form. Ahab's
full lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly con-
tracted; like the unabated Hudson, when
that noble Northman flows narrowly, but
unfathomably through the Highland gorge.
But, as in his narrow-flowing monomania,
not one jot of Ahab's broad madness had
been left behind; so in that broad madness,
not one jot of his great natural intellect had
perished. That before living agent, now
became the living instrument. If such a
furious trope may stand, his special lunacy
stormed his general sanity, and carried it,
and turned all its concentered cannon upon
its own mad mark; so that far from having
lost his strength, Ahab, to that one end, did
now possess a thousand-fold more potency
than ever he had sanely brought to bear
upon any one reasonable object.
This is much; yet Ahab's larger, darker,
deeper part remains unhinted. But vain to
popularize profundities, and all truth is
profound. Winding far down from within
the very heart of this spiked Hotel de Cluny
where we here stand — however grand and
wonderful, now quit it; — and take your
way, ye nobler, sadder souls, to those vast
Roman halls of Thermes; where far be-
neath the fantastic towers of man's upper
earth, his root of grandeur, his whole awful
essence sits in bearded state; an antique
buried beneath antiquities, and throned on
torsoes! So with a broken throne, the great
gods mock that captive king; so like a
Caryatid, he patient sits, upholding on his
frozen brow the piled entablatures of ages.
Wind ye down there, ye prouder, sadder
souls! question that proud, sad king! A
family likeness! aye, he did beget ye, ye
young exiled royalties; and from your grim
sire only will the old State-secret come.
Now, in his heart, Ahab had some glimpse
of this, namely, all my means are sane, my
motive and my object mad. Yet without
power to kill, or change, or shun the fact;
he likewise knew that to mankind he did
long dissemble; in some sort, did still. But
that thing of his dissembling was only sub-
ject to his perceptibility, not to his will
determinate. Nevertheless, so well did he
succeed in that dissembling, that when with
ivory leg he stepped ashore at last, no
Nantucketer thought him otherwise than but
naturally grieved, and that to the quick,
with the terrible casualty which had over-
taken him.
The report of his undeniable delirium at
sea was likewise popularly ascribed to a
kindred cause. And so too, all the added
moodiness which always afterwards, to the
very day of sailing in the Peqiiod on the
present voyage, sat brooding on his brow.
Nor is it so very unlikely, that far from dis-
trusting his fitness for another whaling
voyage, on account of such dark symptoms,
the calculating people of that prudent isle
were inclined to harbor the conceit, that for
those very reasons he was all the better
qualified and set on edge, for a pursuit so
full of rage and wildness as the bloody hunt
of whales. Gnawed within and scorched with-
out, with the infixed, unrelenting fangs of
some incurable idea; such an one, could he be
found, would seem the very man to dart his
iron and lift his lance against the most
appalling of all brutes. Or, if for any reason
thought to be corporeally incapacitated for
that, yet such an one would seem super-
latively competent to cheer and howl on his
underlings to the attack. But be all this as
it may, certain it is, that with the mad
secret of his unabated rage bolted up and
keyed in him, Ahab had purposely sailed
upon the present voyage with the one only
and all-engrossing object of hunting the
i6
HERMAN MELVILLP:
White Whale. Had any one of liis old
acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of
what was lurking in him then, how soon
would their aghast and rip;hteous souls have
wrenched the ship from such a fiendish man!
Thev were bent on profitable cruises, the
profit to be counted down in dollars from
the mint. He was intent on an audacious,
immitigable, and supernatural revenge.
Here, then, was this gray-headed, ungodly
old man, chasing with curses a Job's whale
round the world, at the head of a crew, too,
chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and
castaways, and cannibals — morally enfeebled
also, by the incompetence of mere unaided
virtue of right-mindedness in Starbuck, the
invulnerable jollity of indifference and reck-
lessness in Stubb, and the pervading medi-
ocrity in Flask. Such a crew, so officered,
seemed specially picked and packed by some
infernal fatality to help him to his mono-
maniac revenge. How it was that they so
aboundingly responded to the old man's
ire — by what evil magic their souls were
possessed, that at times his hate seemed
almost theirs; the White Whale as much
their insufferable foe as his; how all this
came to be — what the White Whale was to
them, or how to their unconscious under-
standings, also, in some dim, unsuspected
way, he might have seemed the gliding great
demon of the seas of life, — all this to explain,
would be to dive deeper than Ishmael can
go. The subterranean miner that works in
us all, how can one tell whither leads his
shaft by the ever shifting, muffled sound of
his pick.^ W^ho does not feel the irresistible
arm drag? What skiff in tow of a seventy-
four can stand still.'' For one, I gave myself
up to the abandonment of the time and the
place; but while yet all a-rush to encounter
the whale, could see naught in that brute
but the deadliest ill.
CHAPTER LXXXV
THE FOUNTAIN
That for six thousand years — and no one
knows how many millions of ages before —
the great whales should have been spouting
all over the sea, and sprinkling and mistify-
ing the gardens of the deep, as with so many
sprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for
some centuries back, thousands of hunters
should have been close by the fountain of
the whale, watching these sprinklings and
spoutings — that all this sjiould be, and yet,
that down to this blessed minute (fifteen
and a quarter minutes past one o'clock p.m.
of this sixteenth day of December, a.d.
1850), it should still remain a problem,
whether these spoutings are, after all, really
water, or nothing but vapor — this is surely
a noteworthy thing.
Let us, then, look at this matter, along
with some interesting items contingent.
Every one knows that by the peculiar cun-
ning of their gills, the finny tribes in general
breathe the air which at all times is com-
bined with the element in which they swim;
hence, a herring or a cod might live a
century, and never once raise his head above
the surface. But owing to his marked in-
ternal structure which gives him regular
lungs, like a human being's, the whale can
only live by inhaling the disengaged air in
the open atmosphere. Wherefore the neces-
sity for his periodical visits to the upper
world. But he cannot in any degree breathe
through his mouth, for, in his ordinary atti-
tude, the Sperm Whale's mouth is buried at
least eight feet beneath the surface; and
what is still more, his windpipe has no con-
nection with his mouth. No, he breathes
through his spiracle alone; and this is on
the top of his head.
If I say, that in any creature breathing is
only a function indispensable to vitality,
inasmuch as it withdraws from the air a
certain element, which being subsequently
brought into contact with the blood imparts
to the blood its vivifying principle, I do not
think I shall err; though I may possibly use
some superfluous scientific words. Assume
it, and it follows that if all the blood in a
man could be aerated with one breath, he
might then seal up his nostrils and not fetch
another fora considerable time. That is to
say, he would then live without breathing.
Anomalous as it may seem, this is precisely
the case with the whale, who systematically
lives, by intervals, his full hour and more
(when at the bottom) without drawing a
single breath, or so much as in any way in-
haling a particle of air; for, remember, he
has no gills. How is this? Between his ribs
and on each side of his spine he is supplied
with a remarkable involved Cretan labyrinth
MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHITE WHALE
17
of vermicelli-like vessels, which vessels, when
he quits the surface, are completely dis-
tended with oxygenated blood. So that for
an hour or more, a thousand fathoms in the
sea, he carries a surplus stock of vitality in
him, just as the camel crossing the waterless
desert carries a surplus supply of drink for
future use in its four supplementary
stomachs. The anatomical fact of this
labyrinth is indisputable; and that the
supposition founded upon it is reasonable
and true, seems the more cogent to me,
when I consider the otherwise inexplicable
obstinacy of that leviathan in having his
spoutings outy as the fishermen phrase it.
This is what I mean. If unmolested, upon
rising to the surface, the Sperm Whale will
continue there for a period of time exactly
uniform with all his other unmolested risings.
Say he stays eleven minutes, and jets seventy
times, that is, respires seventy breaths;
then whenever he rises again, he will be sure
to have his seventy breaths over again, to a
minute. Now, if after he fetches a few
breaths you alarm him, so that he sounds, he
will be always dodging up again to make
good his regular allowance of air. And not
till those seventy breaths are told, will he
finally go down to stay out his full term
below. Remark, however, that in different
individuals these rates are different; but
in any one they are alike. Now, why should
the whale thus insist upon having his spout-
ings out, unless it be to replenish his reservoir
of air, ere descending for good .? How obvious
is it, too, that this necessity for the whale's
rising exposes him to all the fatal hazards of
the chase. For not by hook or by net could
this vast leviathan be caught, when sailing a
thousand fathoms beneath the sunlight. -
Not so much thy skill, then, O hunter, as
the great necessities that strike the victory
to thee!
In man, breathing is incessantly going
on — one breath only serving for two or three
pulsations; so that whatever other business
he has to attend to, waking or sleeping,
breathe he must, or die he will. But the
Sperm Whale only breathes about one-
seventh or Sunday of his time.
It has been said that the whale only
breathes through his spout-hole; if it could
truthfully be added that his spouts are mixed
with water, then I opine we should be fur-
nished with the reason why his sense of smell
seems obliterated in him; for the only thing
about him that at all answers to his nose is
that identical spout-hole; and being so
clogged with two elements, it could not be
expected to have the power of smelling. But
owing to the mystery of the spout — whether
it be water or whether it be vapor — no
absolute certainty can as yet be arrived at
on this head. Sure it is, nevertheless, that
the Sperm Whale has no proper olfactories.
But what does he want of them? No roses,
no violets, no Cologne-water in the sea.
Furthermore, as his windpipe solely opens
into the tube of his spouting canal, and as
that long canal — like the grand Erie Canal —
is furnished with a sort of locks (that open
and shut) for the downward retention of air
or the upward exclusion of water, therefore
the whale has no voice; unless you insult
him by saying, that when he so strangely
rumbles, he talks through his nose. But
then again, what has the whale to say.f*
Seldom have I known any profound being
that had anything to say to this world,
unless forced to stammer out something by
way of getting a living. Oh! happy that the
world is such an excellent listener!
Now, the spouting canal of the Sperm
Whale, chiefly intended as it is for the con-
veyance of air, and for several feet laid along,
horizontally, just beneath the upper surface
of his head, and a little to one side; this
curious canal is very much like a gas-pipe
laid down in a city on one side of a street.
But the question returns whether this gas-
pipe is also a water-pipe; in other words,
whether the spout of the Sperm Whale is
the mere vapor of the exhaled breath, or
whether that exhaled breath is mixed with
water taken in at the mouth, and discharged
through the spiracle. It is certain that the
mouth indirectly communicates with the
spouting canal; but it cannot be proved that
this is for the purpose of discharging water
through the spiracle. Because the greatest
necessity for so doing would seem to be,
when in feeding he accidentally takes in
water. But the Sperm Whale's food is far
beneath the surface, and there he cannot
spout even if he would. Besides, if you
regard him very closely, and time him with
your watch, you will find that when un-
molested, there is an undeviatlng rhyme
i8
HERMAN MELVILLE
between the periods of his jets and the
ordinnry periods of respiration.
But w liy pester one with all this reasoning
on the subject? Speak out! You have seen
him spout; then declare what the spout is;
can you not tell water from air? My dear sir,
in this world it is not so easy to settle these
plain things. I have ever found your plain
things the knottiest of all. And as for this
whale spout, you might almost stand in it,
and yet be undecided as to what it is pre-
cisely.
The central body of it is hidden in the
snowy sparkling mist enveloping it; and
how can you certainly tell whether any water
falls from it, when, always, when you are
close enough to a whale to get a close view
of his spout, he is in a prodigious commotion,
the water cascading all around him? And
if at such times you should think that you
really perceived drops of moisture in the
spout, how do you know that they are not
merely condensed from its vapor; or how
do you know that they are not those identical
drops superficially lodged in the spout-hole
fissure, which is counter-sunk into the sum-
mit of the whale's head? For even when
tranquilly swimming through the midday
sea in a calm, with his elevated hump sun-
dried as a dromedary's in the desert; even
then, the whale always carries a small basin
of water on his head, as under a blazing sun
you will sometimes see a cavity in a rock
filled up with rain.
Nor is it at all prudent for the hunter to
be over-curious touching the precise nature
of the whale spout. It will not do for him to
be peering into it, and putting his face in it.
You cannot go with your pitcher to this
fountain and fill it, and bring it away. For
even when coming into slight contact with
the outer, vapory shreds of the jet, which
will often happen, your skin will feverishly
smart, from the acridness of the thing so
touching it. And I know one, who coming
into still closer contact with the spout,
whether with some scientific object in view,
or otherwise, I cannot say, the skin peeled
oflF from his cheek and arm. Wherefore,
among whalemen, the spout is deemed
poisonous; they try to evade it. Another
thing: I have heard it said, and I do not
much doubt it, that if the jet is fairly spouted
into your eyes, it will blind you. Ihe wisest
thing the investigator can do then, it seems
to me, is to let this deadly spout alone.
Still, we can hypothesize, even if we can-
not prove and establish. My hypothesis is
this: that the spout is nothing but mist.
And besides other reasons, to this con-
clusion I am impelled, by considerations
touching the great inherent dignity and sub-
limity of the Sperm Whale. I account him
no common, shallow being, inasmuch as it
is an undisputed fact that he is never found
on soundings, or near shores; all other
whales sometimes are. He is both ponderous
and profound. And I am convinced that
from the heads of all ponderous profound
beings, such as Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil,
Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there always goes
up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the
act of thinking deep thoughts. While com-
posing a little treatise on Eternity, I had the
curiosity to place a mirror before me; and
ere long saw reflected there, a curious in-
volved worming and undulation in the
atmosphere over my head. The invariable
moisture of my hair, while plunged in deep
thought, after six cups of hot tea in my
thin shingled attic, of an August noon; this
seems an additional argument for the above
supposition.
And how nobly it raises our conceit of the
mighty, misty monster, to behold him
solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea;
his vast, mild head overhung by a canopy of
vapor, engendered by his incommunicable
contemplations, and that vapor — as you
will sometimes see it — glorified by a rain-
bow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon
his thoughts. For, d'ye see, rainbows do
not visit the clear air; they only irradiate
vapor. And so, through all the thick mists
of the dim doubts in my mind, divine in-
tuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my
fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I
thank God; for all have doubts; many deny;
but doubts or denials, few along with them,
have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly,
and intuitions of some things heavenly; this
combination makes neither believer nor
infidel, but makes a man who regards them
both with equal eye.
MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHITE WHALE
19
CHAPTER XCVI
THE TRY-WORKS
Besides her hoisted boats, an American
whaler is outwardly distinguished by her
try-works. She presents the curious anomaly
of the most solid masonry joining with oak
and hemp in constituting the completed ship.
It is as if from the open field a brick-kiln
were transported to her planks.
The try-works are planted between the
foremast and mainmast, the most roomy part
of the deck. The timbers beneath are of a
peculiar strength, fitted to sustain the weight
of an almost solid mass of brick and mortar,
some ten feet by eight square, and five in
height. The foundation does not penetrate
the deck, but the masonry is firmly secured
to the surface by ponderous knees of iron
bracing it on all sides, and screwing it down
to the timbers. On the flanks it is cased
with wood, and at top completely covered by
a large, sloping, battened hatchway. Re-
moving this hatch we expose the great try-
pots, two in number, and each of several
barrels' capacity. When not in use, they
are kept remarkably clean. Sometimes they
are polished with soapstone and sand, till
they shine within like silver punch-bowls.
During the night-watches some cynical old
sailors will crawl into them and coil them-
selves away there for a nap. While em-
ployed in polishing them — one man in each
pot, side by side — many confidential com-
munications are carried on, over the iron
lips. It is a place also for profound mathe-
matical meditation. It was in the left hand
try-pot of the Pequody with the soapstone
diligently circling round me, that I was first
indirectly struck by the remarkable fact, that
in geometry all bodies gliding along the
cycloid, my soapstone for example, will
descend from any point in precisely the same
time.
Removing the fire-board from the front of
the try-works, the bare masonry of that side
is exposed, penetrated by the two iron mouths
of the furnaces, directly underneath the pots.
These mouths are fitted with heavy doors of
iron. The intense heat of the fire is pre-
vented from communicating itself to the
deck, by means of a shallow reservoir extend-
ing under the entire enclosed surface of the
works. By a tunnel inserted at the rear, this
reservoir is kept replenished with water as
fast as it evaporates. There are no external
chimneys; they open direct from the rear
wall. And here let us go back for a moment.
It was about nine o'clock at night that
the Pequod's try-works were first started on
this present voyage. It belonged to Stubb
to oversee the business.
"All ready there.? Off hatch, then, and
start her. You, cook, fire the works." This
was an easy thing, for the carpenter had been
thrusting his shavings into the furnace
throughout the passage. Here be it said that
in a whaling voyage the first fire in the try-
works has to be fed for a time with wood.
After that no wood is used, except as a means
of quick ignition to the staple fuel. In a
word, after being tried out, the crisp, shriv-
eled blubber, now called scraps or fritters,
still contains considerable of its unctuous
properties. These fritters feed the flames.
Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-
consuming misanthrope, once ignited, the
whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his
own body. Would that he consumed his
own smoke! for his smoke is horrible to in-
hale, and inhale it you must, and not only
that, but you must live in it for the time.
It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor
about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of
funereal pyres. It smells like the left wing
of the day of judgment; it is an argument
for the pit.
By midnight the works were in full operation.
We were clear from the carcase; sail had been
made; the wind was freshening; the wild
ocean darkness was intense. But that dark-
ness was licked up by the fierce flames, which
at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues,
and illuminated every lofty rope in the rig-
ging, as with the famed Greek fire. The
burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly
commissioned to some vengeful deed. So
the pitch and sulphur-freighted brigs of the
bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their
midnight harbors, with broad sheets of flame
for sails, bore down upon the Turkish frig-
ates, and folded them in conflagrations.
The hatch, removed from the top of the
works, now afforded a wide hearth in front
of them. Standing on this were the Tar-
tarean shapes of the pagan harpooneers,
always the whale-ship's stokers. With huge
pronged poles they pitched hissing masses of
20
HERMAN MELVILLE
blubber into the scalding pots, or stirred up
the fires beneath, till the snaky flames darted,
curling, out of the doors to catch them by the
feet. The smoke rolled away in sullen heaps.
To every pitch of the ship there was a pitch
of the boiling oil, which seemed all eagerness
to leap into their faces. Opposite the mouth
of the works, on the further side of the wide
wooden hearth, was the windlass. This
served for a sea-sofa. Here lounged the
watch, when not otherwise employed, look-
ing into the red heat of the fire, till their eyes
felt scorched in their heads. Their tawny
features, now all begrimed with smoke and
sweat, their matted beards, and the contrast-
ing barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all
these were strangely revealed in the capri-
cious emblazonings of the works. As they
narrated to each other their unholy adven-
tures, their tales of terror told in words of
mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked
upwards out of them, like the flames from
the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the
harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their
huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind
howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship
groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot
her red hell further and further into the
blackness of the sea and the night, and scorn-
fully champed the white bone in her mouth,
and viciously spat round her on all sides;
then the rushing Pequody freighted with sav-
ages, and laden with fire, and burning a
corpse, and plunging into that blackness of
darkness, seemed the material counterpart
of her monomaniac commander's soul.
So seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm,
and for long hours silently guided the way of
this fire-ship on the sea. Wrapped, for that
interval, in darkness myself, I but the better
saw the redness, the madness, the ghastli-
ness of others. The continual sight of the
fiend shapes before me, capering half in
smoke and half in fire, these at last begat
kindred visions in my soul, so soon as I began
to yield to that unaccountable drowsiness
which ever would come over me at a mid-
night helm.
But that night, in particular, a strange
(and ever since inexplicable) thing occurred
to me. Starting from a brief standing sleep,
I was horribly conscious of something fatally
wrong. The jawbone tiller smote my side,
which leaned against it; in my ears was the
low hum of sails, just beginning to shake in
the wind; I thought my eyes were open; I
was half conscious of putting my fingers to
the lids and mechanically stretching them
still further apart. But, spite of all this, I
could see no compass before me to steer by;
though it seemed but a minute since I had
been watching the card, by the steady bin-
nacle lamp illuminating it. Nothing seemed
before me but a jet gloom, now and then
made ghastly by flashes of redness. Upper-
most was the impression, that whatever
swift, rushing thing I stood on was not so
much bound to any haven ahead as rushing
from all havens astern. A stark, bewildered
feeling, as of death, came over me. Con-
vulsively my hands grasped the tiller, but
with the crazy conceit that the tiller was,
somehow, in some enchanted way, inverted.
My God ! what is the matter with me .^ thought
L Lo! in my brief sleep I had turned myself
about, and was fronting the ship's stern, with
my back to her prow and the compass. In
an instant I faced back, just in time to pre-
vent the vessel from flying up into the wind,
and very probably capsizing her. How glad
and how grateful the relief from this un-
natural hallucination of the night, and the
fatal contingency of being brought by the lee!
Look not too long in the face of the fire,
O man! Never dream with thy hand on the
helm! Turn not thy back to the compass;
accept the first hint of the hitching tiller;
believe not the artificial fire, when its redness
makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow,
m the natural sun, the skies will be bright;
those who glared like devils in the forking
flames, the morn will show in far other, at
least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad
sun, the only true lamp — all others but liars!
Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia's
Dismal Swamp, nor Rome's accursed Cam-
pagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the millions
of miles of deserts and of griefs beneath the
moon. The sun hides not the ocean, which is
the dark side of this earth, and which is two-
thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that
mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow
in him, that mortal man cannot be true —
not ':rue, or undeveloped. With books the
same. The truest of all men was the Man
of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is
Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine-
hammered steel of woe. "All is vanity."
MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHITE WHALE
21
All. This willful world hath not got hold of
unchristian Solomon's wisdom yet. But
he who dodges hospitals and jails, and walks
fast crossing graveyards, and would rather
talk of operas than hell; calls Cowper, Young,
Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men;
and throughout a care-free lifetime swears
by Rabelais as passing wise, and therefore
jolly; — not that man is fitted to sit down on
tombstones, and break the green damp mold
with unfathomably wondrous Solomon.
But even Solomon, he says, "the man that
wandereth out of the way of understanding
shall remain" {i.e., even while living) "in
the congregation of the dead." Give not
thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee,
deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There
is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe
that is madness. And there is a Catskill
eagle in some souls that can alike dive down
into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them
again and become invisible in the sunny
spaces. And even if he for ever flies within
the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains;
so that even in his lowest swoop the moun-
tain eagle is still higher than other birds upon
the plain, even though they soar.
CHAPTER CXXXII
THE SYMPHONY
It was a clear steel-blue day. The firma-
ments of air and sea were hardly separable
in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive
air was transparently pure and soft, with a
woman's look, and the robust and man-like
sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells,
as Samson's chest in his sleep.
Hither, and thither, on high, glided the
snow-white wings of small, unspeckled birds;
these were the gentle thoughts of the femi-
nine air; but to and fro in the deeps, far down
in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty
leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these
were the strong, troubled, murderous think-
ings of the masculine sea.
But though thus contrasting within, the
contrast was only in shades and shadows
without; those two seemed one; it was only
the sex, as it were, that distinguished them.
Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the
sun seemed giving this gentle air to this
bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom.
And at the girdling line of the horizon, a
soft and tremulous motion — most seen here
at the Equator — denoted the fond, throb-
bing trust, the loving alarms, with which
the poor bride gave her bosom away.
Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted
with wrinkles; haggardly firm and unyield-
ing; his eyes glowing like coals, that still
glow in the ashes of ruin; untottering Ahab
stood forth in the clearness of the morn; lift-
ing his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair
girl's forehead of heaven.
Oh, immortal infancy, and innocency of
the azure! Invisible winged creatures that
frolic all round us! Sweet childhood of air
and sky! how oblivious were ye of old
Ahab's close-coiled woe! But so have I
seen little Miriam and Martha, laughing-
eyed elves, heedlessly gambol around their
old sire; sporting with the circle of singed
locks which grew on the marge of that
burnt-out crater of his brain.
Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle,
Ahab leaned over the side, and watched how
his shadow in the water sank and sank to his
gaze, the more and the more that he strove
to pierce the profundity. But the lovely
aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem
to dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing
in his soul. That glad, happy air, that win-
some sky, did at last stroke and caress him;
the stepmother world, so long cruel — for-
bidding— now threw affectionate arms round
his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously
sob over him, as if over one, that however
willful and erring, she could yet find it in her
heart to save and to bless. From beneath
his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into
the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such
wealth as that one wee drop.
Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how
he heavily leaned over the side; and he
seemed to hear in his own true heart the
measureless sobbing that stole out of the
center of the serenity around. Careful not
to touch him, or be noticed by him, he yet
drew near to him, and stood there.
Ahab turned.
"Starbuck!"
"Sir."
"Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind,
and a mild looking sky. On such a day —
very much such a sweetness as this — I struck
my first whale — a boy-harpooneer of eigh-
teen! Forty — forty — forty years ago! — ago!
HERMAN MELVILLE
Forty years of continual whaling! forty years
of privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty
years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has
Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty
years to make war on the horrors of the deep!
Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty
years I have not spent three ashore. When
I think of this life I have led; the desolation
of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-
town of a Captain's exclusiveness, which
admits but small entrance to any sympathy
from the green country without — oh, weari-
ness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of
solitary command! — when I think of all this;
only half-suspected, not so keenly known to
me before — and how for forty years I have
fed upon dry salted fare — fit emblem of the
dry nourishment of my soul! — when the
poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his
daily hand, and broken the world's fresh
bread to my moldy crusts — away, whole
oceans away, from that young girl-wife I
wedded past fifty, and sailed for Cape Horn
the next day, leaving but one dent in my
marriage pillow — wife? wife? — rather a w^dow
with her husband alive! Aye, I widowed
that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck;
and then, the madness, the frenzy, the boiling
blood and the smoking brow, with which, for
a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously,
foamingly chased his prey — more a demon
than a man! — aye, aye! what a forty years'
fool — fool — old fool, has old Ahab been!
Why this strife of the chase? why weary and
palsy the arms at the oar, and the iron, and
the lance? how the richer or better is Ahab
now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard,
that with this weary load I bear, one poor
leg should have been snatched from under
me? Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds
me, that I seem to weep. Locks so gray did
never grow but from out some ashes! But
do I look very old, so very, very old, Star-
buck? I feel deadly faint, bowed, and
humped, as though I were Adam, staggering
beneath the piled centuries since Paradise.
God! God! God! — crack my heart! — stave
my brain! — mockery! mockery! bitter, biting
mockery of gray hairs, have I lived enough
joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus in-
tolerably old? Close! stand close to me,
Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it
is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better
than to gaze upon God. By the green land;
by the bright hearthstone! this is the magic
glass, man; I see my wife and my child in
thine eye. No, no; stay on board, on board!
— lower not when I do; when branded Ahab
gives chase to Moby Dick. 1 hat hazard
shall not be thine. No, no! not with the far-
away home I see in that eye!"
"Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble
soul! grand old heart, after all! why should
any one give chase to that hated fish! Away
with me! let us fly these deadly waters! let
us home! Wife and child, too, are Star-
buck's — wife and child of his brotherly, sis-
terly, playfellow youth; even as thine, sir,
are the wife and child of thy loving, longing,
paternal old age! Away! let us away! — this
instant let me alter the course! How cheerily,
how hilariously, O my Captain, would we
bowl on our way to see old Nantucket again!
I think, sir, they have some such mild blue
days, even as this, in Nantucket."
"They have, they have. I have seen
them — some summer days in the morning.
About this time — yes, it is his noon nap
now — the boy vivaciously wakes; sits up in
bed; and his mother tells him of me, of can-
nibal old me; how I am abroad upon the
deep, but will yet come back to dance him
again.'*
"'Tis my Mary, my Mary herself! She
promised that my boy, every morning,
should be carried to the hill to catch the first
glimpse of his father's sail! Yes, yes! no
more! it is done! we head for Nantucket!
Come, my Captain, study out the course, and
let us away! See, see! the boy's face from
the window! the boy's hand on the hill!"
But Ahab's glance was averted; like a
blighted fruit tree he shook, and cast his last
cindered apple to the soil.
"What is it, what nameless, inscrutable,
unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden
lord and master, and cruel, remorseless
emperor commands me; that against all
natural lovings and longings, I so keep push-
ing, and crowding, and jamming myself on
all the time; recklessly making me ready to
do what in my own proper, natural heart, I
durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab?
Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But
if the great sun move not of himself; but is
as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single
star can revolve, but by some invisible
power; how then can this one small heart
MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHITE WHALE
23
beat; this one small brain think thoughts;
unless God does that beating, does that
thinking, does that living, and not I. By
heaven, man, we are turned round and round
in this world, like yonder wmdlass, and Fate
is the handspike. And all the time, lo! that
smiling sky, and this unsounded sea! Look!
see yon Albicore! who put it into him to
chase and fang that flying-fish? Where do
murderers go, man? Who's to doom, when
the judge himself is dragged to the bar? But
it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild-looking
sky; and the air smells now, as if it blew from
a far-away meadow; they have been making
hay somewhere under the slopes of the Andes,
Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping among
the new-mown hay. Sleeping? Aye, toil we
how we may, we all sleep at last on the field.
Sleep? Aye, and rust amid greenness; as
last year's scythes flung down, and left in
the half-cut swathes! — Starbuck!"
But blanched to a corpse's hue with
despair, the mate had stolen away.
Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the
other side; but started at two reflected, fixed
eyes in the water there. Fedallah was
motionlessly leaning over the same rail.
CHAPTER CXXXIII
THE CHASE— FIRST DAY
That night, in the mid-watch, when the
old man — as his wont at intervals — stepped
forth from the scuttle in which he leaned,
and went to his pivot-hole, he suddenly
thrust out his face fiercely, snufl^ng up the
sea air as a sagacious ship's dog will, in
drawing nigh to some barbarous isle. He
declared that a whale must be near. Soon
that peculiar odor, sometimes to a great dis-
tance given forth by the living Sperm Whale,
was palpable to all the watch; nor was any
mariner surprised when, after inspecting the
compass, and then the dog-vane, and then
ascertaining the precise bearing of the odor
as nearly as possible, Ahab rapidly ordered
the ship's course to be slightly altered, and
the sail to be shortened.
The acute policy dictating these move-
ments was sufficiently vindicated at day-
break by the sight of a long sleek on the sea
directly and lengthwise ahead, smooth as oil,
and resembling in the pleated watery wrin-
kles bordering it, the polished metallic-like
marks of some swift tide-rip, at the mouth
of a deep, rapid stream.
"Man the mastheads! Call all hands!"
Thundering with the butts of three clubbed
handspikes on the forecastle deck, Daggoo
roused the sleepers with such judgment claps
that they seemed to exhale from the scuttle,
so instantaneously did they appear with
their clothes in their hands.
"What d'ye see?" cried Ahab, flattening
his face to the sky.
"Nothing, nothing, sir!" was the sound
hailing down in reply.
"T'gallant-sails! stunsails alow and aloft,
and on both sides!"
All sail being set, he now cast loose the
life-line, reserved for swaying him to the
mainroyal masthead; and in a few moments
they were hoisting him thither, when, while
but two-thirds of the way aloft, and while
peering ahead through the horizontal vacancy
between the maintopsail and top-gallant-
sail, he raised a gull-like cry in the air,
"There she blows! — there she blows! A
hump like a snowhill! It is Moby Dick!"
Fired by the cry which seemed simul-
taneously taken up by the three lookouts,
the men on deck rushed to the rigging to
behold the famous whale they had so long
been pursuing. Ahab had now gained his
final perch, some feet above the other look-
outs, Tashtego standing just beneath him
on the cap of the top-gallant-mast, so that
the Indian's head was almost on a level with
Ahab's heel. From this height the whale
was now seen some mile or so ahead, at every
roll of the sea revealing his high sparkling
hump, and regularly jetting his silent spout
into the air. To the credulous mariners it
seemed the same silent spout they had so
long ago beheld in the moonlit Atlantic and
Indian Oceans.
"And did none of ye see it before?" cried
Ahab, hailing the perched men all around
him.
"I saw him almost that same instant, sir,
that Captain Ahab did, and I cried out,'*
said Tashtego.
"Not the same instant; not the same —
no, the doubloon is mine. Fate reserved the
doubloon for me. / only; none of ye could
have raised the White Whale first. There
she blows! there she blows! — there she blows/
There again! — there again!" he cried, in
24
HERMAN MELVILLE
lonp;-dra\vn, lingering!;, methodic tones,
attuned to the gradual prolongings of the
whale's visible jets. "He's goinp; to sound!
In stunsails! Down top-gallant-sails! Stand
by three boats. Mr. Starbuck, remember,
stay on board, and keep the ship. Helm
there! Luff, luff a point! So; steady, man,
steady! There go flukes! No, no; only black
water! All ready the boats there .^ Stand
by, stand by! Lower me, Mr. Starbuck;
lower, lower, — quick, quicker!" and he slid
through the air to the deck.
"He is heading straight to leeward, sir,"
cried Stubb; "right away from us; cannot
have seen the ship yet."
"Be dumb, man! Stand by the braces!
Hard down the helm! — brace up! Shiver
her! — shiver her! So; well that! Boats,
boats!"
Soon all the boats but Starbuck's were
dropped; all the boat-sails set — all thepaddles
plying; with rippling swiftness, shooting to
leeward; and Ahab heading the onset. A
pale, death-glimmer lit up Fedallah's sunken
eyes; a hideous motion gnawed his mouth.
Like noiseless nautilus shells, their light
prows sped through the sea; but only slowly
they neared the foe. As they neared him,
the ocean grew still more smooth; seemed
drawing a carpet over its waves; seemed a
noon-meadow, so serenely it spread. At
length the breathless hunter came so nigh
his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his
entire dazzling hump was distinctly visible,
sliding along the sea as if an isolated thing,
and continually set in a revolving ring of
finest, fleecy, greenish foam. He saw the
vast involved wrinkles of the slightly pro-
jecting head beyond. Before it, far out on
the soft Turkish-rugged waters, w^ent the
glistening white shadow from his broad,
milky forehead, a musical rippling playfully
accompanying the shade; and behind, the
blue waters interchangeably flowed over into
the moving valley of his steady wake; and
on either hand bright bubbles arose and
danced by his side. But these were broken
again by the light toes of hundreds of gay
fowls softly feathering the sea, alternate with
their fitful flight; and like to some flagstaff
rising from the painted hull of an argosy,
the tall but shattered pole of a recent lance
projected from the white whale's back; and
at intervals one of the cloud of soft-toed
fowls hovering, and to and fro skimming like
a canopy over the fish, silently perched and
rocked on this pole, the long tail feathers
streaming like pennons.
A gentle joyousness — a mighty mildness of
repose in swiftness, invested the gliding
whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming
away with ravished Europa clinging to his
graceful horns; his lovely, leering eyes side-
ways intent upon the maid; with smooth be-
witching fleetness, rippling straight for the
nuptial bower in Crete; not Jove, not that
great majesty Supreme! did surpass the
glorified White Whale as he so divinely
swam.
On each soft side — coincident with the
parted swell, that but once laving him, then
flowed so wide away — on each bright side,
the whale shed ofl^ enticings. No wonder
there had been some among the hunters who,
namelessly transported and allured by all
this serenity, had ventured to assail it; but
had fatally found that quietude but the ves-
ture of tornadoes. Yet calm, enticing calm,
oh, whale! thou glidest on, to all who for thfc
first time eye thee, no matter how many in
that same way thou may'st have bejuggled
and destroyed before.
And thus, through the serene tranquillities
of the tropical sea, among waves whose hand-
clappings were suspended by exceeding rap-
ture, Moby Dick moved on, still withholding
from sight the full terrors of his submerged
trunk, entirely hiding the wrenched hideous-
ness of his j aw. But soon the fore part of him
slowly rose from the water; for an instant his
whole marbleized body formed a high arch,
like Virginia's Natural Bridge, and warningly
waving his bannered flukes in the air, the
grand god revealed himself, sounded, and
went out of sight. Hoveringly halting, and
dipping on the wing, the white sea-fowls
longingly lingered over the agitated pool that
he left.
With oars apeak, and paddles down, the
sheets of their sails adrift, the three boats
now stilly floated, awaiting Moby Dick's
reappearance.
"An hour," said Ahab, standing rooted
in his boat's stern; and he gazed beyond the
whale's place, towards the dim blue spaces
and wide wooing vacancies to leeward. It
was only an instant; for again his eyes seemed
whirling round in his head as he swept the
MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHITE WHALE
25
watery circle. The breeze now freshened;
the sea began to swell.
"The birds! — the birds!" cried Tashtego.
In long Indian file, as when herons take
wing, the white birds were now all flying
towards Ahab's boat; and when within a few
yards began fluttering over the water there,
wheeling round and round, with joyous,
expectant cries. Their vision was keener
than man's; Ahab could discover no sign in
the sea. But suddenly as he peered down
and down into its depths, he profoundly saw
a white living spot no bigger than a white
weasel, with wonderful celerity uprising, and
magnifying as it rose, till it turned, and then
there were plainly revealed two long crooked
rows of white, glistening teeth, floating up
from the undiscoverable bottom. It was
Moby Dick's open mouth and scrolled jaw;
his vast, shadowed bulk still half blending
with the blue of the sea. The glittering mouth
yawned beneath the boat like an open-doored
marble tomb; and giving one sidelong sweep
with his steering oar, Ahab whirled the craft
aside from this tremendous apparition. Then,
calling upon Fedallah to change places with
him, went forward to the bows, and seizing
Perth's harpoon, commanded his crew to
grasp their oars and stand by to stern.
Now, by reason of this timely spinning
round the boat upon its axis, its bow, by
anticipation, was made to face the whale's
head while yet under water. But as if per-
ceiving this stratagem, Moby Dick, with
that malicious intelligence ascribed to him,
sidelingly transplanted himself, as it were,
in an instant, shooting his pleated head
lengthwise beneath the boat.
Through and through; through every plank
and each rib, it thrilled for an instant, the
whale obliquely lying on his back, in the man-
ner of a biting shark, slowly and feelingly
taking its bows full within his mouth, so that
the long, narrow, scrolled lower jaw curled
high up into the open air, and one of the teeth
caught in a rowlock. The bluish pearl-white
of the inside of the jaw was within six inches
of Ahab's head, and reached higher than
that. In this attitude the White Whale now
shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat
her mouse. With unastonished eyes Fedal-
lah gazed, and crossed his arms; but the
tiger-yellow crew were tumbling over each
other's heads to gain the uttermost stern.
And now, while both elastic gunwales were
springing in and out, as the whale dallied
with the doomed craft in this devilish way;
and from his body being submerged beneath
the boat, he could not be darted at from
the bows, for the bows were almost inside
of him, as it were; and while the other boats
involuntarily paused, as before a quick crisis
impossible to withstand, then it was that
monomaniac Ahab, furious with this tantali-
zing vicinity of his foe, which placed him all
alive and helpless in the very jaws he hated;
frenzied with all this, he seized the long bone
with his naked hands, and wildly strove to
wrench it from its gripe. As now he thus
vainly strove, the jaw slipped from him; the
frail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and
snapped, as both jaws, like an enormous
shears, sliding further aft, bit the craft com-
pletely in twain, and locked themselves fast
again in the sea, midway between the two
floating wrecks. These floated aside, the
broken ends drooping, the crew at the stern-
wreck clinging to the gunwales, and striving
to hold fast to the oars to lash them across.
At that preluding moment, ere the boat
was yet snapped, Ahab, the first to perceive
the whale's intent, by the crafty upraising
of his head, a movement that loosed his hold
for the time; at that moment his hand had
made one final effort to push the boat out of
the bite. But only slipping further into the
whale's mouth, and tilting over sideways as
it sHpped, the boat had shaken off^ his hold
on the jaw; spilled him out of it, as he leaned
to the push; and so he fell flat-faced upon
the sea.
Ripplingly withdrawing from his prey,
Moby Dick now lay at a little distance, ver-
tically thrusting his oblong white head up
and down in the billows; and at the same
time slowly revolving his whole spindled
body; so that when his vast wrinkled fore-
head rose — some twenty or more feet out of
the water— the now rising swells, with all their
confluent waves, dazzlingly broke against
it; vindictively tossing their shivered spray
still higher into the air.^ So, in a gale, the but
1 This motion is peculiar to the Sperm Whale. It
receives its designation (pitchpoling) from its being
likened to that preliminary up-and-down poise of the
whale-lance, in the exercise called pitchpoling, previ-
ously described. By this motion the whale must best
and most comprehensively view whatever objects may
be encircling him. (Melville's note.)
26
HERMAN MELVILLE
half baffled Channel billows only recoil from
the base of the Eddystone, triumphantly to
overleap its summit with their scud.
Hut soon resummp; his horizontal attitude,
Moby Dick swam swiftly round and round
the wrecked crew; sideways churning the
water m his vengeful wake, as if lashing him-
self up to still another and more deadly
assault. Ihe sight of the splintered boat
seemed to madden him, as the blood of
grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus's
elephants in the book of Maccabees. Mean-
while Ahab half smothered in the foam of the
whale's insolent tail and too much of a
cripple to swim, — though he could still keep
afloat, even in the heart of such a whirlpool
as that; helpless Ahab's head was seen, like
a tossed bubble which the least chance shock
might burst. From the boat's fragmentary
stern, Fedallah incuriously and mildly eyed
him; the clinging crew, at the other drifting
end, could not succor him; more than enough
was it for them to look to themselves. For
so revolvingly appalling was the White
Whale's aspect, and so planetarily swift the
ever-contracting circles he made, that he
seemed horizontally swooping upon them.
And though the other boats, unharmed, still
hovered hard by, still they dared not pull
into the eddy to strike, lest that should be
the signal for the instant destruction of the
jeopardized castav/ays, Ahab and all; nor in
that case could they themselves hope to
escape. With straining eyes, then, they
remained on the outer edge of the direful
zone, whose center had now become the
old man's head.
Meantime, from the beginning all this had
been descried from the ship's mastheads;
and squaring her yards, she had borne down
upon the scene; and was now so nigh, that
Ahab in the water hailed her: — "Sail on
the" — but that moment a breaking sea
dashed on him from Moby Dick, and
whelmed him for the time. But struggling
out of it again, and chancing to rise on a
towering crest, he shouted, — "Sail on the
whale! — Drive him oflF!"
The Pequod's prows were pointed; and
breaking up the charmed circle, she effectu-
ally parted the White Whale from his victim.
As he sullenly swam off, the boats flew to
the rescue.
Dragged into Stubb's boat with bloodshot.
blinded eyes, the white brine caking in his
wrinkles; the long tension of Ahab's bodily
strength did crack, and helplessly he yielded
to his body's doom for a time, lying all
crushed in the bottom of Stubb's boat, like
one trodden under foot of herds of elephants.
Far inland, nameless wails came from him,
as desolate sounds from out ravines.
But this intensity of his physical prostra-
tion did but so much the more abbreviate it.
In an instant's compass, great hearts some-
times condense to one deep pang, the sum-
total of those shallow pains kindly diffused
through feebler men's whole lives. And so,
such hearts, though summary in each one
suffering; still, if the gods decree it, in their
lifetime aggregate a whole age of woe, wholly
made up of instantaneous intensities; for
even in their pointless centers, those noble
natures contain the entire circumferences of
inferior souls.
"The harpoon," said Ahab, half-way ris-
ing, and draggingly leaning on one bended
arm — "is it safe.''"
"Aye, sir, for it was not darted; this is it,"
said Stubb, showing it.
"Lay it before me; — any missing men?"
"One, two, three, four, five; — there were
five oars, sir, and here are five men."
"That's good. — Help me, man; I wish to
stand. So, so, I see him! there! there! going
to leeward still; what a leaping spout! —
Hands off from me! The eternal sap runs
up in Ahab's bones again! Set the sail; out
oars; the helm!"
It is often the case that when a boat is
stove, its crew, being picked up by another
boat, help to work that second boat; and the
chase is thus continued with what is called
double-banked oars. It was thus now. But
the added power of the boat did not equal
the added power of the whale, for he seemed
to have treble-banked his every fin; swim-
ming with a velocity which plainly showed,
that if now, under these circumstances,
pushed on, the chase w^ould prove an indefi-
nitely prolonged, if not a hopeless one; nor
could any crew endure for so long a period,
such an unintermitted, intense straining at
the oar; a thing barely tolerable only in some
one brief vicissitude. The ship itself, then, as
it sometimes happens, offered the most prom-
ising intermediate means of overtaking the
chase. Accordingly, the boats now made for
MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHITE WHALE
27
her, and were soon swayed up to their cranes
— the two parts of the wrecked boat having
been previously secured by her — and then
hoisting everything to her side, and stacking
her canvas high up, and sideways outstretch-
ing it with stunsails, Hke the double-jointed
wings of an albatross; the Pequod bore down
in the leeward wake of Moby Dick. At the
well-known, methodic intervals, the whale's
glittering spout was regularly announced
from the manned mastheads; and when he
would be reported as just gone down, Ahab
would take the time, and then pacing the
deck, binnacle-watch in hand, so soon as the
last second of the allotted hour expired, his
voice was heard. — ''Whose is the doubloon
now.? D'ye see him.'"' and if the reply was,
"No, sir!" straightway he commanded them
to lift him to his perch. In this way the day
wore on; Ahab, now aloft and motionless;
anon, unrestingly pacing the planks.
As he was thus walking, uttering no sound,
except to hail the men aloft, or to bid them
hoist a sail still higher, or to spread one to a
still greater breadth — thus to and fro pacing,
beneath his slouched hat, at every turn he
passed his own wTecked boat, which had
been dropped upon the quarter-deck, and
lay there reversed; broken bow to shattered
stern. At last he paused before it; and as in
an already over-clouded sky fresh troops of
clouds will sometimes sail across, so over the
old man's face there now stole some such
added gloom as this.
Stubb saw him pause; and perhaps intend-
ing, not vainly, though, to evince his own
unabated fortitude, and thus keep up a val-
iant place m his Captain's mind, he advanced,
and eyeing the wreck exclaimed — "The
thistle the ass refused; it pricked his mouth
too keenly, sir; ha! ha!"
"What soulless thing is this that laughs
before a wreck? Man, man! did I not know
thee brave as fearless fire (and as mechani-
cal) I could swear thou wert a poltroon.
Groan nor laugh should be heard before a
wreck."
"Aye, sir," said Starbuck, drawing near,
"'tis a solemn sight; an omen, and an ill one."
"Omen? omen? — the dictionary! If the
gods think to speak outright to man, they
will honorably speak outright; not shake
their heads, and give an old wives' darkling
hint. — Begone! Ye two are the opposite
poles of one thing; Starbuck is Stubb re-
versed, and Stubb is Starbuck; and ye two
are all mankind; and Ahab stands alone
among the millions of the peopled earth, nor
gods nor men his neighbors! Cold, cold — I
shiver! — How now? Aloft there! D'ye see
him? Sing out for every spout, though he
spout ten times a second!"
The day was nearly done; only the hem of
his golden robe was rustling. Soon, it was
almost dark, but the look-out men still
remained unset.
"Can't see the spout now, sir; — too dark"
— cried a voice from the air.
"How heading when last seen?" ^
"As before, sir, — straight to leeward.'*
"Good! he will travel slower now 'tis night.
Down royals and top-gallant stunsails, Mr.
Starbuck. We must not run over him before
morning; he's making a passage now, and
may heave-to a while. Helm there! Keep
her full before the wind! — Aloft! come down!
— Mr. Stubb, send a fresh hand to the fore-
mast head, and see it manned till morning."
— Then advancing towards the doubloon in
the mainmast — "Men, this gold is mine, for
I earned it; but I shall let it abide here till
the White Whale is dead; and then, whoso-
ever of ye first raises him, upon the day he
shall be killed, this gold is that man's; and if
on that day I shall again raise him, then, ten
times its sum shall be divided among all of
ye! Away now! — the deck is thine, sir."
And so saying, he placed himself half-way
within the scuttle, and slouching his hat,
stood there till dawn, except when at inter-
vals rousing himself to see how the night
wore on.
CHAPTER CXXXIV
THE CHASE— SECOND DAY
At daybreak, the three mastheads were
punctually manned afresh.
"D'ye see him?" cried Ahab, after allow-
ing a little space for the light to spread.
"See nothing, sir."
"Turn up all hands and make sail! he
travels faster than I thought for; — the top-
gallant sails! — aye, they should have been
kept on her all night. But no matter — 'tis
but resting for the rush."
Here be it said, that this pertinacious
pursuit of one particular whale, continued
28
HERMAN MELVILLE
throuch clay into night, and throu2;li nij^ht
into day, is a thing by no means unprece-
dented in the South Sea Hsiiery. For such is
the wonderful skill, prescience of experience,
and invincible confidence acquired by some
great natural geniuses among the Nan-
tucket commanders, that from the simple
observation of a whale when last descried,
they will, under certain given circumstances,
pretty accurately foretell both the direction
in which he will continue to swim for a time,
while out of sight, as well as his probable
rate of progression during that period. And
in these cases, somewhat as a pilot, when
about losing sight of a coast, whose general
trending he well knows, and which he desires
shortly to return to again, but at some fur-
ther point; like as this pilot stands by his
compass, and takes the precise bearing of the
cape at present visible, in order the more cer-
tainly to hit aright the remote, unseen head-
land, eventually to be visited: so does the
fisherman, at his compass, with the whale;
for after being chased, and diligently marked,
through several hours of daylight, then,
when night obscures the fish, the creature's
future wake through the darkness is almost
as established to the sagacious mind of the
hunter, as the pilot's coast is to him. So
that to this hunter's wondrous skill, the
proverbial evanescence of a thing writ in
water, a wake, is to all desired purposes well-
nigh as reliable as the steadfast land. And
as the mighty iron Leviathan of the modern
railway is so familiarly known in its every
pace, that, with watches in their hands, men
time his rate as doctors that of a baby's pulse;
and lightly say of it, "the up train or the
down train will reach such or such a spot, at
such or such an hour," even so, almost,
there are occasions when these Nantucketers
time that other Leviathan of the deep,
according to the observed humor of his speed ;
and say to themselves, "so many hours hence
this whale will have gone two hundred miles,
will have about reached this or that degree
of latitude or longitude." But to render this
acuteness at all successful in the end, the
wind and the sea must be the whaleman's
allies; for of what present avail to the be-
calmed or windbound mariner is the skill
that assures him he is exactly ninety-three
leagues and a quarter from his port? Infer-
able from these statements are many col-
lateral subtile matters touching the chase of
whales.
The ship tore on; leaving such a furrow in
the sea as when a cannon-ball, missent, be-
comes a ploughshare and turns up the level
field.
"By salt and hemp!" cried Stubb, "but
this swift motion of the deck creeps up one's
legs and tingles at the heart. This ship and
I are two brave fellows! — Ha! ha! Some
one take me up, and launch me, spine-wise,
on the sea, — for by live-oaks! my spine's a
keel. Ha, ha! we go the gait that leaves no
dust behind!"
"There she blows — she blows! — she blows!
— right ahead!" was now the masthead cry.
"Aye, aye!" cried Stubb; "I knew it — ye
can't escape — blow on and split your spout,
O whale! the mad fiend himself is after ye!
blow your trump — blister your lungs! — Ahab
will dam off your blood, as a miller shuts his
water-gate upon the stream!"
And Stubb did but speak out for well-nigh
all that crew. The frenzies of the chase had
by this time worked them bubblingly up,
like old wine w^orked anew. Whatever pale
fears and forebodings some of them might
have felt before; these were not only now
kept out of sight through the growing awe
of Ahab, but they were broken up, and on
all sides routed, as timid prairie hares that
scatter before the bounding bison. The hand
of Fate had snatched all their souls; and by
the stirring perils of the previous day; the
rack of the past night's suspense; the fixed,
unfearing, blind, reckless way in which their
w41d craft went plunging towards its flying
mark; by all these things, their hearts were
bowled along. The wind that made great
bellies of their sails, and rushed the vessel on
by arms invisible as irresistible; this seemed
the symbol of that unseen agency which so
enslaved them to the race.
They w^re one man, not thirty. For as
the one ship that held them all; though it
was put together of all contrasting things —
oak, and maple, and pine wood; iron, and
pitch, and hemp — yet all these ran into each
other in the one concrete hull, w^hich shot on
its way, both balanced and directed by the
long central keel; even so, all the individuali-
ties of the crew, this man's valor, that
man's fear; guilt and guiltiness, all varieties
were welded into oneness, and wer'^' all
MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHITE WHALE
29
directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their
one lord and keel did point to.
The rigging lived. The mastheads, like
the tops of tall palms, were outspreadingly
tufted with arms and legs. Clinging to a
spar with one hand, some reached forth the
other with impatient wavings; others, shad-
ing their eyes from the vivid sunlight, sat
far out on the rocking yards; all the spars in
full bearing of mortals, ready and ripe for
their fate. Ah ! how they still strove through
that infinite blueness to seek out the thing
that might destroy them!
"Why sing ye not out for him, if ye see
him?" cried Ahab, when, after the lapse of
some minutes since the first cry, no more had
been heard. "Sway me up, men; ye have
been deceived; not Moby Dick casts one odd
jet that way, and then disappears."
It was even so; in their headlong eagerness,
the men had mistaken some other thing for
the whale-spout, as the event itself soon
proved; for hardly had Ahab reached his
perch; hardly was the rope belayed to its pin
on deck, when he struck the key-note to an
orchestra, that made the air vibrate as with
the combined discharges of rifles. The tri-
umphant halloo of thirty buckskin lungs was
heard, as — much nearer to the ship than the
place of the imaginary jet, less than a mile
ahead — Moby Dick bodily burst into view!
For not by any calm and indolent spoutings;
not by the peaceable gush of that mystic
fountain in his head, did the White Whale
now reveal his vicinity; but by the far more
wondrous phenomenon of breaching. Rising
with his utmost velocity from the furthest
depths, the Sperm Whale thus booms his
entire bulk into the pure element of air, and
piling up a mountain of dazzling foam, shows
his place to the distance of seven miles and
more. In those moments, the torn, enraged
waves he shakes off seem his mane; in
some cases this breaching is his act of de-
fiance.
"There she breaches! there she breaches!"
was the cry, as in his immeasurable brava-
does the White Whale tossed himself salmon-
like to Heaven. So suddenly seen in the blue
plain of the sea, and relieved against the still
bluer margin of the sky, the spray that he
raised, for the moment, intolerably glittered
and glared like a glacier; and stood there
gradually fading and fading away from its
first sparkling intensity, to the dim misti-
ness of an advancing shower in a vale.
"Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby
Dick!" cried Ahab, "thy hour and thy har-
poon are at hand! — Down! down all of ye,
but one man at the fore. The boats! — stand
by!"
Unmindful of the tedious rope-ladders of
the shrouds, the men, like shooting stars,
slid to the deck, by the isolated back-stays
and halyards; while Ahab, less dartingly, but
still rapidly, was dropped from his perch.
"Lower away," he cried, so soon as he
had reached his boat — a spare one, rigged
the afternoon previous. "Mr. Starbuck, the
ship is thine — keep away from the boats, but
keep near them. Lower, all!"
As if to strike a quick terror into them, by
this time being the first assailant himself,
Moby Dick had turned, and was now coming
for the three crews. Ahab's boat was cen-
tral; and cheering his men, he told them he
would take the whale head-and-head, — that
is, pull straight up to his forehead; — a not
uncommon thing; for when within a certain
limit, such a course excludes the coming
onset from the whale's sidelong vision. But
ere that close limit was gained, and while yet
all three boats were plain as the ship's three
masts to his eye; the White Whale churning
himself into furious speed, almost in an
instant as it were, rushing among the boats
with open jaws, and a lashing tail, offered
appalling battle on every side; and heedless
of the irons darted at him from every boat,
seemed only intent on annihilating each
separate plank of which those boats were
made. But skillfully maneuvered, incessantly
wheeling like trained chargers in the field;
the boats for a while eluded him; though, at
times, but by a plank's breadth; while all
the time, Ahab's unearthly slogan tore every
other cry but his to shreds.
But at last in his untraceable evolutions,
the White Whale so crossed and recrossed,
and in a thousand ways entangled the slack
of the three lines now fast to him, that they
foreshortened, and, of themselves, warped
the devoted boats towards the planted irons
in him; though now for a moment the whale
drew aside a little, as if to rally for a more
tremendous charge. Seiz ng that oppor-
tunity, Ahab first paid out more line; and
then was rapidly hauling and jerking in
^o
HERMAN MELVILLE
upon it again — hoping that way to disen-
cumber it of some snarls — when lo! — a sight
more savage than the embattled teeth of
sharks!
Caught and twisted — corkscrewed in the
mazes of the line — loose harpoons and lances,
with all their bristling barbs and points,
came flashing and dripping up to the chocks
in the bows of Ahab's boat. Only one thing
could be done. Seizing the boat-knife, he
critically reached within — through — and
then, without — the rays of steel; dragged in
the line beyond, passed it, inboard, to the
bowsman, and then, twice sundering the
rope near the chocks — dropped the mter-
cepted fagot of steel into the sea; and was
all fast again. That instant, the White
Whale made a sudden rush among the re-
maining tangles of the other lines; by so
doing, irresistibly dragged the more involved
boats of Stubb and Flask towards his flukes;
dashed them together like two rolling husks
on a surf-beaten beach, and then, diving
down into the sea, disappeared in a boiling
maelstrom, in w^hich, for a space, the odorous
cedar chips of the wTecks danced round and
round, like the grated nutmeg in a swiftly
stirred bowl of punch.
While the two crews were yet circling in
the waters, reachmg out after the revolving
line-tubs, oars, and other floating furniture,
while aslope little Flask bobbed up and down
like an empty vial, twitching his legs up-
wards to escape the dreaded jaws of sharks;
and Stubb was lustily singing out for some
one to ladle him up; and w^hile the old man's
line — now parting — admitted of his pulling
into the creamy pool to rescue whom he
could; — in that w'lld simultaneousness of a
thousand concerted perils, — Ahab's yet
unstricken boat seemed drawn up tow^ards
Heaven by invisible wires, — as, arrow-like,
shooting perpendicularly from the sea, the
White Whale dashed his broad forehead
against its bottom, and sent it, turning over
and over, into the air; till it fell again —
gunwale downwards — and Ahab and his men
struggled out from under it, like seals from
a seaside cave.
The first uprising momentum of the
whale — modifying its direction as he struck
the surface — involuntarily launched him
along it, to a little distance from the center
of the destruction he had made; and with
his back to it, he now lay for a moment
slowly feeling with his flukes from side to
side; and whenever a stray oar, bit of plank,
the least chip or crumb of the boats touched
his skin, his tail swiftly drew back, and came
sideways, smiting the sea. But soon, as if
satisfied that his work for that time was
done, he pushed his pleated forehead through
the ocean, and trailing after him the inter-
tangled lines, continued his leeward way at a
traveler's methodic pace.
As before, the attentive ship having
descried the whole fight, again came bearing
down to the rescue, and dropping a boat,
picked up the floating mariners, tubs, oars,
and whatever else could be caught at, and
safely landed them on her decks. Some
sprained shoulders, wrists, and ankles; livid
contusions; wrenched harpoons and lances;
inextricable intricacies of rope; shattered
oars and planks; all these were there; but
no fatal or even serious ill seemed to have
befallen any one. As with Fedallah the day
before, so Ahab was now found grimly cling-
ing to his boat's broken half, which afforded
a comparatively easy float; nor did it so
exhaust him as the previous day's mishap.
But when he was helped to the deck, all
eyes w^ere fastened upon him; as instead of
standing by himself he still half-hung upon
the shoulder of Starbuck, who had thus far
been the foremost to assist him. His ivory
leg had been snapped off, leaving but one
short sharp splinter.
"Aye, aye, Starbuck, 'tis sweet to lean
sometimes, be the leaner who he will; and
would old Ahab had leaned oftener than he
has."
"The ferrule has not stood, sir," said the
carpenter, now coming up; "I put good
work into that leg."
"But no bones broken, sir, I hope," said
Stubb with true concern.
"Aye! and all splintered to pieces,
Stubb! — d'ye see it.-^But even with a
broken bone, old Ahab is untouched; and I
account no living bone of mine one jot more
me, than this dead one that's lost. Nor
white w^hale, nor man, nor fiend, can so much
as graze old Ahab in his own proper and in-
accessible being. Can any lead touch yonder
floor, any mast scrape yonder roof.^ — Aloft
there! which way.^"
"Dead to leeward, sir."
MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHITE WHALE
31
"Up helm, then; pile on the sail again,
shipkeepers! down the rest of the spare
boats and rig them — Mr. Starbuck, away,
and muster the boats' crews."
"Let me first help thee towards the bul-
warks, sir."
"Oh, oh, oh! how this splinter gores me
now! Accursed fate! that the uncon-
querable captain in the soul should have
such a craven mate!"
bir."^
"My body, man, not thee. Give me
something for a cane — there, that shivered
lance will do. Muster the men. Surely I
have not seen him yet. By heaven, it can-
not be! — missing? — quick! call them all."
The old man's hinted thought was true.
Upon mustering the company, the Parsee
was not there.
"The Parsee!" cried Stubb— "he must
have been caught in "
"The black vomit wrench thee! — run all
of ye above, alow, cabin, forecastle — find
him — not gone — not gone!"
But quickly they returned to him with the
tidings that the Parsee was nowhere to be
found.
"Aye, sir," said Stubb — "caught among
the tangles of your line — I thought I saw
him dragging under.'*
My
imei
my
line .'' Gone .^ — gone ? —
What means that little word? — What death-
knell rings in it, that old Ahab shakes as if
he were the belfry. The harpoon, too! —
toss over the litter there, — d'ye see it.'' — the
forged iron, men, the w^hite whale's — no,
no, no, — blistered fool! this hand did dart
it! — 'tis in the fish! — Aloft there! Keep him
nailed — Quick! — all hands to the rigging of
the boats — collect the oars — harpooneers!
the irons, the irons! — hoist the royals higher
— a pull on all the sheets!— helm there!
steady, steady for your life! I'll ten times
girdle the unmeasured globe; yea and dive
straight through it, but I'll slay him yet!"
"Great God! but for one single instant
show thyself," cried Starbuck; "never, never
wilt thou capture him, old man. — In Jesus'
name no more of this, that's worse than
devil's madness. Two days chased; twice
stove to splinters; thy very leg once more
snatched from under thee; thy evil shadow
gone — all good angels mobbing thee with
warnings: — what more wouldst thou have.'' —
Shall we keep chasing this murderous fish
till he swamps the last man? Shall we be
dragged by him to the bottom of the sea?
Shall we be towed by him to the infernal
world? Oh, oh! — Impiety and blasphemy
to hunt him more!"
"Starbuck, of late I've felt strangely
moved to thee; ever since that hour we both
saw — thou know'st what, in one another's
eyes. But in this matter of the whale, be
the front of thy face to me as the palm of
this hand — a lipless, unfeatured blank.
Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole
act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed
by thee and me a billion years before this
ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates'
lieutenant; I act under orders. Look thou,
underling! that thou obeyest mine. — Stand
round me, men. Ye see an old man cut down
to the stump; leaning on a shivered lance;
propped up on a lonely foot. 'Tis Ahab —
his body's part; but Ahab's soul's a centi-
pede, that moves upon a hundred legs. I
feel strained, half stranded, as ropes that
tow dismasted frigates in a gale; and I may
look so. But ere I break, ye'll hear me crack;
and till ye hear that, know that Ahab's
hawser tows his purpose yet. Believe ye,
men, in the things called omens? Then
laugh aloud, and cry encore! For ere they
drown, drowning things will twice rise to the
surface; then rise again, to sink for ever-
more. So with Moby Dick — two days he's
floated — to-morrow will be the third. Aye,
men, he'll rise once more — but only to spout
his last! D'ye feel brave men, brave?"
"As fearless fire," cried Stubb.
"And as mechanical," muttered Ahab,
Then as the men went forward, he muttered
on: — "The things called omens! And yester-
day I talked the same to Starbuck there,
concerning my broken boat. Oh! how
valiantly I seek to drive out of others' hearts
what's clinched so fast in mine! — The
Parsee — the Parsee! — gone, gone? and he was
to go before: — but still was to be seen again
ere I could perish — How's that? — There's
a riddle now might baflfle all the lawyers
backed by the ghosts of the whole line of
judges: — like a hawk's beak it pecks my
brain. /'//, /'// solve it, though!"
When dusk descended, the whale was still
in sight to leeward.
So once more the sail was shortened, and
:?2
HERMAN MELVILLE
everythinp; passed nearly as on the previous
nipht; only, the sound of hammers, and the
hum of the grindstone was heard till nearly
daylight, as the men toiled by lanterns in the
complete and careful rigging of the spare
boats and sharpening their fresh weapons
for the morrow. Meantime, of the broken
keel of Ahab's wrecked craft the carpenter
made him another leg; while still as on the
night before, slouched Ahab stood fixed
within his scuttle; his hid heliotrope glance
anticipatingly gone backward on its dial;
set due eastward for the earliest sun.
CHAPTER CXXXV
THE CHASE— THIRD DAY
The morning of the third day dawned
fair and fresh, and once more the solitary
night-man at the fore-masthead was re-
lieved by crowds of the daylight lookouts,
who dotted every mast and almost every
spar.
"D'ye see him?" cried Ahab; but the
whale was not yet in sight,
"In his infallible wake, though; but fol-
low that wake, that's all. Helm there;
steady, as thou goest, and hast been going.
What a lovely day again! w^ere it a new-
made world, and made for a summer-house
to the angels, and this morning the first of
its throwing open to them, a fairer day could
not dawn upon that world. Here's food for
thought, had Ahab time to think; but
Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels,
that's tingling enough for mortal man! to
think's audacity. God only has that right
and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a
coolness and a calmness; and our poor
hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too
much for that. And yet. Eve sometimes
thought my brain was very calm — frozen
calm, this old skull cracks so, like a glass in
which the contents turn to ice, and shiver it.
And still this hair is growing now; this
moment growing, and heat must breed it;
but no, it's like that sort of common grass
that will grow anywhere, between the earthly
clefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava.
How the wild winds blow it; they whip it
about me as the torn shreds of split sails lash
the tossed ship they cling to. A vile wind
that has no doubt blown ere this through
prison corridors and cells, and wards of
hospitals, and ventilated them, and now
comes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces.
Out upon it! — it's tainted. Were I the wind,
Ed blow no more on such a wicked, miserable
world. Ed crawl somewhere to a cave, and
slink there. And yet, 'tis a noble and heroic
thing, the wind! who ever conquered it? In
every fight it has the last and bitterest blow.
Run tilting at it, and you but run through it.
Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked
men, but will not stand to receive a single
blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing — a
nobler thing than that. Would now the
wind but had a body; but all the things that
most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all
these things are bodiless, but only bodiless
as objects, not as agents. There's a most
special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious
difference! And yet, I say again, and swear
it now, that there's something all glorious
and gracious in the wind. These warm Trade
Winds, at least, that in the clear heavens
blow straight on, in strong and steadfast,
vigorous mildness; and veer not from their
mark, however the baser currents of the sea
may turn and tack, and mightiest Missis-
sippis of the land shift and swerve about,
uncertain where to go at last. And by the
eternal Poles! these same Trades that so
directly blow my good ship on; these Trades,
or something like them — something so un-
changeable, and full as strong, blow my
keeled soul along! To it! Aloft there!
What d'ye see?'*
"Nothing, sir."
"Nothing! and noon at hand! The
doubloon goes a-begging! See the sun!
Aye, aye, it must be so. Eve oversailed
him. How, got the start? Aye, he's chasing
me now; not I, him — that's bad; I might
have known it, too. Eool! the lines — the
harpoons he's towing. Aye, aye, I have run
him by last night. About! about! Come
down, all of ye, but the regular lookouts!
Man the braces!"
Steering as she had done, the wind had
been somewhat on the Pequod^s quarter, so
that now being pointed in the reverse direc-
tion, the braced ship sailed hard upon the
breeze as she rechurned the cream in her own
white wake.
"Against the wind he now steers for the
open jaw," murmured Starbuck to himself,
as he coiled the new-hauled main-brace
MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHITE WHALE
33
upon the rail. "God keep us, but already
my bones feel damp within me, and from
the inside wet my flesh. I misdoubt me
that I disobey my God in obeying him!"
"Stand by to sway me up!" cried Ahab,
advancing to the hempen basket. "We
should meet him soon."
"Aye, aye, sir," and straightway Starbuck
did Ahab's bidding, and once more Ahab
swung on high.
A whole hour now passed; gold-beaten
out to ages. Time itself now held long
breaths with keen suspense. But at last,
some three points oflF the weather-bow,
Ahab descried the spout again, and instantly
from the three mastheads three shrieks went
up as if the tongues of fire had voiced it.
"Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this
third time, Moby Dick! On deck there! —
brace sharper up; crowd her into the wind's
eye. He's too far off to lower yet, Mr.
Starbuck. The sails shake! Stand over
that helmsman with a topmaul! So, so;
he travels fast, and I must down. But let
me have one more good round look aloft
here at the sea; there's time for that. An
old, old sight, and yet somehow so young;
aye, and not changed a wink since I first
saw it, a boy, from the sandhills of Nan-
tucket! The same! — the same! — the same
to Noah as to me. There's a soft shower to
leeward. Such lovely leewardings! They
must lead somewhere — to something else
than common land, more palmy than the
palms. Leeward! the white whale goes that
way; look to windward, then; the better if
the bitterer quarter. But good-bye, good-
bye, old masthead! What's this.f' — green?
ay, tiny mosses in these warped cracks. No
such green weather stains on Ahab's head!
There's the difference now between man's
old age and matter's. But aye, old mast,
we both grow old together; sound in our
hulls, though, are we not, my ship.? Aye,
minus a leg, that's all. By heaven! this
dead wood has the better of my live flesh
every way. I can't compare with it; and
I've known some ships made of dead trees
outlast the lives of men made of the most
vital stuff of vital fathers. What's that he
said? he should still go before me, my pilot;
and yet to be seen again? But where?
Shall I have eyes at the bottom of the sea,
supposing I descend those endless stairs?
and all night I've been sailing from him,
wherever he did sink to. Aye, aye, like
many more thou told'st direful truth as
touching thyself, O Parsee; but, Ahab,
there thy shot fell short. Good-bye, mast-
head— keep a good eye upon the whale, the
while I'm gone. We'll talk to-morrow, nay,
to-night, when the white whale lies down
there, tied by head and tail."
He gave the word; and still gazing round
him, was steadily lowered through the cloven
blue air to the deck.
In due time the boats were lowered; " but
as standing in his shallop's stern, Ahab just
hovered upon the point of the descent, he
waved to the mate, — who held one of the
tackle-ropes on deck — and bade him pause.
"Starbuck!"
"Sir?"
"For the third time my soul's ship starts
upon this voyage, Starbuck.'*
"Aye, sir, thou wilt have it so."
"Some ships sail from their ports, and
ever afterwards are missing, Starbuck!"
"Truth, sir: saddest truth."
"Some men die at ebb tide; some at low
water; some at the full of the flood; — and
I feel now like a billow that's all one crested
comb, Starbuck. I am old; — shake hands
with me, man."
Their hands met; their eyes fastened;
Starbuck's tears the glue.
"Oh, my captain, my captain! — noble
heart — go not — go not! — see, it's a brave
man that weeps; how great the agony of
the persuasion then!"
"Lower away!" — cried Ahab, tossing the
mate's arm from him. "Stand by the
cr^ew 1
In an instant the boat was pulling round
close under the stern.
"The sharks! the sharks!" cried a voice
from the low cabin-window there; "O
master, my master, come back!"
But Ahab heard nothing; for his own voice
was high-lifted then; and the boat leaped
on.
Yet the voice spake true; for scarce had
he pushed from the ship, when numbers of
sharks, seemingly rising from out the dark
waters beneath the hull, maliciously snapped
at the blades of the oars, every time they
dipped in the water; and in this way ac-
companied the boat with their bites. It is a
34
HERMAN Ml'XVlLLE
thinj^ not uncommonly happening to the
whale-boats in those swarming seas; the
sharks at times apparently following them
in the same prescient way that vultures
hover over the banners of marching regi-
ments in the east. But these were the first
sharks that had been observed by the Pequod
since the White Whale had been first
descried; and whether it was that Ahab's
crew were all such tiger-yellow barbarians,
and therefore their flesh more musky to the
senses of the sharks — a matter sometimes
well known to affect them, — however it was,
they seemed to follow that one boat without
molesting the others.
"Heart of wrought steel!" murmured
Starbuck, gazing over the side, and following
with his eyes the receding boat — "canst
thou yet ring boldly to that sight.'' — lowering
thy keel among ravening sharks, and fol-
lowed by them, open-mouthed, to the chase;
and thi^ the critical third day? — For when
three days flow together in one continuous
intense pursuit; be sure the first is the
morning, the second the noon, and the third
the evening and the end of that thing — be
that end what it may. Oh! my God! what
is this that shoots through me, and leaves
me so deadly calm, yet expectant, — fixed at
the top of a shudder! Future things swim
before me, as in empty outlines and skele-
tons; all the past is somehow grown dim.
Mary, girl! thou fadest in pale glories be-
hind me; boy! I seem to see but thy eyes
grown wondrous blue. Strangest problems of
life seem clearing; but clouds sweep be-
tween— Is my journey's end coming? My
legs feel faint; like his who has footed it all
day. Feel thy heart, — beats it yet? — Stir
thyself, Starbuck! — stave it off — move,
move! speak aloud! — Masthead there! See
ye my boy's hand on the hill.'' — Crazed; —
aloft there! — keep thy keenest eye upon the
boats: — mark well the whale! — Ho! again!
— drive off that haw^k! see! he pecks — he
tears the vane" — pointing to the red flag
flying at the main-truck — "Ha! he soars
away with it! — Where's the old man now?
sees't thou that sight, oh Ahab! — shudder,
shudder!"
The boats had not gone very far, when by
a signal from the mastheads — a downward
pointed arm, Ahab knew that the whale had
sounded; but intending to be near him at
the next rising, he held on his way a little
sideways from the vessel; the becharmed
crew maintaining the profoundest silence, as
the head-beat waves hammered and ham-
mered against the opposing bow.
"Drive, drive in your nails, oh ye waves!
to their uttermost heads drive them in! ye
but strike a thing without a lid; and no
coflin and no hearse can be mine: — and hemp
only can kill me! Ha! ha!"
Suddenly the waters around them slowly
swelled in broad circles; then quickly up-
heaved, as if sideways sliding from a sub-
merged berg of ice, swiftly rising to the
surface. A low rumbling sound was heard;
a subterraneous hum; and then all held their
breaths; as bedraggled with trailing ropes,
and harpoons, and lances, a vast form shot
lengthwise, but obliquely from the sea.
Shrouded in a thin drooping veil of mist, it
hovered for a moment in the rainbowed air;
and then fell swamping back into the deep.
Crushed thirty feet upwards, the waters
flashed for an instant like heaps of fountains,
then brokenly sank in a shower of flakes,
leaving the circling surface creamed like new
milk round the marble trunk of the whale,
"Give way!" cried Ahab to the oarsmen
and the boats darted forward to the attack;
but maddened by yesterday's fresh irons
that corroded in him, Moby Dick seemed
combinedly possessed by all the angels that
fell from heaven. The wide tiers of welded
tendons overspreading his broad white fore-
head, beneath the transparent skin, looked
knitted together; as head on, he came churn-
ing his tail among the boats; and once more
flailed them apart; spilling out the irons and
lances from the two mates' boats, and dash-
ing in one side of the upper part of their
bows, but leaving Ahab's almost without a
scar.
While Daggoo and Queequeg were stop-
ping the strained planks; and as the whale
swimming out from them, turned, and
showed one entire flank as he shot by them
again; at that moment a quick cry went up.
Lashed round and round to the fish's back;
pinioned in the turns upon turns in which,
during the past night, the whale had reeled
the involutions of the lines around him, the
half torn body of the Parsee was seen; his
sable raiment frayed to shreds; his dis-
tended eyes turned full upon old Ahab.
MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHITE WHALE
35
The harpoon dropped from his hand.
"Befooled, befooled!" — drawing in a long
lean breath — "Aye, Parsee! I see thee
again. — Aye, and thou goest before; and
this, this then is the hearse that thou didst
promise. But I hold thee to the last letter
of thy word. Where is the second hearse .f*
Away, mates, to the ship! those boats are
useless now; repair them if ye can in time,
and return to me; if not, Ahab is enough
to die — Down, men! the first thing that but
offers to jump from this boat I stand in,
that thing I harpoon. Ye are not other men,
but my arms and my legs; and so obey me. —
Where's the whale.'' gone down again?"
But he looked too nigh the boat; for as if
bent upon escaping with the corpse he bore,
and as if the particular place of the last en-
counter had been but a stage in his leeward
voyage, Moby Dick was now again steadily
swimming forward; and had almost passed
the ship, — which thus far had been sailing
in the contrary direction to him, though for
the present her headway had been stopped.
He seemed swimming with his utmost
velocity, and now only intent upon pursuing
his own straight path in the sea.
"Oh! Ahab," cried Starbuck, "not too
late is it, even now, the third day, to desist.
See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou,
thou, that madly seekest him!"
Setting sail to the rising wind, the lonely
boat was swiftly impelled to leeward, by
both oars and canvas. And at last when
Ahab was sliding by the vessel, so near as
plainly to distinguish Starbuck's face as he
leaned over the rail, he hailed him to turn
the vessel about, and follow him, not too
swiftly, at a judicious interval. Glancing
upwards, he saw Tashtego, Queequeg, and
Daggoo, eagerly mounting to the three mast-
heads; while the oarsmen were rocking in
the two staved boats which had just been
hoisted to the side, and were busily at work
in repairing them. One after the other,
through the port-holes, as he sped, he also
caught flying glimpses of Stubb and Flask,
busying themselves on deck among bundles
of new irons and lances. As he saw all this;
as he heard the hammers in the broken boats;
far other hammers seemed driving a nail
into his heart. But he rallied. And now
marking that the vane or flag was gone from
the main masthead, he shouted to Tashtego,
who had just gained that perch, to descend
again for another flag, and a hammer and
nails, and so nail it to the mast.
Whether fagged by the three days' run-
ning chase, and the resistance to his swim-
ming in the knotted hamper he bore; or
whether it was some latent deceitfulness and
malice in him: whichever was true, the
White Whale's way now began to abate, as
it seemed, from the boat so rapidly nearing
him once more; though indeed the whale's
last start had not been so long a one as
before. And still as Ahab glided over the
waves the unpitying sharks accompanied
him; and so pertinaciously stuck to the
boat; and so continually bit at the plying
oars, that the blades became jagged and
crunched, and left small splinters in the sea,
at almost every dip.
"Heed them not! those teeth but give
new rowlocks to your oars. Pull on! 'tis
the better rest, the shark's jaw than the
yielding water."
"But at every bite, sir, the thin blades
grow smaller and smaller!"
"They will last long enough! pull on! —
But who can tell" — he muttered — "whether
these sharks swim to feast on the whale or
on Ahab.'' — But pull on! Aye, all alive, now
— we near him. The helm! take the helm;
let me pass," — and so saying, two of the
oarsmen helped him forward to the bows of
the still flying boat.
At length as the craft was cast to one side,
and ran ranging along with the White
Whale's flank, he seemed strangely oblivious
of its advance — as the whale sometimes
will — and Ahab was fairly within the smoky
mountain mist, which, thrown oflF from the
whale's spout, curled round his great Mo-
nadnock hump. He was even thus close to
him; when, with body arched back, and both
arms lengthwise high-lifted to the poise, he
darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer
curse into the hated whale. As both steel
and curse sank to the socket, as if sucked
into a morass, Moby Dick sideways writhed;
spasmodically rolled his nigh flank against
the bow, and, without staving a hole in it, so
suddenly canted the boat over, that had it
not been for the elevated part of the gun-
wale to which he then clung, Ahab would
once more have been tossed into the sea. As
it was, three of the oarsmen — who foreknew
i6
HERMAN MELVILLE
not tlie precise instant of the dart, and were
therefore unprepared for its effects — these
were fliinc; out; but so fell, that, in an instant
two of them clutched tlie gunwale again,
and rising to its level on a combing wave,
hurled themselves bodily inboard again;
the third man helplessly dropping astern,
but still afloat and swimming.
Almost sunultaneously, with a mighty
volition of ungraduated, instantaneous swift-
ness, the White Whale darted through the
weltering sea. But when Ahab cried out to
the steersman to take new turns with the
line, and hold it so; and commanded the
crew to turn round on their seats, and tow
the boat up to the mark; the moment the
treacherous line felt that double strain and
tug, it snapped in the empty air!
"What breaks in me.'' Some sinew
cracks! — 'tis whole again; oars! oars! Burst
in upon him!"
Hearing the tremendous rush of the sea-
crashing boat, the whale wheeled round to
present his blank forehead at bay; but in
that evolution, catching sight of the nearing
black hull of the ship; seemingly seeing in it
the source of all his persecutions; bethink-
ing it — it may be — a larger and nobler foe;
of a sudden, he bore down upon its advancing
prow, smiting his jaws amid fiery showers of
foam.
Ahab staggered; his hand smote his fore-
head. "I grow blind; hands! stretch out
before me that I may yet grope my way.
Is't night?"
"The whale! The ship!" cried the
cringing oarsmen.
"Oars! oars! Slope downwards to thy
depths, O sea, that ere it be for ever too late,
Ahab may slide this last, last time upon his
mark! I see: the ship! the ship! Dash
on, my men! Will ye not save my ship?"
But as the oarsmen violently forced their
boat through the sledge-hammering seas, the
before whale-smitten bow-ends of two
planks burst through, and in an instant
almost, the temporarily disabled boat lay
nearly level with the waves; its half-wading,
splashing crew, trying hard to stop the gap
and bale out the pouring water.
Meantime, for that one beholding instant,
Tashtego's masthead hammer remained sus-
pended in his hand; and the red flag, half-
wrapping him as with a plaid, then streamed
itself straight out from him, as his own for-
ward-flowing heart; while Starbuck and
Stubb, standing upon the bowsprit beneath,
caught sight of the down-coming monster
just as soon as he.
"The whale, the whale! Up helm, up
helm! Oh, all ye sweet powers of air, now
hug me close! Let not Starbuck die, if die
he must, in a woman's fainting fit. Up
helm, I say — ye fools, the jaw! the jaw!
Is this the end of all my bursting prayers?
all my life-long fidelities? Oh, Ahab, Ahab,
lo, thy work. Steady! helmsman, steady.
Nay, nay! Up helm again! He turns to
meet us! Oh, his unappeasable brow drives
on towards one, whose duty tells him he
cannot depart. My God, stand by me now!
"Stand not by me, but stand under me,
whoever you are that will now help Stubb;
for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grin at thee,
thou grinning whale! Whoever helped
Stubb, or kept Stubb awake, but Stubb's
own unwinking eye? And now poor Stubb
goes to bed upon a mattress that is all too
soft; would it were stuffed with brushwood!
I grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Look
ye, sun, moon, and stars! I call ye assassins
of as good a fellow as ever spouted up his
ghost. For all that, I would yet ring glasses
with ye, would ye but hand the cup! Oh,
oh, oh, oh! thou grinning whale, but there'll
be plenty of gulping soon! Why fly ye not,
O Ahab? For me, oflF shoes and jacket to it;
let Stubb die in his drawers! A most moldy
and over-salted death, though; — cherries!
cherries! cherries! Oh, Flask, for one red
cherry ere we die!"
"Cherries? I only wish that we were
where they grow. Oh, Stubb, I hope my
poor mother's drawn my part-pay ere this;
if not, few coppers will come to her now, for
the voyage is up."
From the ship's bows, nearly all the sea-
men now hung inactive; hammers, bits of
plank, lances, and harpoons, mechanically
retained in their hands, just as they had
darted from their various employments; all
their enchanted eyes intent upon the whale,
which from side to side strangely vibrating
his predestinating head, sent a broad band
of overspreading semicircular foam before
him as he rushed. Retribution, swift
vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole
aspect, and spite of all that mortal man
MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHITE WHALE
37
could do, the solid white buttress of his
forehead smote the ship's starboard bow, till
men and timbers reeled. Some fell flat upon
their faces. ' Like dislodged trucks, the heads
of the harpooneers aloft shook on their bull-
like necks. Through the breach, they heard
the waters pour, as mountain torrents down
a flume.
"The ship! The hearse! — the second
hearse!" cried Ahab from the boat; "its
wood could only be American!"
Diving beneath the settling ship, the
Whale ran quivering along its keel; but
turning under water, swiftly shot to the sur-
face again, far off the other bow, but within
a few yards of Ahab's boat, where, for a time,
he lay quiescent.
"I turn my body from the sun. What ho,
Tashtego! let me hear thy hammer. Oh!
ye three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou
uncracked keel; the only god-bullied hull;
thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and Pole-
pointed prow, — death-glorious ship! must
ye then perish, and without me? Am I cut
oflF from the last fond pride of meanest ship-
WTecked captains.^ Oh, lonely death on
lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost
greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho!
from all 3^our furthest bounds, pour ye now
in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life,
and top this one piled comber of my death!
Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but
unconquering whale; to the last I grapple
with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee;
for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.
Sink all coffins and all hearses to one com-
mon pool! and since neither can be mine let
me then tow to pieces, while still chasing
thee, though tied to thee, thou damned
whale! Thus, I give up the spear!"
The harpoon was darted; the stricken
whale flew forward; with igniting velocity
the. line ran through the groove; ran foul.
Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it;
but the flying turn caught him round the
neck and, voicelessly as Turkish mutes bow-
string their victim, he was shot out of the
boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next
instant, the heavy eyesplice in the rope's
final end flew out of the stark-empty tub,
knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the
sea, disappeared in its depths.
For an instant, the tranced boat's crew
stood still; then turned. "The ship?
Great God, where is the ship? Soon they
through dim, bewildering mediums saw her
sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous
Fata Morgana; only the uppermost masts
out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or
fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches,
the pagan harpooneers still maintained their
sinking lookouts on the sea. And now, con-
centric circles seized the lone boat itself, and
all its crew, and each floating oar, and every
lance-pole, and spinning, animate and in-
animate, all round and round in one vortex,
carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out
of sight.
But as the last whelmings intermixingly
poured themselves over the sunken head of
the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few
inches of the erect spar yet visible, together
with long streaming yards of the flag, which
calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings,
over the destroying billows they almost
touched; — at that instant, a red arm and a
hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the
open air, in the act of nailing the flag faster
and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-
hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-
truck downwards from its natural home
among the stars, pecking at the flag, and
incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now
chanced to intercept its broad fluttering
wing between the hammer and the wood;
and simultaneously feeling that ethereal
thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in
his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen
there; and so the bird of heaven, with arch-
angelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust
upwards, and his whole captive form folded
in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship,
which, like Satan, would not sink to hell
till she had dragged a living part of heaven
along with her, and helmeted herself with it.
Now small fowls flew screaming over the
yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat
against its steep sides; then all collapsed,
and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as
it rolled five thousand years ago.
EPILOGUE
And I only am escaped alone to tell thee. — Job.
The drama's done. Why then here does
anyone step forth.'' — Because one did survive
the wreck.
It so chanced, that after the Parsee's dis-
3^
HERMAN MELVILLE
appearance, I was he whom the Fates or-
dained to take tlie place of Ahab's bowsman,
when that bowsman assumed the vacant
post; the same, who, when on the last day
the three men were tossed from out the rock-
ing boat, was dropped astern. So, floating on
the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full
sight of it, when the half-spent suction of the
sunk ship reached me, I was then, but slowly,
drawn towards the closing vortex. When I
reached it, it had subsided to a creamy pool.
Round and round, then, and ever contracting
towards the button-like black bubble at the
axis of that slowly wheeling circle, like
another Lxion I did revolve. Till, gaining
that vital center, the black bubble upward
burst; and now, liberated by reason of its
cunning spring, and, owing to its great
buoyancy, rising with great force, the coffin
hfe-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell
over, and floated by my side. Buoyed up
by that cofiin, for almost one whole day and
night, I floated on a soft and dirge-like main.
1 he unharming sharks, they glided by as if
with padlocks on their mouths; the savage
sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On
the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and
picked me up at last. It was the devious-
cruising Rachel,^ that in her retracing search
after her missing children, only found
another orphan.
1 A whaler whose meeting with the Peqiiod is told
in Chap. CXXVIII. The Rachel had encountered Moby
Dick, and one of her boats had disappeared in pur-
suing the White Whale. In the boat was a son of the
Rachel's captain, and he was still searching for it.
J
WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)
Of mingled Dutch and English ancestry, Whitman was born on 31 May, 1819, at West Hills, a
small village near Huntington, Long Island. His father at this time was a farmer. Some time between
1823 and 1825 the family moved in to Brooklyn, and thereafter Whitman's father earned his living
as a carpenter and housebuilder. The boy attended Brooklyn schools for several years without show-
ing any promise, and then, at about the age of eleven, became an office-boy to a lawyer, and later to
a physician. When he was twelve he was employed by a printer and, after he had learned to set type,
he found work as a compositor in the printing establishments of several newspapers in Brooklyn and
New York. In 1836 for some reason he turned back to the country and for several years was a school-
teacher— neither a very competent nor a very successful one — in a number of country schools on Long
Island. In the summer of 1838 he attempted to start a newspaper at Huntington, but was so irregu-
lar in his work that after some months those who were supporting the project dismissed him. Again
he became a school-teacher, and in Jamaica from 1839 to 1841 he combined teaching with work in a
printing-office. At this time he was regarded as a lazy and ineffectual young man; he was certainly
discontented, but seemed to be given over to hazy reverie rather than to be following, or even plan-
ning, any active method of bettering his condition. He was, however, already dreaming, if vaguely,
of writing a book of some kind to recall men to the truth of their nature. He wanted to warn them
against "the mania of owning things." He was perhaps beginning to have those mystical experiences
which later became more definite and complete, and which gave him increasing confidence in the inner
light which guided him as, presumably, it had guided his Quaker ancestors. It was only gradually,
however, that his inner light became strong enough to compel obedience; — that is, to compel him to
direct, confident, and energetic pursuit of a definitely conceived purpose. Meanwhile his activities were
to remain for some years miscellaneous in character. They constituted, on the whole, a good prep-
aration for his later work, but there is no reason to suppose that they were part of a deliberate, com-
prehensive plan.
In 1 841 Whitman returned to the city, working during the next seven years on many periodicals
and newspapers, in both New York and Brooklyn. He took what work he could get, as compositor,
or contributor, or editor. As a writer he supported reforms which at this time were being plentifully
urged upon the American people, and he became, for the moment, an undiscriminating sentimental
humanitarian. Stimulated by gin-punch, he produced Franklin Evans (1842), a cheap, melodramatic
narrative exhibiting — perhaps to himself as well as to others — the evils of drinking. He wrote, too,
against the use of tea, coffee, and tobacco. As a reformer, however, he soon developed lines of his own,
showing good sense and insight, and urging his causes with courage and persistence. He contended
in his editorial writings for a more generous support and more careful supervision of education, for
the use of milder methods of teaching than the usual flogging system, and for changes in the school-
curriculum designed to adapt it to the actual needs of future citizens of a modern democracy. And
"his hatred for sham in education was matched by his disgust at sham everywhere. Another subject
of frequent recurrence was America's tendency to ape the Old World in music, art, literature, manners,
and the drama. Another was the dangers of materialism, whether in the form of African slavery or
in the more alluring guise of ordinary money-making. Other favorite themes were: the abolition
of capital punishment, the evils of intemperance, sympathy for the unfortunate and the criminal, a
living wage for working women, the ennobling influence of the gentler sex, the beauty and educative
function of nature, the greatness and the origin and destiny of America, the free spirit of the West, the
necessity of the Union, the need of personal cleanliness and of aesthetic surroundings, the opportunities
for civic improvement, the absurdities of fashion, the mission of democracy, and the blessing of good
books." (E. Holloway, Uncollected Poetry and Prose of JValt Whitman, I, Ixxviii.) He also during
this period wrote a number of book-reviews, two of which show that he was acquainted with the writ-
ings of Carlyle at least as early as 1846 and with those of Emerson at least as early as 1847. But
not all of his time went directly into his work. For "he missed nothing that was to be seen. He
attended the theater and the opera; he studied the fairs and exhibitions; he patronized the public
baths; he was familiar with all the police courts and the slums; he wrote crude special articles on
Sing Sing, on the hospitals, the asylums, the schools; he attended picnics, went on steamboat and
railway excursions, and was present to take part in political meetings and celebrations. He attended
39
40 WALT WHITMAN
lectures and concerts, gazed in awe at the great city fires, and loitered amidst the shipping and on the
ferries. Wherever human life was 'magnificently moving in vast masses,' there was he to feel and
absorb it." (E. Holloway, as above, I, xl-xli.)
The most important post which Whitman held during these years was that of editor of The Daily
Brooklyn Eagle ( 1 846-1 848), and when he was dismissed from this position because of his irregular
manner of working and also because of his "progressive politics" he secured another on a newly-estab-
lished New Orleans newspaper. He remained in New Orleans about three months, and he may have
formed, while there, a connection with an unknown woman, probably married, which resulted in his
becoming a father. Little is known about this aspect of Whitman's life, practically all information
concerning it coming, in the vaguest terms, from Whitman himself. On one occasion he admitted
that he was the father of six children, and added that "their fortune and benefit" precluded his hav-
ing intimate relations with them. Probably he meant that their mothers were married women. Fur-
ther, he told John Burroughs that in the years before he went to New Orleans he had "sounded all
experiences of life, with all their passions, pleasures, and abandonments." And it appears certain
that during the period of his Washington residence he established a connection with a married woman
there. But beyond this meager knowledge all is conjecture concerning Whitman's relations with
women and concerning his children.
Upon his return from New Orleans Whitman again took up newspaper work in Brooklyn, editing
the Brooklyn Freeman until September, 1849, when he parted from the paper with these last editorial
words: "To those who have been my friends, I take occasion to proffer the warmest thanks of a grate-
ful heart. My enemies — and old hunkers generally — I disdain and defy the same as ever." He con-
tinued newspaper work in following years, perhaps went again to New Orleans, perhaps assisted his
father for a time in housebuilding, and certainly spent much time in reading, loafing, and writing the
new kind of poetry which, as his notebooks show, he had begun to compose as early as 1847. In 1855
twelve of the new poems, carefully revised and rewritten, were printed in a thin volume in Brooklyn,
under the title Leaves of Grass. It is not known exactly what earlier writings may have aided Whit-
man in the invention of his irregular poetic form. The Bible and Macpherson's Ossian probably
helped him to its discover\', and perhaps the blank verse of Shakespeare and Bryant and the prose
of Carlyle and Emerson, but, whatever sources of suggestion he was conscious of, he was really the
inventor of the form he used. He expected his book to be attacked, and attacked it was, but it received
little notice of any kind; and he would have had cause only for discouragement over the fate of his
long-prepared effort "to loosen the mind of still-to-be-formed America from the folds, the superstitions,
and all the long, tenacious, and stifling anti-democratic authorities of Asiatic and European past," had
it not been that he received a warmly congratulatory letter from Emerson, who thus recognized the
discipleship which Whitman proclaimed. He proceeded in 1856 to print a second edition of Leaves of
Grass, in which he included twenty new poems, and Emerson's letter together with his reply, and some
press notices, and on the back of the cover he had stamped a sentence from Emerson's letter: "I greet
you at the beginning of a great career, R. W. Emerson." This annoyed Emerson and probably did
not much help the book. At intervals Whitman continued through the rest of his life to issue new
editions of Leaves of Grass, constantly revising it and making important additions of new poems or
groups of poems, and slowly winning a larger public as well as many warmly sympathetic friends in
both England and America.
Meanwhile he still had his living to earn, and he resumed newspaper work in Brooklyn for several
years. He planned to deliver lectures in the late 1850's, but nothing came of the project. In i860
he was in Boston, seeing something of Emerson and other friends made through Leaves of Grass, and
issuing there the third edition of that volume. The Civil War was, of course, a profound and tragic
challenge to Whitman's faith in democracy, but it seems never to have shaken that faith, while it
gradually deepened his insight into life and chastened and ennobled his nature. At the end of 1862
he went down into Virginia to care for a wounded brother, and thus drifted into work for the relief
and comfort of other sick and wounded soldiers — work which took all his time and strength and ten-
derness during the next several years, as well as all the money he could earn through newspaper cor-
respondence and clerical employment and all that he could secure through friends. He continued to
live in Washington, where most of his great work for the soldiers was done, supported by a govern-
ment clerkship, until an attack of paralysis in 1873 compelled him to give up his position. He then
went to live in Camden, New Jersey, with a brother, and there he lived until his death. He gradually
recovered a portion of his strength, and was able in 1879 to travel to Colorado and in the following
year to Canada, and later to undertake shorter journeys, to see John Burroughs, to revisit Long Island,
and the like, and he continued to write, but he never fully recovered and he was never able to com-
plete his projected sequel to Leaves of Grass, in which he wished to treat of the spiritual aspect of life
and to show that "the unseen soul governs absolutely at last." In 1884 he bought a small house in
STARTING FROM PAUMANOK 41
Camden with the profits from the 1882 edition of the Leaves, and here he died, serene and still hopeful
despite h:)ng illness, some persecution, and other trials enough, on 26 March, 1892. He lived suffi-
ciently long to see his work fairly accepted; and while controversy over it has continued since his
death, and is not likely soon to cease, still, it is at least evident that he has taken his place near the
head of American writers. No other American save Emerson has exercised such an influence as he
has over later thought, and he stands alone in the extent and importance of his influence over later
poetry.
SHUT NOT YOUR DOORS ^
Shut not your doors to me proud libraries,
For that which was lacking on all your well-filled shelves, yet needed most, I bring,
Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,
The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing,
A book separate, not linked with the rest nor felt by the intellect.
But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page.
POETS TO COME
Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for.
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known,
Arouse! for you must justify me.
I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.
I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you and
then averts his face.
Leaving it to you to prove and define it.
Expecting the main things from you.
STARTING FROM PAUMANOK 2
Starting from fish-shape Paumanok where I was born.
Well-begotten, and raised by a perfect mother.
After roaming many lands, lover of populous pavements,
1 It has seemed best to follow, not the chronological order, but Whitman's own arrangement of his poems,
in reprinting these selections from Leaves of Grass. The chronological order can be determined, by those who
wish to do so, from the footnotes. From the beginning Whitman regarded his poems, not as separate wholes,
but as parts of a comprehensive picture of "the deliberate and progressive unfolding of the conscious life of a man
who is at once individual and typical," and Leaves of Grass is "so arranged as to present first the foundations
and implications of such a life and to fill in afterwards the various stages of experience and reflection," (B. de
Selincourt.) The scheme was loose, it was not followed with entire consistency, and it was left uncompleted.
Obviously for ideal completeness the poet had to live his book before he wrote it, and it could be completed only
with death, so that a measure of incompleteness was inevitable; but this was increased because after 1873 Whit-
man was unable to work continuously at his highest level. Nevertheless, the poems are best studied and under-
stood in the order in which Whitman deliberately placed them. The introduction to the book comprises a group
of short pieces having the general title Inscriptions, from which the first two poems above are taken, and the
important longer poem, Starting from Paumanok, which immediately follows them. Shut Not Your Doors was
first published in 1865, and appeared in Leaves of Grass in its present form in 1881. (The date corresponding to
the second of these two will in subsequent cases be given in parentheses following the first, with L. G. placed
before it.) Poets to Come was first published in i860 (L. G., 1867).
The selections from Whitman are reprinted with the permission of Messrs. Doubleday, Page, and Company,
the authorized publishers of Whitman's writings. For the poems the Inclusive Edition of Leaves of Grass^ edited
by Emory Holloway, has been followed.
2 First published i860 (L. G., 1881). "Paumanok" is Long Island. This "important and noble poem . . .
expounds the whole purpose oi Leaves of Grass, sounding together its three harmonizing notes of individualism and
religion and love." (B. de Selincourt.)
42 \\'Ai;r WHITMAN
Dweller in Mannahatta my city, or on southern savannas,
Or a soldier camped or carrying my knapsack and nun, or a miner in California,
Or rude in my home in Dakota's woods, my diet meat, my drink from the spring,
Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess,
Far from the clank of crowds intervals passing rapt and happy,
Aware of the fresh free giver the flowing Missouri, aware of mighty Niagara,
Aware of the buffalo herds grazing the plains, the hirsute and strong-breasted bull, lo
Of earth, rocks, Fifth-month flowers experienced, stars, rain, snow, my amaze.
Having studied the mocking-bird's tones and the flight of the mountain-hawk.
And heard at dawn the unrivaled one, the hermit thrush from the swamp-cedars,
Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.
II
Victory, union, faith, identity, time.
The indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery.
Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports.
This then is life,
Here is what has come to tne surface after so many throes and convulsions
How curious! how real! 20
Underfoot the divine soil, overhead the sun.
See revolving the globe.
The ancestor-continents away grouped together.
The present and future continents north and south, with the isthmus between.
See, vast trackless spaces.
As in a dream they change, they swiftly fill,
Countless masses debouch upon them,
They are now covered with the foremost people, arts, institutions, known.
See, projected through time,
For me an audience interminable. 30
With firm and regular step they wend, they never stop,
Successions of men, Americanos, a hundred millions.
One generation playing its part and passing on.
Another generation playing its part and passing on in its turn,
With faces turned sideways or backward towards me to listen,
With eyes retrospective towards me.
Ill
Americanos! conquerors! marches humanitarian!
Foremost! century marches! Libertad! masses!
For you a programme of chants.
Chants of the prairies, 4°
Chants of the long-running Mississippi, and down to the Mexican sea,
Chants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota,
Chants going forth from the center from Kansas, and thence equidistant.
Shooting in pulses of fire ceaseless to vivify all.
STARTING FROM PAUMANOK 43
Take my leaves America, take them South and take them North,
Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own offspring.
Surround them East and West, for they would surround you,
And you precedents, connect lovingly with them, for they connect lovingly with you.
I conned old times,
I sat studying at the feet of the great masters, 50
Now if eligible O that the great masters might return and study me.
In the name of these States shall I scorn the antique?
Why these are the children of the antique to justify it.
V
Dead poets, philosophs, priests.
Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since,
Language-shapers on other shores.
Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate,
I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you have left wafted hither,
I have perused it, own it is admirable (moving awhile among it).
Think nothing can ever be greater, nothing can ever deserve more than it deserves, 60
Regarding it all intently a long while, then dismissing it,
I stand in my place with my own day here.
Here lands female and male,
Here the heir-ship and heiress-ship of the world, here the flame of materials,
Here spirituality the translatress, the openly-avowed.
The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms.
The satisfier, after due long-waiting now advancing.
Yes here comes my mistress the soul.
VI
The soul.
Forever and forever — longer than soil is brown and solid — longer than water ebbs and
flows. 70
I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the most spiritual poems,
And I will make the poems of my body and of mortality.
For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my soul and of immortality.
I will make a song for these States that no one State may under any circumstances be sub-
jected to another State,
And I will make a song that there shall be comity by day and by night between all the States
and between any two of them,
And I will make a song for the ears of the President, full of weapons with menacing points.
And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces;
And a song make I of the One formed out of all.
The fanged and glittering One whose head is over all.
Resolute warlike One including and over all 80
(However high the head of any else that head is over all).
I will acknowledge contemporary lands,
I will trail the whole geography of the globe and salute courteously every city large and small,
And employments! I will put in my poems that with you is heroism upon land and sea.
And I will report all heroism from an American point of view.
44 WALT WHITMAN
I will sing the song of companionship,
I will show what alone must finally compact these,
I believe these are to found their own ideal of manly love, indicating it in me,
I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were threatening to consume me,
I will lift what has too long kept down those smoldering fires, 90
I will give them complete abandonment,
I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love,
For who but I should understand love with all its sorrow and joy?
And who but I should be the poet of comrades?
VII
I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races,
I advance from the people in their own spirit.
Here is what sings unrestricted faith.
Omnes! omnes! let others ignore what they may,
I make the poem of evil also, I commemorate that part also, 99
I am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is — and I say there is in fact no evil
(Or if there is I say it is just as important to you, to the land or to me, as any thing else).
I too, following many and followed by many, inaugurate a religion, I descend into the arena
(It may be I am destined to utter the loudest cries there, the winner's pealing shouts,
Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above every thing).
Each is not for its own sake,
I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion's sake.
I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough,
None has ever yet adored or worshiped half enough.
None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain the future is.
I say that the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be their religion, no
Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur
(Nor character nor life worthy the name without religion,
Nor land nor man or woman without religion).
VIII
What are you doing young man?
Are you so earnest, so given up to literature, science, art, amours?
These ostensible realities, politics, points?
Your ambition or business whatever it may be?
It is well — against such I say not a word, I am their poet also.
But behold! such swiftly subside, burnt up for religion's sake.
For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential life of the earth, 120
Any more than such are to religion. . , ,
What do you seek so pensive and silent? "^
What do you need camerado?
Dear son do you think it is love?
Listen dear son — listen America, daughter or son,
It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess, and yet it satisfies, it is great.
But there is something else very great, it makes the whole coincide.
It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands sweeps and provides for all.
STARTING FROM PAUMANOK 45
Know you, solely to drop in the earth the germs of a greater religion,
The following chants each for its kind I sing. 130
My comrade!
For you to share with me two greatnesses, and a third one rising inclusive and more re-
splendent.
The greatness of Love and Democracy, and the greatness of Religion.
Melange mine own, the unseen and the seen,
Mysterious ocean where the streams empty,
Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering around me.
Living beings, identities now doubtless near us in the air that we know not of,
Contact daily and hourly that will not release me,
These selecting, these in hints demanded of me.
Not he with a daily kiss onward from childhood kissing me, 140
Has winded and twisted around me that which holds me to him,
Any more than I am held to the heavens and all the spiritual world,
After what they have done to me, suggesting themes.
0 such themes — equalities! O divine average!
Warblings under the sun, ushered as now, or at noon, or setting.
Strains musical flowing through ages, now reaching hither,
1 take to your reckless and composite chords, add to them, and cheerfully pass them forward.
XI
As I have walked in Alabama my morning walk,
I have seen where the she-bird the mocking-bird sat on her nest in the briers hatching her
brood.
I have seen the he-bird also, 150
I have paused to hear him near at hand inflating his throat and joyfully singing.
And while I paused it came to me that what he really sang for was not there only.
Nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes,
But subtle, clandestine, away beyond,
A charge transmitted and gift occult for those being born.
XII
Democracy! near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself and joyfully singing.
Ma femme! for the brood beyond us and of us.
For those who belong here and those to come,
I exultant to be ready for them will now shake out carols stronger and haughtier than have
ever yet been heard upon earth.
I will make the songs of passion to give them their way, 160
And your songs outlawed offenders, for I scan you with kindred eyes, and carry you with
me the same as any.
I will make the true poem of riches,
To earn for the body and the mind whatever adheres and goes forward and is not dropped
by death;
46 WALT WHITMAN
I will effuse egotism and show it underlyinp; all, and I will be the bard of pcrsonalit}-,
And I will show of male and female that either is but the equal of the other.
And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me, for I am determined to tell you with
courageous clear voice to prove you illustrious,
And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present, and can be none in the future.
And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be turned to beautiful results.
And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death.
And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are compact, 170
And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as profound as any.
I will not make poems with reference to parts,
Hut I will make poems, songs, thoughts, with reference to ensemble.
And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to all days,
And I will not make a poem nor the least part of a poem but has reference to the soul,
Because having looked at the objects of the universe, I find there is no one nor any particle
of one but has reference to the soul.
XIII
Was somebody asking to see the soul?
See, your own shape and countenance, persons, substances, beasts, the trees, the running
rivers, the rocks and sands.
All hold spiritual joys and afterwards loosen them;
How can the real body ever die and be buried? 180
Of your real body and any man's or woman's real body,
Item for item it will elude the hands of the corpse-cleaners and pass to fitting spheres.
Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the moment of death.
Not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the meaning, the main concern,
Any more than a man's substance and life or a woman's substance and life return in the
body and the soul.
Indifferently before death and after death.
Behold, the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern, and includes and is the soul;
Whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or any part of it!
XIV
Whoever you are, to you endless announcements!
Daughter of the lands did you wait for your poet? 190
Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?
Toward the male of the States, and toward the female of the States,
Exulting words, words to Democracy's lands.
Interlinked, food-yielding lands!
Land of coal and iron! land of gold! land of cotton, sugar, rice!
Land of wheat, beef, pork! land of wool and hemp! land of the apple and the grape!
Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! land of those sweet-aired intermin-
able plateaus!
Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie!
Lands where the north-west Columbia winds, and where the south-w^est Colorado winds!
Land of the eastern Chesapeake! land of the Delaware! 200
Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan!
Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! land of Vermont and Connecticut!
Land of the ocean shores! land of sierras and peaks!
STARTING FROM PAUMANOK 47
Land of boatmen and sailors! fishermen's land!
Inextricable lands! the clutched together! the passionate ones!
The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limbed!
The great women's land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and the inexperienced sisters!
Far breathed land! Arctic braced! Mexican breezed! the diverse! the compact!
The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian!
0 all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at any rate include you all with
perfect love! 210
1 cannot be discharged from you! not from one any sooner than another!
O death! O for all that, I am yet of you unseen this hour with irrepressible love,
Walking New England, a friend, a traveler,
Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples on Paumanok's sands.
Crossing the prairies, dwelling again in Chicago, dwelling in every town,
Observing shows, births, improvements, structures, arts.
Listening to orators and oratresses in public halls,
Of and through the States as during life, each man and woman my neighbor.
The Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I as near to him and her.
The Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me, and I yet with any of them, 220
Yet upon the plains west of the spinal river, yet in my house of adobie.
Yet returning eastward, yet in the Seaside State or in Maryland,
Yet Kanadian cheerily braving the winter, the snow and ice welcome to me.
Yet a true son either of Maine or of the Granite State, or the Narragansett Bay State, or
the Empire State,
Yet sailing to other shores to annex the same, yet welcoming every new brother.
Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones from the hour they unite with the old ones.
Coming among the new ones myself to be their companion and equal, coming personally
to you now.
Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.
XV
With me with firm holding, yet haste, haste on.
For your life adhere to me 230
(I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give myself really to you, but
what of that?
Must not Nature be persuaded many times?).
No dainty dolce afFettuoso I,
Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-necked, forbidding, I have arrived.
To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the universe,
For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them.
XVI
On my way a moment I pause.
Here for you! and here for America!
Still the present I raise aloft, still the future of the States I harbinge glad and sublime.
And for the past I pronounce what the air holds of the red aborigines. 240
The red aborigines,
Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds and animals in the
woods, syllabled to us for names,
Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee, Kaqueta, Oronoco,
Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla,
Leaving such to the States they melt, they depart, charging the water and the land with
names.
48 WALT WHITMAN
XVII
Expanding and swift, henceforth,
Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick and audacious,
A world primal agam, vistas of glory incessant and branching,
A new race dominating previous ones and grander far, with new contests,
New politics, new literatures and religions, new inventions and arts. 250
These, my voice announcing — I will sleep no more but arise.
You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing
unprecedented waves and storms.
XVIII
See, steamers steaming through my poems.
See, in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing.
See, in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter's hut, the flatboat, the maize-leaf, the
claim, the rude fence, and the backwoods village.
See, on the one side the Western Sea and on the other the Eastern Sea, how they advance
and retreat upon my poems as upon their own shores.
See, pastures and forests in my poems — see, animals wild and tame — see, beyond the Kaw,
countless herds of buffalo feeding on short curly grass.
See, in my poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with paved streets, with iron and stone edifices,
ceaseless vehicles, and commerce.
See, the many-cyllndered steam prmting-press — see, the electric telegraph stretching across
the continent.
See, through Atlantica's depths pulses American Europe reaching, pulses of Europe duly
returned, 260
See, the strong and quick locomotive as it departs, panting, blowing the steam-whistle.
See, ploughmen ploughing farms — see, miners digging mines — see, the numberless factories.
See, mechanics busy at their benches with tools — see from among them superior judges,
phllosophs. Presidents, emerge, dressed in working dresses.
See, lounging through the shops and fields of the States, me well-belov'd, close-held by day
and night.
Hear the loud echoes of my songs there — read the hints come at last.
XIX
O camerado close! O you and me at last, and us two only.
O a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly!
O something ecstatic and undemonstrable! O music wild!
O now I triumph — and you shall also;
O hand in hand — O wholesome pleasure — O one more desirer and lover! 270
0 to haste firm holding — to haste, haste on with me.
SONG OF MYSELF 1
I
1 CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself.
And what I assume you shall assume.
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
1 First published 1855 {L. G., 1881). This poem, following the introduction of the reader to the book, intro-
duces the book's hero to the reader. It should be realized that Whitman sings himself because he regards him-
self as typical or representative — the incarnation of the "divine average." See particularly stanza 17 of this
poem.
SONG OF MYSELF
My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance, 10
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
II
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me. 20
The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzzed whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine.
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through
my lungs.
The snifF of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-colored sea-rocks, and
of hay in the barn.
The sound of the belched words of my voice loosed to the eddies of the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms.
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag.
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides.
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.
Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? have you reckoned the earth much? 30
Have you practiced so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems.
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun (there are millions of suns left).
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the
dead, nor feed on the specters in books.
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me.
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.
Ill
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there is now, 40
Nor any more youth or age than there is now.
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Urge and urge and urge.
Always the procreant urge of the world.
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and increase, always sex.
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.
50 WALT WHITMAN
I o elaborate is no avail, learn'd and iinlearn'd feel that it is so.
Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams.
Stout as a horse, affectionate, hau<;hty, electrical, 50
I and this mystery here we stand.
Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.
Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.
Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am silent, and
go bathe and admire myself.
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest.
I am satisfied — I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night, and withdraws
at the peep of the day with stealthy tread, 60
Leaving me baskets covered with white towels swelling the house with their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent.
Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is ahead.'*
IV
Trippers and askers surround me.
People I meet, the eflPect upon me of my early life or the ward and city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues.
The real or fancied indiflPerence of some man or woman I love, Jo
The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss or lack of money, or depres-
sions or exaltations.
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the fitful events;
These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.
Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am.
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next.
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.
Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders, 80
I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.
I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.
Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat.
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
SONG OF MYSELF 51
I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turned over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stripped
heart.
And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet. 90
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument
of the earth.
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own.
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own.
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love.
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them.
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heaped stones, elder, mullein and poke-weed.
VI
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands.
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. lOO
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped.
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say
Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means. Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. no
Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men.
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers' laps,
And here you are the mothers' laps.
This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men.
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
0 I perceive after all so many uttering tongues.
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. 120
1 wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women.
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
52 WALT WHITMAN
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. 130
VII
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it,
I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-washed babe, and am not contained
between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,
The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.
I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself
(They do not know how immortal, but I know).
Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female,
For me those that have been boys and that love women, 140
For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted.
For me the sweet-heart and the old maid, for me mothers and the mothers of mothers.
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
For me children and the begetters of children.
Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no.
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away.
VIII
The little one sleeps in its cradle,
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand.
The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill, 150
I peeringly view them from the top.
The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom,
I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol has fallen.
The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of the promenaders.
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the clank of the shod horses
on the granite floor.
The snow-sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snow-balls,
The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of roused mobs.
The flap of the curtained litter, a sick man inside borne to the hospital.
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall.
The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working his passage to the center
of the crowd, 160
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes.
What groans of over-fed or half-starved who fall sunstruck or in fits.
What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and give birth to babes.
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what howls restrained by decorum.
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances, rejections with convex lips,
I mind them or the show or resonance of them — I come and I depart.
SONG OF MYSELF 53
IX
The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready,
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon,
The clear hght plays on the brown gray and green intertinged,
The armfuls are packed to the sagging mow. 170
I am there, I help, I came stretched atop of the load,
I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other,
I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and timothy,
And roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps.
X
Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,
Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee.
In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-killed game.
Falling asleep on the gathered leaves with my dog and gun by my side.
The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle and scud, 180
My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously from the deck.
The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopped for me,
I tucked my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time;
You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.
I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west, the bride was a red girl,
Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly smoking, they had moccasins
to their feet and large thick blankets hanging from their shoulders.
On a bank lounged the trapper, he was dressed mostly in skins, his luxuriant beard and
curls protected his neck, he held his bride by the hand.
She had long eyelashes, her head was bare, her coarse straight locks descended upon her
voluptuous limbs and reached to her feet.
The runaway slave came to my house and stopped outside,
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile, 190
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak.
And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him.
And brought water and filled a tub for his sweated body and bruised feet.
And gave him a room that entered from my own, and gave him some coarse clean clothes,
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness.
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
He stayed with me a week before he was recuperated and passed north,
I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock leaned in the corner.
XI
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore.
Twenty-eight young men and all so ft-iendly; 2CXD
Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.
She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank.
She hides handsome and richly dressed aft the blinds of the window.
Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.
54 WALT WHITMAN
Where are you ofF to, lady? for I see you,
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.
Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather,
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.
The beards of the young men glistened with wet, it ran from their long hair^ 210
Little streams passed all over their bodies.
An unseen hand also passed over their bodies,
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.
The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun, they do not ask ^
who seizes fast to them.
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.
XII
The butcher-boy puts oflT his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall in the market,
I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuflUe and break-down.
Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil,
Each has his main-sledge, they are all out, there is a great heat in the fire. 220
From the cinder-strewed threshold I follow their movements.
The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms,
Overhand the hammers swing, overhand so slow, overhand so sure,
They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.
XIII
The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses, the block sw^ags underneath on its tied-
over chain.
The negro that drives the long dray of the stone-yard, steady and tall he stands poised on
one leg on the string-piece.
His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over his hip-band.
His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of his hat away from his forehead.
The sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache, falls on the black of his polished and perfect
limbs.
I behold the picturesque giant and love him, and I do not stop there, 230
I go with the team also.
In me the caresser of life wherever moving, backward as well as forward sluing,
To niches aside and junior bending, not a person or object missing,
Absorbing all to myself and for this song.
Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade, what is that you express in
your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.
My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant and day-long ramble,
They rise together, they slowly circle around.
SONG OF MYSELF 55
I believe in those wing'd purposes,
And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me, 240
And consider green and violet and the tufted crown intentional.
And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else,
And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me,
And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.
XIV
The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,
Ya-honk he says, and sounds it dow^n to me like an invitation,
The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listening close.
Find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky.
The sharp-hoofed moose of the north, the cat on the house-sill, the chickadee, the prairie-dog,
The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats, 250
The brood of the turkey-hen and she with her half-spread wings,
I see in them and myself the same old law.
The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections,
They scorn the best I can do- to relate them.
I am enamored of growing out-doors,
Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods.
Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of axes and mauls, and the drivers of
horses,
I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.
What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me,
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns, 260
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the fijst that will take me,
Not asking the sky to come down to my good will,
Scattering it freely forever.
XV
The pure contralto sings in the organ loft.
The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp.
The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving dinner,
The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm.
The mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon are ready,
The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar, 270
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big w^heel.
The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loafe and looks at the oats and rye,
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirmed case
(He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's bedroom);
The jour printer w^ith gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the manuscript;
The malformed limbs are tied to the surgeon's table,
What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard nods by the bar-room stove.
The machinist rolls up his sleeves, the policeman travels his beat, the gate-keeper marks who
pass, 280
The young fellow drives the express-wagon (I love him» though I do not know him) ;
56 WALT WHITMAN
The half-breed straps on his hght boots to compete in the race,
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young, some lean on their rifles, some sit on logs,
Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece;
The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee,
As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them from his saddle.
The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers bow to
each other,-
The youth lies awake in the cedar-roofed garret and harks to the musical rain.
The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,
The squaw wrapped in her yellow-hemmed cloth is offering moccasins and bead-bags for
sale, 29Q
The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with half-shut eyes bent sideways,
As the deck-hands make fast the steamboat the plank is thrown for the shore-going passengers,
The young sister holds out the skein while the elder sister winds it off in a ball, and stops
now and then for the knots,
The one-year wife is recovering and happy having a week ago borne her first child,
The clean-haired Yankee girl works with her sewing-machine or in the factory or mill.
The paving-man leans on his two-handed rammer, the reporter's lead flies swiftly over the
note-book, the sign-painter is lettering with blue and gold,
The canal boy trots on the tow-path, the book-keeper counts at his desk, the shoemaker
waxes his thread.
The conductor beats time for the band and all the performers follow him.
The child is baptized, the convert is making his first professions.
The regatta is spread on the bay, the race is begun (how the white sails sparkle!), 300
The drover watching his drove sings out to them that would stray.
The pedler sweats with his pack on his back (the purchaser higgling about the odd cent);
The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock moves slowly.
The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-opened lips.
The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck,
The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each other
(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you);
The President holding a cabinet council is surrounded by the great Secretaries,
On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with twined arms,
The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold, 310
The Missourian crosses the plains toting his wares and his cattle.
As the fare-collector goes through the train he gives notice by the jingling of loose change.
The floor-men are laying the floor, the tinners are tinning the roof, the masons are calling
for mortar,
In single file each shouldering his hod pass onward the laborers;
Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gathered, it is the fourth of Seventh-
month (what salutes of cannon and small arms!),
Seasons pursuing each other the plougher ploughs, the mower mows, and the winter-grain
falls in the ground;
Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the frozen surface.
The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep with his ax,
Flatboatmen make fast towards dusk near the cotton-wood or pecan-trees,
Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red River or through those drained by the
Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansas, 320
Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooche or Altamahaw,
Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great grandsons around them,
In walls of adobie, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after their day's sport,
The city sleeps and the country sleeps,
The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time.
The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife;
SONG OF MYSELF 57
And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
And such as it is to be of these more or less I am,
And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.
XVI
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, 330
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others.
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man.
Stuffed with the stuff that is coarse and stuffed with the stuff that is fine.
One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the largest the same,
A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a planter nonchalant and hospitable down by the Oconee
I live,
A Yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the limberest joints on earth and
the sternest joints on earth,
A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deer-skin leggings, a Louisianian or
Georgian,
A boatman over lakes or bays or along coasts, a Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye;
At home on Kanadian snow-shoes or up in the bush, or with fishermen off Newfoundland,
At home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest and tacking, 340
At home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine, or the Texan ranch.
Comrade of Californians, comrade of free North-Westerners (loving their big proportions).
Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen, comrade of all who shake hands and welcome to drink
and meat,
A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest,
A novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons.
Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion,
A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker.
Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.
I resist any thing better than my own diversity.
Breathe the air but leave plenty after me, 350
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.
(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place.
The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in their place,
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.)
XVII
These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing.
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing.
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This the common air that bathes the globe. 36c
XVIII
With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums,
I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for conquered and slain persons.
Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?
I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.
58 WALT WHITMAN
I beat and pound for the dead,
I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.
Vivas to those who have failed!
And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!
And to those themselves who sank in the sea!
And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes! 370
And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known!
XIX
This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger.
It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous, I make appointments with all,
I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited.
The heavy-lipped slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.
This is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odor of hair,
This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning,
This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face, 380
This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again.
Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has.
Do you take it I would astonish ?
Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering through the woods?
Do I astonish more than they?
This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.
XX
Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;
How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat? 390
What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?
All I mark as my own you shall offset it w^th your own,
Else it were time lost listening to me.
I do not snivel that snivel the world over.
That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth.
Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids, conformity goes to the fourth-
removed,
I wear my hat as I please indoors or out.
W^hy should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious?
Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counseled with doctors and calculated
close,
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones. 4CX)
SONG OF MYSELF 59
In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less,
And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.
I know I am solid and sound,
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.
I know I am deathless,
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass,
I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night.
I know I am august,
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood, 410
I see that the elementary laws never apologize
(I reckon J. behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after all).
I exist as I am, that is enough.
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.
One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself.
And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.
My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite,
I laugh at what you call dissolution, 420
And I know the amplitude of time.
XXI
I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new tongue.
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man.
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
I chant the chant of dilation or pride.
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,
I show that size is only development. 430
Have you outstripped the rest? are you the President?
It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on.
I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,
I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.
Press close bare-bosomed night — press close magnetic nourishing night!
Night of south winds — night of the large few stars!
Still nodding night — mad naked summer night.
Smile O voluptuous cool-breathed earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset — earth of the mountains misty-topped! 440
6o WALT WHITMAN
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the hmpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!
Far-swooping elbowed earth — rich apple-blossomed earth!
Smile, for your lover comes.
Prodigal, you have given me love — therefore I to you give love!
0 unspeakable passionate love.
XXII
You sea! I resign myself to you also — I guess what you mean,
1 behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers,
I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me, 450
We must have a turn together, I undress, hurry me out of sight of the land,
Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse.
Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you.
Sea of stretched ground-swells.
Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths,
Sea of the brine of life and of unshoveled yet always-ready graves,
Howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea,
I am Integral with you, I too am of one phase and of all phases.
Partaker of Influx and efflux, I, extoller of hate and conciliation,
ExtoUer of amies and those that sleep in each others' arms, 460
I am he attesting sympathy
(Shall I make my list of things In the house and skip the house that supports them?).
I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also.
What blurt is this about virtue and about vice?
Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent.
My gait is no fault-finder's or rejecter's gait,
I moisten the roots of all that has grown.
Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging pregnancy?
Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be worked over and rectified?
I find one side a balance and the antipodal side a balance, 470
Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine.
Thoughts and deeds of the present our rouse and early start.
This minute that comes to me over the past declUions,
There is no better than it and now.
What behaved well in the past or behaves well to-day is not such a wonder.
The wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man or an infidel.
XXIII
Endless unfolding of words of ages!
And mine a word of the modern, the word En-Masse.
A word of the faith that never balks.
Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely. 4^^
SONG OF MYSELF 6i
It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all,
That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all.
I accept Reality and dare not question it,
Materialism first and last imbuing.
Hurrah for positive science! long live exact demonstration!
Fetch stonecrop mixed with cedar and branches of lilac,
This is the lexicographer, this the chemist, this made a grammar of the old cartouches.
These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas,
This is the geologist, this works with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician.
Gentlemen, to you the first honors always! 490
Your facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling,
I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling.
Less the reminders of properties told my words,
And more the reminders they of life untold, and of freedom and extrication.
And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully equipped.
And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them that plot and conspire.
XXIV
Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,
Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding.
No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them,
No more modest than immodest. 500
Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!
Whoever degrades another degrades me,
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.
Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the current and index.
I speak the pass-Word primeval, I give the sign of democracy.
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.
Through me many long dumb voices.
Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves.
Voices of the diseased and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs, 510
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion.
And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuflf,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the deformed, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.
Through me forbidden voices.
Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veiled and I remove the veil.
Voices Indecent by me clarified and transfigured.
I do not press my fingers across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart, 520
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
62 WALT WHI'IMAN
I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeHng, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from,
The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer.
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.
If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any
part of it.
Translucent mold of me it shall be you!
Shaded ledges and rests it shall be you!
Firm masculine colter it shall be you! 53"^
Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you!
\ ou my rich blood! your milky stream pale strippings of my life!
Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you!
My brain it shall be your occult convolutions!
Root of washed sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded duplicate eggs! it shall
be you!
Mixed tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you!
Trickling sap of maple, fiber of manly wheat, it shall be you!
Sun so generous it shall be you!
Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you!
You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you! 540
Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you!
Broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall
be you!
Hands I have taken, face I have kissed, mortal I have ever touched, it shall be you.
I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious.
Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy,
I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my faintest wish.
Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the friendship I take again.
That I walk up my stoop, I pause to consider if it really be,
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
To behold the day-break! 550
The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows.
The air tastes good to my palate.
Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols silently rising, freshly exuding,
Scooting obliquely high and low.
Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs,
Seas of bright juice suflPuse heaven.
The earth by the sky stayed with, the daily close of their junction,
The heaved challenge from the east that moment over my head.
The mocking taunt. See then whether you shall be master!
XXV
Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, 560
If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.
SONG OF MYSELF 63
We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun,
We found our own O my soul in the calm and cool of the daybreak.
My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds.
Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself,
It provokes me forever, it says sarcastically,
JValt you contain enough^ why dont you let it out then?
Come now I will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of articulation,
Do you not know O speech how the buds beneath you are folded? 570
Waiting in gloom, protected by frost.
The dirt receding before my prophetical screams,
I underlying causes to balance them at last.
My knowledge my live parts, it keeping tally with the meaning of all things,
Happiness (which whoe^vxr hears me let him or her set out in search of this day).
My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really am,
Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me,
I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you.
Writing and talk do not prove me,
I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face, • 580
With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.
XXVI
Now I will do nothing but listen,
To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it.
I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking
my meals.
I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,
I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following.
Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night,
Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of work-people at their meals,
The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick.
The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncing a death-sentence, 590
The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships bythe wharves, the refrain of the anchor-lifters,
The ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-streaking engines and hose-carts
with premonitory tinkles and colored lights.
The steam-whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars,
The slow march played at the head of the association marching two and two
(They go to guard some corpse, the flag-tops are draped with black muslin).
I hear the violoncello ('tis the young man's heart's complaint),
I hear the keyed cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears.
It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast.
I hear the chorus, it is a grand opera,
Ah this indeed is music — this suits me. 600
A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me.
The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full.
64 WALT WHITMAN
I hear the trained soprano (what work with liers is this?)
The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies,
It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possessed them,
It sails me, I dab with bare feet, they are licked by the indolent waves,
I am cut by bitter and an<:;ry hail, I lose my breath,
Steeped amid honeyed morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death,
At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,
And that we call Being, 6io
XXVII
To be in any form, what is that?
(Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither)
If nothing lay more developed the quahaug in its callous shell were enough.
Mine is no callous shell,
I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,
They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.
I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy.
To touch my person to some one else's is about as much as I can stand.
XXVIII
Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity,
Flames and ether making a rush for my veins, 620
Treacherous tip of me reaching and crow^ding to help them,
My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly different from myself.
On all sides prurient provokers stiflFening my limbs.
Straining the udder of my heart for its w^ithheld drip,
Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial.
Depriving me of my best as for a purpose.
Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare w^aist.
Deluding my confusion w^ith the calm of the sunlight and pasture-fields.
Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses aw^ay.
They bribed to swap off with touch and go and graze at the edges of me, 630
No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger,
Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a while.
Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me.
The sentries desert every other part of me.
They have left me helpless to a red marauder.
They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me.
I am given up by traitors,
I talk wildly, I have lost my wits, I and nobody else am the greatest traitor,
I went myself first to the headland, my own hands carried me there.
You villain touch! what are you doing? my breath is tight in its throat, 640
Unclench your floodgates, you are too much for me.
XXIX
Blind loving wTestling touch, sheathed hooded sharp-toothed touch!
Did it make you ache so, leaving me?
SONG OF MYSELF 65
Parting tracked by arriving, perpetual payment of perpetual loan,
Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.
Sprouts take and accumulate, stand by the curb prolific and vital,
Landscapes projected masculine, full-sized and golden.
XXX
All truths wait in all things,
They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it.
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon, 650
The insignificant is as big to me as any
(What is less or more than a touch?).
Logic and sermons never convince,
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.
(Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so.
Only what nobody denies is so.)
A minute and a drop of me settle my brain,
I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps.
And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman,
And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other, 660
And they are to branch boundlessly out of .that lesson until it becomes omnlfic,
And until one and all shall delight us, and we them.
XXXI
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest.
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven.
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow" crunching with depressed head surpasses any statue.
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.
I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots, 670
And am stuccoed with quadrupeds and birds all over,
And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons.
But call any thing back again when I desire it.
In vain the speeding or shyness,
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach.
In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powdered bones,
In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes,
In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low,
In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
In vam the snake slides through the creepers and logs, 680
In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods.
In vain the razor-billed auk sails far north to Labrador,
I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the clifF.
XXXII
I think I could turn and live with animals, they're so placid and self-contained,
I stand and look at them long and long.
66 WALT WHITMAN
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one IS dissatisfied, not one is demented witli the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, 690
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.
I wonder where they get those tokens.
Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them?
Myself moving forward then and now and forever,
Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,
Infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them,
Not too exclusive toward the teachers of my remembrancers.
Picking out here one that I love, and now go with him on brotherly terms. 700
A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses,
Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears.
Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground.
Eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly moving.
His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him.
His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around and return.
I but use you a minute, then I resign you, stallion,
Why do I need your paces when I myself out-gallop them.''
Even as I stand or sit passing faster than you.
XXXIII
Space and Time! now I see it is true, what I guessed at, 710
What I guessed when I loafed on the grass.
What I guessed while I lay alone in my bed.
And again as I walked the beach under the paling stars of the morning.
My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gaps,
I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents,
I am afoot with my vision.
By the city's quadrangular houses — in log huts, camping with lumbermen.
Along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet bed,
Weeding my onion-patch or hoeing rows of carrots and parsnips, crossing savannas, trailing
in forests.
Prospecting, gold-digging, girdling the trees of a new purchase, 720
Scorched ankle-deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down the shallow river.
Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where the buck turns furiously at
the hunter,
Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, where the otter is feeding on fish,
Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou,
Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where the beaver pats the mud with
his paddle-shaped tail;
Over the growing sugar, over the yellow-flowered cotton plant, over the rice in its low moist
field,
SONG OF MYSELF 67
Over the sharp-peaked farm house, with its scalloped scum and slender shoots from the
jTutters,
Over the western persimmon, over the long-leaved corn, over the delicate blue-flower flax,
Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzer there with the rest,
Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze; 730
Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on by low scragged limbs,
Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves of the brush.
Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheat-lot.
Where the bat flies in the Seventh-month eve, where the great gold-bug drops through the
dark.
Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to the meadow,
Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous shuddering of their hides.
Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, where andirons straddle the hearth-slab, where
cobwebs fall in festoons from the rafters;
Where trip-hammers crash, where the press is whirling its cylinders,
Where the human heart beats with terrible throes under its ribs.
Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft (floating in it myself and looking composedly
down), 740
Where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose, where the heat hatches pale-green eggs in the
dented sand,
Where the she-whale swims with her calf and never forsakes it.
Where the steam-ship trails hind-ways its long pennant of smoke,
Where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water,
Where the half-burned brig is riding on unknown currents.
Where shells grow to her slimy deck, where the dead are corrupting below;
Where the dense-starred flag is borne at the head of the regiments.
Approaching Manhattan up by the long-stretching island.
Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance,
Upon a door-step, upon the horse-block of hard wood outside, 75^
Upon the race-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs or a good game of base-ball,
At he-festivals, with blackguard gibes, ironical license, bull-dances, drinking, laughter.
At the cider-mill tasting the sweets of the brown mash, sucking the juice through a straw,
At apple-peelings wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find.
At musters, beach-parties, friendly bees, huskings, house-raisings;
Where the mocking-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles, screams, weeps.
Where the hay-rick stands in the barn-yard, where the dry-stalks are scattered, where the
brood-cow waits in the hovel.
Where the bull advances to do his masculine work, where the stud to the mare, where the
cock is treading the hen.
Where the heifers browse, where geese nip their food with short jerks.
Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie, 760
Where herds of buff'alo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and near.
Where the humming-bird shimmers, where the neck of the long-lived swan is curving and
winding,
Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her near-human laugh,
Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden half hid by the high weeds.
Where band-necked partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their heads out,
Where burial coaches enter the arched gates of a cemetery.
Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees.
Where the yellow-crowned heron comes to the edge of the marsh at night and feeds upon
small crabs.
Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon,
Where the katy-did works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree over the well, ^^0
Through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired leaves,
6S WALT WHITMAN
Through the salt-hck or orange glade, or under conical firs,
ihrougli the gymnasium, through the curtained saloon, through the office or public hall;
Pleased with the native and pleased witli the foreign, pleased with the new and old,
Pleased with the homely woman as well as the handsome.
Pleased with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and talks melodiously.
Pleased with the tune of the choir of the whitewashed church.
Pleased with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist preacher, impressed seriously at
the camp-meeting;
Looking in at the shop-windows of Broadway the whole forenoon, flatting the flesh of my
nose on the thick plate glass.
Wandering the same afternoon with my face turned up to the clouds, or down a lane or along
the beach, 780
My right and left arms round the sides of two friends, and I in the middle;
Coming home with the silent and dark-cheeked bush-boy (behind me he rides at the drape
of the day).
Far from the settlements studying the print of animals' feet, or the moccasin print,
By the cot in the hospital reaching lemonade to a feverish patient,
Nigh the coffined corpse when all is still, examining with a candle;
Voyaging to every port to dicker and adventure.
Hurrying with the modern crowd as eager and fickle as any.
Hot toward one I hate, ready in my madness to knife him.
Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from me a long while,
Walking the old hills of Judaea with the beautiful gentle God by my side, 790
Speeding through space, speeding through heaven and the stars,
Speeding amid the seven satellites and the broad ring, and the diameter of eighty thousand
miles.
Speeding with tailed meteors, throwing fire-balls like the rest.
Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly,
Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning.
Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing,
I tread day and night such roads.
I visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product.
And look at quintillions ripened and look at quintillions green.
I fly those flights of a fluid and swallowing soul, 800
My course runs below the soundings of plummets.
I help myself to material and immaterial,
No guard can shut me off, no law prevent me.
I anchor my ship for a little while only.
My messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns to me.
I go hunting polar furs and the seal, leaping chasms with a pike-pointed staff, clinging to
topples of brittle and blue.
I ascend to the foretruck,
I take my place late at night in the crow's-nest.
We sail the arctic sea, it is plenty light enough,
Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful beauty, 810
The enormous masses of ice pass me and I pass them, the scenery is plain in all directions.
The white-topped mountains show in the distance, I fling out my fancies toward them.
We are approaching some great battle-field in which we are soon to be engaged,
SONG OF MYSELF 69
We pass the colossal outposts of the encampment, we pass with still feet and caution,
Or we are entering; by the suburbs some vast and rumed city,
The blocks and fallen architecture more than all the living cities of the globe.
I am a free companion, I bivouac by invading watchfires,
I turn the bridegroom out of bed and stay with the bride myself,
I tighten her all night to my thighs and lips.
My voice is the wife's voice, the screech by the rail of the stairs, 820
They fetch my man's body up dripping and drowned.
I understand the large hearts of heroes.
The courage of present times and all times,
How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship, and Death chasing
it up and down the storm,
How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was faithful of days and faithful of
nights.
And chalked in large letters on a board. Be of good cheery we will not desert you;
How he followed with them and tacked with them three days and would not give it up.
How he saved the drifting company at last.
How the lank loose-gowned women looked when boated from the side of their prepared graves,
How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipped unshaved men; 830
All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine,
I am the man, I suffered, I was there.
The disdain and calmness of martyrs,
The mother of old, condemned for a witch, burnt with dry wood, her children gazing on.
The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence, blowing, covered with sweat.
The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, the murderous buckshot and the bullets.
All these I feel or am.
I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs.
Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,
I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinned with the ooze of my skin, 840
I fall on the weeds and stones.
The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close.
Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with whip-stocks.
Agonies are one of my changes of garments.
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the w^ounded person,
My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.
I am the mashed fireman with breast-bone broken.
Tumbling walls buried me in their debris.
Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades,
I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels, 850
They have cleared the beams away, they tenderly lift me forth.
I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is for my sake.
Painless after all I lie exhausted but not so unhappy,
White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared of their fire-caps,
The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches.
Distant and dead resuscitate.
They show as the dial or move as the hands of me, I am the clock myself.
70 WALT Will IM AN
I am ail old artillerist, 1 tell of my fort's bombardment,
1 am there again.
Again the long roll of the drummers, 86o
Again the attacking cannon, mortars,
Again to my listening ears the cannon responsive.
I take part, I see and hear the whole.
The cries, curses, roar, the plaudits for well-aimed shots,
1 he ambulanza slowly passing trailing its red drip.
Workmen searching after damages, making indispensable repairs,
I he fall of grenades through the rent roof, the fan-shaped explosion.
The whizz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, high in the air.
Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general, he furiously waves with his hand.
He gasps through the clot AIi?id not me — 7nind — the entrenchments. 870
XXXIV
Now I tell what I knew in Texas in my early youth
(I tell not the fall of Alamo,
Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo,
The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo),
*Tis the tale of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and twelve young men.
Retreating they had formed in a hollow square with their baggage for breastworks,
Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemy's, nine times their number, was the price
they took in advance.
Their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone.
They treated for an honorable capitulation, received writing and seal, gave up their arms
and marched back prisoners of war.
They w'ere the glory of the race of rangers, 880
Matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, courtship.
Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud, and affectionate.
Bearded, sunburnt, dressed in the free costume of hunters.
Not a single one over thirty years of age.
The second First-day morning they were brought out in squads and massacred, it was
beautiful early summer,
The work commenced about five o'clock and was over by eight.
None obeyed the command to kneel,
Some made a mad and helpless rush, some stood stark and straight,
A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart, the living and dead lay together.
The maimed and mangled dug in the dirt, the new-comers saw them there, 890
Some half-killed attempted to crawl away,
These were dispatched with bayonets or battered with the blunts of muskets.
A youth not seventeen years old seized his assassin till two more came to release him.
The three were all torn and covered with the boy's blood.
At eleven o'clock began the burning of the bodies;
That is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve young men.
SONG OF MYSELF 71
XXXV
Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight?
Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars?
List to the yarn, as my grandmother's father the sailor told it to me.
Our foe was no skulk in his ship I tell you (said he), 900
His was the surly English pluck, and there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never
will be;
Along the lowered eve he came horribly raking us.
We closed with him, the yards entangled, the cannon touched.
My captain lashed fast with his own hands.
We had received some eighteen pound shots under the water.
On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around and blow-
ing up overhead.
Fighting at su.o-down, fighting at dark,
Ten o'clock at night, the full moon well up, our leaks on the gain, and five feet of water
reported.
The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the after-hold to give them a chance
for themselves.
The transit to and from the magazine is now stopped by the sentinels, 910
They see so many strange faces they do not know whom to trust.
Our frigate takes fire.
The other asks if we demand quarter?
If our colors are struck and the fighting done?
Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little captain.
We have not struck^ he composedly cries, we have just begun our part of the fighting.
Only three guns are in use,
One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy's main-mast.
Two well served with grape and canister silence his musketry and clear his decks.
The tops alone second the fire of this little battery, especially the main-top, 920
They hold out bravely during the whole of the action.
Not a moment's cease.
The leaks gain fast on the pumps, the fire eats toward the powder-magazine.
One of the pumps has been shot away, it is generally thought we are sinking.
Serene stands the little captain.
He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low.
His eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns.
Toward twelve there in the beams of the moon they surrender to us.
XXXVI
Stretched and still lies the midnight.
Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness, 93c
72 WALT WHITMAN
Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, preparations to pass to the one we have conquered,
I he captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders through a countenance white as
a sheet,
Near hy the corpse of the child that served in the cabin,
The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully curled whiskers,
The flames spite of all that can be done flickering aloft and below.
The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty,
Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves, dabs of flesh upon the masts and spars.
Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the soothe of waves,
Black and impassive guns, litter of powder-parcels, strong scent,
A few large stars overhead, silent and mournful shining, 940
Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore, death-messages
given in charge to survivors.
The hiss of the surgeon's knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw,
Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long, dull, tapering groan.
These so, these irretrievable.
XXXVII
You laggards there on guard! look to your arms!
In at the conquered doors they crowd! I am possessed I
Embody all presences outlawed or suffering.
See myself in prison shaped like another man,
And feel the dull unintermitted pain.
For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch, 950
It is I let out in the morning and barred at night.
Not a mutineer walks handcuflfed to jail but I am handcuffed to him and walk by his side
(I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one with sweat on my twitching lips).
Not a youngster is taken for larceny but I go up too, and am tried and sentenced.
Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp but I also lie at the last gasp.
My face is ash-colored, my sinews gnarl, away from me people retreat.
Askers embody themselves in me and I am embodied in them,
I project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg.
XXXVIII
Enough! enough! enough!
Somehow I have been stunned. Stand back! 960
Give me a little time beyond my cuffed head, slumbers, dreams, gaping,
I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.
That I could forget the mockers and insults!
That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the bludgeons and hammers!
That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning!
I remember now,
I resume the overstaid fraction.
The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it, or to any graves.
Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenmgs roll from me.
SONG OF MYSELF 73
I troop forth replenished with supreme power, one of an average unending procession, 970
Inland and sea-coast we go, and pass all boundary lines,
Our swift ordinances on their way over the whole earth.
The blossoms we wear in our hats the growth of thousands of years.
Eleves, I salute you! come forward!
Continue your annotations, continue your questionings.
XXXIX
The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?
Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it?
Is he some Southwesterner raised outdoors? is he Kanadian?
Is he from the Mississippi country? Iowa, Oregon, California?
The mountains? prairie-life, bush-life? or sailor from the sea? 980
Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him,
They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them, stay with them.
Behavior lawless as snowflakes, woods simple as grass, uncombed head, laughter, and naivete,
Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and emanations,
They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers.
They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath, they fly out of the glance of his eyes.
XL
Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask — lie overr
You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also.
Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,
Say, old top-knot, what do you want? 990
Man or woman, I might tell how I like you, but cannot.
And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot,
And might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights and days.
Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity.
When I give I give myself.
You there, impotent, loose in the knees.
Open your scarfed chops till I blow grit within you.
Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets,
I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to spare.
And any thing I have I bestow. lOOO
I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me.
You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.
To cotton-field drudge or cleaner of privies I lean,
On his right cheek I put the family kiss.
And in my soul I swear I never will deny him.
On women fit for conception I start bigger and nimbler babes
(This day I am jetting the stuflf" of far more arrogant republics).
74 WALT WHITMAN
To any one dyinp;, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door,
Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed,
Let the pliysician and the priest p,o home. lOlO
I seize the descending man and raise hiiii with resistless will,
0 despairer, here is my neck,
By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me.
1 dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up,
Every room of the house do I fill with an armed force,
Lovers of me, bafHers of graves.
Sleep — I and they keep guard all night.
Not doubt, not disease shall dare to lay finger upon you,
I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself,
And when you rise in the morning you will find what I tell you is so. 1020
XLI
I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs,
And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help.
I heard what w^as said of the universe.
Heard it and heard it of several thousand years;
It is middling well as far as it goes — but is that all.^
Magnifying and applying come I,
Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,
Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah,
Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson,
Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha, 1030
In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix engraved
With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and image.
Taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more.
Admitting they were alive and did the work of their days
(They bore mites as for unfledged birds who have now to rise and fly and sing for themselves).
Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself, bestowing them freely on
each man and woman I see,
Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house.
Putting higher claims for him there with his rolled-up sleeves driving the mallet and chisel.
Not objecting to special revelations, considering a curl of smoke or a hair on the back of my
hand just as curious as any revelation.
Lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to me than the gods of the
antique wars, 1040
Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction.
Their brawn}'^ limbs passing safe over charred laths, their white foreheads whole and unhurt
out of the flames;
By the mechanic's wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for every person born,
Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels with shirts bagged out
at their waists,
The snag-toothed hostler with red hair redeeming sins past and to come.
Selling all he possesses, traveling on foot to fee lawyers for his brother and sit by him while
he is tried for forgery;
What w^as strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me, and not filling the square
rod then.
SONG OF MYSELF 75
The bull and the bug never worshiped half enough,
Dung and dirt more admirable than was dreamed,
The supernatural of no account, myself waiting my time to be one of the supremes, 1050
The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and be as prodigious;
By my life-lumps! becoming already a creator,
Putting myself here and now to the ambushed womb of the shadows.
XLII
A call in the midst of the crowd,
My own voice, orotund sweeping and final.
Come my children.
Come my boys and girls, my women, household and intimates.
Now the performer launches his nerve, he has passed his prelude on the reeds within.
Easily written loose-fingered chords — I feel the thrum of your climax and close.
My head slues round on my neck, 1060
Music rolls, but not from the organ.
Folks are around me, but they are no household of mine.
Ever the hard unsunk ground.
Ever the eaters and drinkers, ever the upward and downward sun, ever the air and the
ceaseless tides.
Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing, wicked, real.
Ever the old inexplicable query, ever that thorned thumb, that breath of itches and thirsts,
Ever the vexer's hoot! hoot! till we find where the sly one hides and bring him forth,
Ever love, ever the sobbing liquid of life.
Ever the bandage under the chin, ever the trestles of death.
Here and there with dimes on the eyes walking, 1070
To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning.
Tickets buying, taking, selling, but in to the feast never once going,
Many sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chaff for payment receiving,
A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming.
This is the city and I am one of the citizens,
Whatever interests the rest interests me, politics, wars, markets, newspapers, schools.
The mayor and councils, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories, stocks, stores, real estate and
personal estate.
The little plentiful manikins skipping around in collars and tailed coats,
I am aware who they are (they are positively not worms or fleas),
I acknowledge the duplicates of myself, the weakest and shallowest is deathless with me, 1080
What I do and say the same waits for them.
Every thought that flounders in me the same flounders in them.
I know perfectly well my own egotism.
Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less,
And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself.
Not words of routine this song of mine.
But abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer bring;
This printed and bound book — but the printer and the printing-office boy?
76 WALT WHITMAN
The well-taken photographs — but your wife or friend close and solid in your arms?
The black ship mailed with iron, her mighty guns in her turrets — but the pluck of the captain
and engineers? 1090
In the houses the dishes and fare and furniture — but the host and hostess, and the look
out of their eyes?
The sky up there — yet here or next door, or across the way?
The saints and sages in history — but you yourself?
Sermons, creeds, theology — but the fathomless human brain,
And what is reason? and what is love? and what is life?
XLIII
I do not despise you priests, all time, the world over.
My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths.
Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern,
Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years.
Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting the sun, lioo
Making a fetich of the first rock or stump, powowing with sticks in the circle of obis,
Helping the llama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols.
Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession, rapt and austere in the woods a
gymnosophist.
Drinking mead from the skull-cup, to Shastas and Vedas admirant, minding the Koran,
Walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and knife, beating the serpent-
skin drum,
Accepting the Gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing assuredly that he is divine,
To the mass kneeling or the puritan's prayer rising, or sitting patiently in a pew.
Ranting and frothing in my insane crisis, or waiting dead-like till my spirit arouses me,
Looking forth on pavement and land, or outside of pavement and land.
Belonging to the winders of the circuit of circuits. mo
One of that centripetal and centrifugal gang I turn and talk like a man leaving -^barges
before a journey.
Down-hearted doubters dull and excluded.
Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, disheartened, atheistical,
I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt, despair and unbelief.
How the flukes splash!
How they contort rapid as lightning, with spasms and spouts of blood!
Be at peace bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers,
I take my place among you as much as among any.
The past is the push of you, me, all, precisely the same.
And what is yet untried and afterward is for you, me, all precisely the same. 1 120
I do not know what is untried and afterward.
But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fall.
Each who passes is considered, each who stops is considered, not a single one can it fail.
It cannot fail the young man who died and was buried,
Nor the young woman who died and was put by his side.
Nor the little child that peeped in at the door, and then drew back and was never seen again,
Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it with bitterness worse than gall,
SONG OF MYSELF 77
Nor him in the poor house tubercled by rum and the bad disorder,
Nor the numberless slaughtered and wrecked, nor the brutish koboo called the ordure of
humanity,
Nor the sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to slip in, I130
Nor any thing in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of the earth.
Nor any thing in the myriads of spheres, nor the myriads of myriads that inhabit them,
Nor the present, nor the least wisp that is known.
XLIV
It is time to explain myself — let us stand up.
What is known I strip away,
I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown.
The clock indicates the moment — but what does eternity indicate.?
We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers,
There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.
Births have brought us richness and variety, 1 140
And other births will bring us richness and variety.
I do not call one greater and one smaller,
That which fills its period and place is equal to any.
Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my sister?
I am sorry for you, they are not murderous or jealous upon me,
All has been gentle with me, I keep no account with lamentation
(What have I to do with lamentation?).
I am an acme of things accompHshed, and I an encloser of things to be.
My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs.
On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps, 1 1 50
All below duly traveled, and still I mount and mount.
Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,
Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, I know I was even there,
I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist.
And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.
Long I was hugged close — long and long.
Immense have been the preparations for me.
Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me.
Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,
For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings, I160
They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.
Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me.
My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it.
yS WALT WHITMAN
For it the nebula cohered to an orb,
The long slow strata piled to rest it on,
Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care
All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me,
Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.
XLV
O span of youth! ever-pushed elasticity. 1170
0 manhood, balanced, florid and full.
My lovers suffocate me,
Crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin,
Jostling me through streets and public halls, coming naked to me at night.
Crying by day Ahoy! from the rocks of the river, swinging and chirping over my head.
Calling my name from flower-beds, vines, tangled underbrush.
Lighting on every moment of my life,
Bussing my body with soft balsamic busses.
Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to be mine.
Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineflfable grace of dying days! 1180
Every condition promulges not only itself, it promulges what grows after and out of itself.
And the dark hush promulges as much as any.
1 open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems.
And all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the rim of the farther systems.
Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding.
Outward and outward and forever outward.
My sun has his sun and round him obediently wheels.
He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.
There is no stoppage and never can be stoppage, 1190
If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces, were this moment reduced
back to a pallid float, it would not avail in the long run.
We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
And surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther.
A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not hazard the span or make
it impatient,
They are but parts, any thing is but a part.
See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that.
Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.
My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain.
The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms.
The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there. 1200
SONG OF MYSELF 79
XLVI
I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured and never will be measured.
I tramp a perpetual journey (come listen all!),
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods,
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist.
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road.
Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, 1 210
You must travel it for yourself.
It is not far, it is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know,
Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.
Shoulder your duds dear son, and I will mine, and let us hasten forth.
Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.
If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip,
And in due time you shall repay the same service to me,
For after we start we never lie by again.
This day before dawn I ascended a hill and looked at the crowded heaven, 1220
And I said to my spirit When we become the enfolders of those orbs, and the pleasure and knozvl-
edge of every thing in them, shall we be filled and satisfied then?
And my spirit said No, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond.
You are also asking me questions and I hear you,
I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.
Sit a while dear son.
Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink.
But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I kiss you with a good-by
kiss and open the gate for your egress hence.
Long enough have you dreamed contemptible dreams.
Now I wash the gum from your eyes.
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life. 1230
Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore.
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer.
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with
your hair.
XLVII
I am the teacher of athletes.
He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own.
He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.
8o WALT WHITMAN
The boy I love, the same becomes a man not through derived power, but in his own right,
Wicked rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear,
Fond of his sweetheart, rehshing well his steak,
Unrequited love or a slight cutting him worse than sharp steel cuts, 1240
First-rate to ride, to fight, to hit the bull's eye, to sail a skiff, to sing a song or play on the
banjo,
Preferring scars and the beard and faces pitted with small-pox over all latherers,
And those well-tanned to those that keep out of the sun.
I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me?
I follow you whoever you are from the present hour,
My words itch at your ears till you understand them.
I do not say these things for a dollar or to fill up the time while I wait for a boat
(It is you talking just as much as myself, I act as the tongue of you,
Tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosened).
I swear I will never again mention love or death inside a house, 1250
And I swear I will never translate myself at all, only to him or her who privately stays with
me in the open air.
If you would understand me go to the heights or water-shore.
The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key,
The maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second my words.
No shuttered room or school can commune with me,
But roughs and little children better than they.
The young mechanic is closest to me, he knows me well,
The woodman that takes his ax and jug with him shall take me with him all day,
The farm-boy ploughing in the field feels good at the sound of my voice.
In vessels that sail my words sail, I go with fishermen and seamen and love them. 1260
The soldier camped or upon the march is mine.
On the night ere the pending battle many seek me, and I do not fail them,
On that solemn night (it may be their last) those that know me seek me.
My face rubs to the hunter's face when he lies down alone in his blanket.
The driver thinking of me does not mind the jolt of his wagon.
The young mother and old mother comprehend me.
The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment and forget where they are,
They and all would resume what I have told them.
XLVIII
I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, 1270
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is.
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral dressed in his
shroud,
And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth,
And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times,
And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero.
And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe.
And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million
universes.
J
SONG OF MYSELF
And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God
(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death). 1280
I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.
Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.
XLIX
And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me.
To his work without flinching the accoucheur comes, 1290
I see the elder-hand pressing receiving supporting,
I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors.
And mark the outlet, and mark the relief and escape.
And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me,
I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing,
I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polished breasts of melons.
And as to you Life I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths
(No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before).
I hear you whispering there 0 stars of heaven,
0 suns — O grass of graves — O perpetual transfers and promotions, 1300
If you do not say any thing how can I say any thing?
Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest.
Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing twilight.
Toss, sparkles of day and dusk — toss on the black stems that decay in the muck.
Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs.
1 ascend from the moon, I ascend from the night,
I perceive that the ghastly glimmer is noonday sunbeams reflected,
And debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great or small.
L
There is that in me — I do not know what it is — but I know it is in me.
Wrenched and sweaty — calm and cool then my body becomes, 13 lO
I sleep — I sleep long.
I do not know it — it is without name — it is a word unsaid.
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.
Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on.
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.
Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.
82 \VAi;r WHITMAN
Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death — it is form, union, plan — it is eternal life — it is Happiness.
LI
The past and present wilt — I have filled them, emptied them,
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future. 1320
Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snufl^ the sidle of evening
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer).
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself
(I am large, I contain multitudes).
I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late? 1330
LII
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadowed wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,-
I efl^use my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
It you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. 1340
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless.
And filter and fiber your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
ONE HOUR TO MADNESS AND JOY »
One hour to madness and joy! O furious! O confine me not!
(What is this that frees me so in storms?
What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)
1 First published i860 {L. G., 1881). This poem is taken from the group, following the Song of Myself,
entitled Children of Adam. One of the many who visited Whitman during his last years in Camden asked:
"Don't you on the whole regret having written your poems of sex?" — to which the poet replied, "Don't you on
the whole regret that I am Walt Whitman?"
I
I
WHOEVER YOU ARE HOLDING ME NOW IN HAND 83
O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!
0 savage and tender achings! (I bequeath them to you, my children,
1 tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.)
O to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me in defiance of the world!
O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine!
O to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the lips of a determined man.
O the puzzle, the thrice-tied knot, the deep and dark pool, all untied and illumined! lo
O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!
To be absolved from previous ties and conventions, I from mine and you from yours!
To find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of Nature!
To have the gag removed from one's mouth!
To have the feeling to-day or any day I am sufficient as I am.
0 something unproved! something in a trance!
To escape utterly from others' anchors and holds!
To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!
To court destruction with taunts, with invitations!
To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me! 20
To rise thither with my inebriate soul!
To be lost if it must be so! •
To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fullness and freedom!
With one brief hour of madness and joy.
WHOEVER YOU ARE HOLDING ME NOW IN HAND ^
Whoever you are holding me now in hand.
Without one thing all will be useless,
1 give you fair warning before you attempt me further,
I am not what you supposed, but far different.
Who is he that would become my follower?
W ho would sign himself a candidate for my affections?
The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive,
You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your sole and exclu-
sive standard,
^'our novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,
The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives around you would have to
be abandoned, 10
Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, let go your hand from my
shoulders.
Put me down and depart on your way.
Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,
Or back of a rock in the open air
(For in any roofed room of a house I emerge not, nor in company,
And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead).
But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any person for miles around
approach unawares.
Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or some quiet island.
Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,
\\ ith the comrade's long-dwelling kiss or the new husband's kiss, 20
For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.
1 First published i860 {L. G., 1881). This and the following six poems are from the group entitled Calamus.
84
WALT WHITMAN
Or if you will, thrustinu me beneath your clothing,
Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip,
Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;
For thus merely touchmg you is enough, is best,
And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.
But these leaves conning you con at peril,
For these leaves and me you will not understand,
They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will certainly elude you,
Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold! 30
Already you see I have escaped from you.
For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,
Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it.
Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me,
Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few) prove victorious,
Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil, perhaps more,
For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and not hit, that which
I hinted at;
Therefore release me and depart on your way.
OF THE TERRIBLE DOUBT OF APPEARANCES ^
Of the terrible doubt of appearances,
Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded,
That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all.
That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only,
May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing waters.
The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, may-be these are (as doubtless they
are) only apparitions, and the real something has yet to be known
(How often they dart out of themselves as if to confound me and mock me!
How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of them).
May-be seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they indeed but seem) as from my present
point of view, and might prove (as of course they would) nought of what they appear,
or nought anyhow, from entirely changed points of view;
To me these and the like of these are curiously answered by my lovers, my dear friends, 10
When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while holding me by the hand.
When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and reason hold not, surround
us and pervade us.
Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am silent, I require nothing further,
I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identity beyond the grave.
But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied.
He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.
I
THE BASE OF ALL METAPHYSICS 2
And now gentlemen,
A word I give to remain m your memories and minds.
As base and finale too for all metaphysics.
(So to the students the old professor.
At the close of his crowded course.)
> First published i860 (L. G., 1867).
2 First published 1871 (L. G., 1871).
WHEN I PERUSE THE CONQUERED FAME 85
Having studied the new and antique, the Greek and Germanic systems,
Kant having studied and stated, Fichte and Schelling and Hegel,
Stated the lore of Plato, and Socrates greater than Plato,
And greater than Socrates sought and stated, Christ divine having studied long,
I see reminiscent to-day those Greek and Germanic systems, lo
See the philosophies all, Christian churches and tenets see,
Yet underneath Socrates clearly see, and underneath Christ the divine I see.
The dear love of man for his comrade, the attraction of friend to friend,
Of the well-married husband and wife, of children and parents.
Of city for city and land for land.
RECORDERS AGES HENCE 1
Recorders ages hence,
Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior, I will tell you what to say
of me,
Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover.
The friend the lover's portrait, of whom his friend his lover was fondest.
Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love within him, and freely
poured it forth,
Who often walked lonesome walks thinking of his dear friends, his lovers.
Who pensive away from one he loved often lay sleepless and dissatisfied at night.
Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he loved might secretly be indifferent to
him.
Whose happiest days were far away through fields, in woods, on hills, he and another wander-
ing hand in hand, they twain apart from other men.
Who oft as he sauntered the streets curved with his arm the shoulder of his friend, while
the arm of his friend rested upon him also. 10
I HEAR IT WAS CHARGED AGAINST ME 2
I HEAR it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions.
But really I am neither for nor against institutions
(What indeed have I in common with them? or what with the destruction of them?),
Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of these States inland and seaboard.
And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large that dents the water.
Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument,
The institution of the dear love of comrades.
WHEN I PERUSE THE CONQUERED FAME^
When I peruse the conquered fame of heroes and the victories of mighty generals, I do not
envy the generals,
Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great house.
But when I hear of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with them.
How together through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging, long and long,
Through youth and through middle and old age, how unfaltering, how affectionate and
faithful they were.
Then I am pensive — I hastily walk away filled with the bitterest envy.
« First published i860 {L. G., 1867).
2 First published i860 {L. G., 1867).
•First published i860 (L. G., 1871).
86 WALT WHITMAN
NO LABOR-SAVING MACHINE^
No labor-savinj!; machine,
Nor discovery liave 1 made,
Nor will I be able to leave behind me any wealthy bequest to found a hospital or library,
Nor reminiscence of any deed of courage for America,
Nor literary success nor intellect, nor book for the book-shelf.
But a few carols vibrating through the air I leave,
For comrades and lovers.
SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD ^
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road.
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.
The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are, lo
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am filled with them; and I will fill them in return.)
II
You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here,
I believe that much unseen is also here.
Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,
The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseased, the illiterate person, are not denied;
The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar's tramp, the drunkard's stagger, the
laughing party of mechanics, 20
The escaped youth, the rich person's carriage, the fop, the eloping couple.
The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back
from the town,
They pass, I also pass, any thing passes, none can be interdicted.
None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me.
Ill
You air that serves me with breath to speak!
You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!
You light that wTaps me and all things in delicate equable showers!
You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!
I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so d&ar to me.
' First published i860 {L. G., 1881). = First published 1856 (Z,. G., 1881).
SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD 87
You flagged walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges! 30
You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined sides! you distant ships!
You rows of houses! you window-pierced fa9ades! you roofs!
You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!
You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!
You doors and ascending steps! you arches!
You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!
From all that has touched you I believe you have imparted to yourselves, and now would
impart the same secretly to me,
From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive surfaces, and the spirits
thereof would be evident and amicable with me.
IV
The earth expanding right hand and left hand.
The picture alive, every part in its best light, 40
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted,
The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of the road.^
O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me?
Do you say Venture not — if you leave me you are lost?
Do you say / am already prepared^ I am zvell-beaten and undeniedy adhere to me?
0 public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you,
You express me better than I can express myself.
You shall be more to me than my poem.
1 think heroic deeds were all conceived in the open air, and all free poems also,
I think I could stop here myself and do miracles, 50
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever beholds me shall like me,
I think whoever I see must be happy.
From this hour I ordain myself loosed of limits and imaginary lines.
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.
lam larger, better than I thought, 5o
I did not know I held so much goodness.
All seems beautiful to me,
I can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me I would do the same
to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as 1 go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me.
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.
88 WALT WHITMAN
VI
Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me,
Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appeared it would not astonish me. 70
Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
Here a great personal deed has room
(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
Its eflPusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all authority and all argument
against it).
Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be passed from one having it to another not having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, 80
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.
Now I re-examine philosophies and religions.
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and
along the landscape and flowing currents.
Here is realization.
Here is a man tallied — he realizes here what he has in him,
The past, the future, majesty, love — if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.
Only the kernel of every object nourishes;
Where is he who tears oflf the husks for you and me.?
Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me? 90
Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashioned, it is apropos;
Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers.?
Do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls?
VII
Here is the efflux of the soul.
The efflux of the soul comes from within through embowered gates, ever provoking questions,
These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are they?
Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood?
Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?
(I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and always drop fruit as
I pass.) 100
What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers?
What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side?
What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I walk by and pause?
What gives me to be free to a woman's and man's good-will? what gives them to be free to
mine?
VIII t
The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness,
I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,
Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.
SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD 89
Here rises the fluid and attaching character,
The fluid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of man and woman
(The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day out of the roots of them-
selves, than it sprouts fresh and sweet continually out of itselO- no
Toward tlie fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the love of young and old,
From it falls distilled the charm that mocks beauty and attainments,
Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact.
IX
Aliens! whoever you are come travel with me!
Traveling with me you find what never tires.
The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, mcomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible
at first,
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well enveloped,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.
Aliens! we must not step here, 120
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here,
However sheltered this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a
little while.
X
Aliens! the inducements shall be greater,
We will sail pathless and wild seas.
We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper speeds by under full sail.
AUons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements,
Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;
Aliens! from all formules!
From your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests. 130
The stale cadaver blocks up the passage — the burial waits no longer.
Aliens! yet take warning!
He traveling with me needs the best bleed, thews, endurance,
None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and health,
Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself,
Only these may come who come in sweet and determined bodies,
No diseased person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted here.
(I and mine do net convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,
We convince by our presence.)
XI
Listen! I will be honest with you, 140
I do not offer the eld smooth prizes, but oflFer rough new prizes.
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is called riches,
*You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve.
You but arrive at the city to which yeu were destined, you hardly settle yourself to satis-
faction before yeu are called by an irresistible call to depart,
Yeu shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of these who remain behind yeu,
90 WALT WHITMAN
Wliat hcckonin^s of love you receive you shall only answer with passionate kisses of parting,
You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reached hands toward you.
XII
AUons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!
They too are on the road — they are the swift and majestic men — they are the greatest
women, 15°
Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas.
Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land.
Habitues of many distant countries, habitues of far-distant dwellings,
Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers,
Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore,
Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of children, bearers of children.
Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of coffins,
Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious years each emerging from
that which preceded it,
Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases,
Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days, i6o
Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded and well-grained
manhood,
Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpassed, content,
Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood,
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe.
Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
XIII
Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,
To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,
To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to,
Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys,
To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it, 170
To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it,
To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you, however long but it stretches
and waits for you,
To see no being, not God's or any, but you also go thither.
To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without labor or purchase, abstract-
ing the feast yet not abstracting one particle of it.
To take the best of the farmer's farm and the rich man's elegant villa, and the chaste blessings
of the well-married couple, and the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens,
To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through.
To carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever you go,
To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter them, to gather the love
out of their hearts.
To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them behind you,
To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls. 180
All parts away for the progress of souls,
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments — all that was or is apparent upon this globe
or any globe, falls into niches and corners before the procession of souls along the
grand roads of the universe.
Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all
other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance.
SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD 91
Forever alive, forever forward,
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied,
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men.
They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go,
But I know that they go toward the best — toward something great.
Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth!
You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though you built it, or though
it has been built for you. 190
Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen!
It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it.
Behold through you as bad as the rest,
Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping, of people,
Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those washed and trimmed faces,
Behold a secret silent loathing and despair.
No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the confession,
Another self,' a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding it goes,
Formless and wordless through the streets of the cities, polite and bland in the parlors.
In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly, 200
Home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bedroom, everywhere.
Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the breast-bones, hell
under the skull-bones,
Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial flowers.
Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself.
Speaking of any thing else but never of itself.
XIV
Allons! through struggles and wars*
The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.
Have the past struggles succeeded?
What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature?
Now understand me well — it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of
success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle
necessary. 210
My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion.
He going with me must go well armed,
Jle going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies, desertions.
XV
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe — I have tried it — my own feet have tried it well — be not detained!
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopened!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearned!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound
the law.
Camerado, I give you my hand! 220
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
92 WALT WHITMAN
CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY
Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west — sun there half an hour high — I see you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious
to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my
meditations, than you might suppose.
II
The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day,
The simple, compact, well-joined scheme, myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated yet
part of the scheme.
The similitudes of the past and those of the future,
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street
and the passage over the river.
The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away, 10
The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,
The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others.
Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to
the south and east.
Others will see the islands large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high,
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them.
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back to the sea of the
ebb-tide.
Ill
It avails not, time nor place — distance avails not, 20
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence.
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Just as you are refreshed by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refreshed,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet was
hurried.
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemmed pipes of steam-
boats, I looked.
I too many and many a time crossed the river of old,
Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air floating with motionless
wings, oscillating their bodies,
Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left the rest in strong shadow,
1 First published 1856 (L. C, 1881). In Specimen Days Whitman has a paragraph entitled My Passion
for Ferries. In it he says that when he lived in New York or Brooklyn his life was curiously identified with Ful-
ton ferry, and that almost daily from 1850 to i860 he crossed on the boats, often up in the pilot-houses where
he could see and absorb everything. "What oceanic currents, eddies, underneath — the great tides of humanity
also, with ever-shifting movements. Indeed, I have always had a passion for ferries; to me they afford inimitable,
streaming, never-failing, living poems."
CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY 93
Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south, 30
Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,
Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,
Looked at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my head in the sunlit water.
Looked on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward,
Looked on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,
Looked toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving.
Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,
Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor,
The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars.
The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine pennants, 40
The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilot-houses.
The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheelj,
The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolicsome crests and glistening.
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the granite storehouses by
the docks.
On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flanked on each side by the barges,
the hay-boat, the belated lighter.
On the neighboring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high and glaringly
into the night,
Casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and yellow light over the tops of
houses, and down into the clefts of streets.
IV
These and all else were to me the same as they are to you,
I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river, 5^
The men and women I saw were all near to me.
Others the same— others who look back on me because I looked forward to them
(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night).
V
What is it then between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?
Whatever it is, it avails not — distance avails not, and place avails not,
I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,
I too walked the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the waters around it,
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me.
In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me, 60
In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me,
I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution,
I too had received identity by my body,
That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew I should be of my body,
VI
It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall.
The dark threw its patches down upon me also.
The best I had done seemed to me blank and suspicious.
My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meager?
Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil,
I am he who knew what it was to be evil, 70
I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,
94 WALl Win I.MAN
Hlabbed, blushed, resented, lied, stole, grudged,
Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak.
Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant,
The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me.
The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting,
Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, lazmess, none of these wanting,
Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest.
Was called by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they saw me approach-
ing or passing.
Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of their flesh against me as
I sat, 80
Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembl3% ^Tt'never told them a word,
Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,
Played the part that still looks back on the actor or actress.
The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like.
Or as small as we like, or both great and small.
VII
Closer yet I approach you.
What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you — I laid in my stores in advance,
I considered long and seriously of you before you were born.
Who was to know what should come home to me?
Who knows but I am enjoying this? 90
Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot
see me?
VIII
Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than mast-hemmed Manhattan?
River and sunset and scallop-edged waves of flood-tide?
The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the twilight, and the belated lighter?
What gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with voices I love call
me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as I approach?
What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that looks in my face?
Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you?
We understand then do we not?
What I promised without mentioning it, have you not accepted?
What the study could not teach — what the preaching could not accomplish is accomplished,
is it not? 100
IX
Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edged waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women
generations after me!
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!
Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!
Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!
Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public assembly!
Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my nighest name!
Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress! no
Play the old role, the role that is great or small according as one makes it!
PIONEERS! O PIONEERS! 95
Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be looking upon you;
He firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste with the hasting current;
Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air;
Receive the summer sky, you water, and faithfully hold it till all downcast eyes have time to
take it from you!
Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any one's head, in the sunlit
water!
Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sailed schooners, sloops, lighters!
Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lowered at sunset!
Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at night-fall! cast red and
yellow light over the tops of the houses!
Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are, 120
You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul.
About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinest aromas.
Thrive, cities — bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and sufficient rivers,
Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual,
.Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting.
You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers,
We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward,
Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us,
We use you, and do not cast you aside — we plant you permanently within us,
We fathom you not — we love you — there is perfection in you also, 130
You furnish your parts toward eternity,
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.
PIONEERS! O PIONEERS!!
Come my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes.''
Pioneers! O pioneers!
For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O you youths. Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, lo
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson.
Pioneers! O pioneers!
> First published 1865 (L. G., 1 881). This is one of a group of poems with the general title, Birds 0/ Pas-
sage. In a passage in Specimen Days (written, however, in 1879 or later, "after traveling Illinois, Missouri, Kan-
sas, and Colorado") Whitman says: "Grand as the thought that doubtless the child is already born who will
see a hundred millions of people the most prosperous and advanced of the world, inhabiting these Prairies, the
great Plains, and the valley of the Mississippi, I could not help thinking it would be grander still to see all those
inimitable American areas fused in the alembic of a perfect poem, or other aesthetic work, entirely western, fresh
and limitless — altogether our own, without a trace or taste of Europe's soil, reminiscence, technical letter or spirit.
My days and nights, as I travel here — what an exhilaration! — not the air alone, and the sense of vastness, but
every local sight and feature."
96 WALT WHITMAN
All the past we leave behind,
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers! 20
We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep.
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
We primeval forests felling,
We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within,
We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Colorado men are we,
From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus, 30^
From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood interveined,
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O resistless restless race!
O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all!
O I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all,
Pioneers! O pioneers! 40
Raise the mighty mother mistress,
Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress (bend your heads all).
Raise the fanged and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weaponed mistress,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
See my children, resolute children.
By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter,
Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
On and on the compact ranks.
With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly filled, 5°
Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O to die advancing on!
Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come?
Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is filled,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
All the pulses of the world.
Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat,
Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us,
Pioneers! O pioneers! 60
PIONEERS! O PIONEERS! 97
Life's involved and varied pageants.
All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,
All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves.
Pioneers! O pioneers!
All the hapless silent lovers,
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,
All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
I too with my soul and body,
We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way, 70
Through these shores amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Lo, the darting bowling orb!
Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets.
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
These are of us, they are with us.
All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind.
We to-day's procession heading, we the route for travel clearing,
Pioneers! O pioneers! 80
O you daughters of the West!
O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Minstrels latent on the prairies!
(Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have done your work)
Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us.
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Not for delectations sweet,
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious, 90
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment.
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Do the feasters gluttonous feast ?
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they locked and bolted doors?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground.
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Has the night descended?
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding on our way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious,
Pioneers! O pioneers! loo
Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the daybreak call — hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind.
Swift! to the head of the army! — swift! spring to your places,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
98 WALT WHITIVIAN
OUT OF THE CRADLE ENDLESSLY ROCKING ^
Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Nmth-month nudnight.
Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wandered alone,
bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the showered halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears, 10
From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,
From the myriad thence-aroused words.
From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
From such as now they start the scene revisiting,
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing.
Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man, yet by these tears a little boy again.
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter, 20
Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing.
Once Paumanok,
When the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass was growing,
Up this seashore in some briers.
Two feathered guests from Alabama, two together,
And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown,
And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand.
And every day the she-bird crouched on her nest, silent, with bright eyes.
And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them, 30
Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.
Shine! shine! shine!
Pour down your warmth, great sun!
While we bask, we two together.
1 First published 1859 {L. G., 1881). This and the two following poems are taken from the group entitled
Sea-Drijt. "In so far as Whitman is a great stylist, it is not his daring unconventionalities that make him so,
though these in themselves are such as to argue greatness of a kind. He is great because, having chosen his
method, he takes the consequences of his choice with consummate pliability and responsiveness. He has been
reflecting on the uses of language, and has struck out a line of his own for the use of it. In spite of this his writ-
ing is free from the taint of theory, has none of the rigidity of conscious rebellion, is not the less easy because he
has determined to make it so. He takes no word or phrase as having the weight, meaning, or implication he
has decided shall attach to it; he does not dictate to language, but faithfully allows it to dictate to him, quite
undisturbed by its fluidity, ready to interweave together and present as one the remotest aspects of his theme.
The crowning example of his power in this is the song of the mocking-bird in Out of the Cradle Eyidlessly Rock-
ing. The bird, like his poet, counts over the natural objects which surround him, apostrophizing the sea, the
breakers, the noon, the shore, the stars, the wind. But the items of the list, passing under the spell of personal
passion, become as it were the instruments of an orchestra; each plays its individual part in a lyrical symphony,
and each is in turn identified with the central motive of the whole, . . . Years before 'futurism ' was heard or thought
of, the core of aspiration in its incoherencies has been felt and rendered." (B. de Sclincourt.)
OUT OF THE CRADLE ENDLESSLY ROCKING 99
Two together!
Winds hlozv sovth, or zvinds hlozv norths
Day come zchite, or night come black,
Homey or rivers and mountains from home.
Singing all time, mindtng no time,
While we two keep together. 40
Till of a sudden,
May-be killed, unknown to her mate,
One forenoon the she-bird crouched not on the nest,
Nor returned that afternoon, nor the next,
Nor ever appeared again.
And thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea.
And at night under the full of the moon in calmer weather,
Over the hoarse surging of the sea.
Or flitting from brier to brier by day,
I saw, I heard at intervals the remaining one, the he-bird, 50
The solitary guest from Alabama.
Blow! blow! blow!
Blow up sea-winds along Paumanok's shore;
I wait and I wait till you blow my mate to me.
Yes, when the stars glistened.
All night long on the prong of a moss-scalloped stake,
Down almost amid the slapping waves,
Sat the lone singer wonderful causing tears.
He called on his mate.
He poured forth the meanings which I of all men know. 60
Yes my brother I know,
The rest might not, but I have treasured every note.
For more than once dimly down to the beach gliding.
Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the shadows.
Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and sights after their sorts,
The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing,
I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair,
Listened long and long.
Listened to keep, to sing, now translating the notes,
^'ollowing you my brother. 70
Soothe! soothe! soothe!
Close on its wave soothes the wave behind.
And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one closey
But my love soothes not me, not me.
Low hangs the moon, it rose late.
It is lagging — 0 I think it is heavy with love, with love,
0 madly the sea pushes upon the land.
With love, with love.
loo WALT WHITMAN
0 night! do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers?
JVhat is that little black thing I see there in the zvhite? 80
Loud! loud! loud!
Loud I call to you, my love!
High and clear I shoot my voice over the zvaveSy
Surely you must know who is here, is here.
You must know who I am, my love.
Low-hanging moon!
What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow?
0 it is the shape, the shape of my mate!
0 moon do not keep her from me any longer.
Land! land! 0 land! 90
Whichever way I turn, 0 I think you could give me my mate hack again if you only wouldy
For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look.
0 rising stars!
Perhaps the one I want so much will rise, will rise with some of you.
0 throat! 0 trembling throat!
Sound clearer through the atmosphere!
Pierce the woods, the earth.
Somewhere listening to catch you must he the one I want.
Shake out carols!
Solitary here, the night's carols! 100
Carols of lonesome love! death's carols!
Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon!
0 under that moon where she droops almost down into the sea!
0 reckless despairing carols.
But soft! sink low!
Soft! let me just murmur.
And do you wait a moment you husky-noised sea.
For somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to mf,
So faint, I must be still, be still to listen.
But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to me» 1 10
Hither my love!
Here I am! here!
With this just-sustained note I announce myself to you,
This gentle call is for you my love, for you.
Do not be decoyed elsewhere,
That is the whistle of the wind, it is not my voice.
That is the fluttering, the fluttering of the spray.
Those are the shadows of leaves.
0 darkness! 0 in vain!
0 I am very sick and sorrowful. 120
0 brown halo in the sky near the moon, drooping upon the sea!
0 troubled reflection in the sea!
0 throat! 0 throbbing heart!
And I singing uselessly, uselessly all the night.
i
OUT OF THE CRADLE ENDLESSLY ROCKING loi
0 past! 0 happy life! 0 songs of joy!
In the air, in the zvoodsy over fields,
Loved! loved! loved! loved! loved!
But my mate no more, no more with me!
We two together no more.
The aria sinking, 130
All else continuing, the stars shining,
The winds blowing, the notes of the bird continuous echoing,
With angry moans the fierce old mother incessantly moaning,
On the sands of Paumanok's shore gray and rustling.
The yellow half-moon enlarged, sagging down, drooping, the face of the sea almost touching.
The boy ecstatic, with his bare feet the waves, with his hair the atmosphere dallying,
The love in the heart long pent, now loose, now at last tumultuously bursting,
The aria's meaning, the ears, the soul, swiftly depositing,
The strange tears down the cheeks coursing,
The colloquy there, the trio, each uttering, 140
The undertone, the savage old mother incessantly crying.
To the boy's soul's questions sullenly timing, some drowned secret hissing,
To the outsetting bard.
Demon or bird! (said the boy's soul)
Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it really to me?
For I, that was a child, my tongue's use sleeping, now I have heard you.
Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake.
And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs, clearer, louder and more sorrowful than
yours,
A thousand warbling echoes have startled to life within me, never to die.
O you singer solitary, singing by yourself, projecting me, 150
O solitary me listening, never more shall I cease perpetuating you,
Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations.
Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me.
Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there in the night,
By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon,
The messenger there aroused, the fire, the sweet hell within,
The unknown want, the destiny of me.
O give me the clew! (it lurks in the night here somewhere)
O if I am to have so much, let me have more!
A word then (for I will conquer it), 160
The word final, superior to all.
Subtle, sent up — what is it.^ — I listen;
Are you whispering it, and have been all the time, you sea waves?
Is that it from your liquid rims and wet sands?
Whereto answering, the sea,
Delaying not, hurrying not.
Whispered me through the night, and very plainly before daybreak,
Lisped to me the low and delicious word death.
And again death, death, death, death.
Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my aroused child's heart, 170
But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet.
Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly all over.
Death, death, death, death, death.
I02 WALT WHITMAN
Which 1 do not forget,
Hut fuse the song of my dusky demon and brother,
That he sang to me in the moonHi^lit on Paumanok's gray beach,
Witli the tliousand responsive songs at random,
My own songs awaked from that hour,
And with them the key, the word up from the waves.
The word of the sweetest song and all songs, 1 80
That strong and dehcious word wliich, creeping to my feet
(Or Hke some old crone rocking the cradle, swathed in sweet garments, bending aside),
The sea whispered me.
TEARS '
Tears! tears! tears!
In the night, in solitude, tears,
On the white shore dripping, dripping, sucked in by the sand.
Tears, not a star shining, all dark and desolate.
Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head;
O who is that ghost? that form in the dark, with tears?
WHiat shapeless lump is that, bent, crouched there on the sand?
Streaming tears, sobbing tears, throes, choked with wild cries;
O storm, embodied, rising, careering with swift steps along the beach!
O wild and dismal night storm, with wind — O belching and desperate! 10
O shade so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and regulated pace,
But away at night as you fly, none looking — O then the unloosened ocean,
Of tears! tears! tears!
ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT 2
On the beach at night,
Stands a child with her father.
Watching the east, the autumn sky.
Up through the darkness.
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky.
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east.
Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,
And nigh at hand, only a very little above.
Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades. lO
From the beach the child holding the hand of her father.
Those burial clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all.
Watching, silently weeps.
Weep not, child.
Weep not, my darling.
With these kisses let me remove your tears.
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious.
They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,
Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge.
They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again, 20
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure.
The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.
1 First published 1867 {L. G., 1871). * First published 1871 (L. G., 1871).
COME UP FROM THE FIELDS FATHER 103
Then clearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?
Something there is
(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection),
Something there is more immortal even than the stars
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away).
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter, 30
Longer than sun or any revolving satellite.
Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.
WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN'D ASTRONOMERS
When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me.
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-
room.
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wandered off by myself.
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Looked up in perfect silence at the stars.
THOUGHT 2
Of obedience, faith, adhesiveness;
As I stand aloof and look there is to me something profoundly affecting in large masses of
men following the lead of those who do not believe in men.
COME UP FROM THE FIELDS FATHERS
Come up from the fields father, here's a letter from our Pete,
And come to the front door mother, here's a letter from thy dear son.
Lo, 'tis autumn,
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind.
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellised vines.
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?)
Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds.
Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers well. 10
• First published 1865 {L. C, 1867). This and the following poem come from a group entitled By the Road-
side.
2 First published i860 {L. G., i860).
' First published 1865 {L. G., 1867). This and the following poem are taken from Drum-Taps. This, con-
taining poems inspired by aspects of the Civil War, was published as a separate volume in 1865, but was included
in Leaves of Grass in the edition of 1867.
I04 WALT WHITMAN
Down in tlic Hclds all prospers well,
But now from the fields come father, come at the daughter's call.
And come to the entry mother, to the front door come right aw.ay.
Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps trembling,
She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap.
Open the envelope quickly,
O this is not our son's writing, yet his name is signed,
O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mother's soul!
All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the main words only,
Sentences broken, gunshot zvound In the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital, 20
Jt present lozv, but will soon be better.
Ah now the single figure to me.
Amid all teeming and w^ealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms,
Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,
By the jamb of a door leans.
Grieve not so, dear mother (the just-grown daughter speaks through her sobs,
The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismayed),
See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.
Alas poor boy, he will never be better (nor may-be needs to be better, that brave and simple
soul), /
While they stand at home at the door he is dead already, 30
The only son is dead.
But the mother needs to be better.
She with thin form presently dressed in black.
By day her meals untouched, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,
O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and withdraw.
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.
AS I LAY WITH MY HEAD IN YOUR LAP CAMERADO ^
As I lay with my head in your lap camerado.
The confession I made I resume, what I said to you and the open air I resume.
I know I am restless and make others so,
I know my words are weapons full of danger, full of death.
For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them,
I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have been had all accepted
me,
I heed not and have never heeded either experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridicule.
And the threat of what is called hell is little or nothing to me.
And the lure of what is called heaven is little or nothing to me;
Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still urge you, without
the least idea what is our destmation, 10
Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quelled and defeated.
1 First published 1865-1866 (L. G., 1881).
WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOORYARD BLOOMED 105
WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOORYARD BLOOMED ^
I
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed,
And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night,
I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.
II
O powerful western fallen star!
O shades of night — O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappeared — O the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless — O helpless soul of me! lo
O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.
Ill
In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the whitewashed palings.
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green.
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, w^ith the perfume strong I love.
With every leaf a miracle — and from this bush in the dooryard.
With delicate-colored blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.
IV
In the swamp in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
Solitary the thrush, 20
The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements.
Sings by himself a song.
Song of the bleeding throat,
Death's outlet song of life (for well dear brother I know,
If thou wast not granted to sing thou would'st surely die).
V
Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities.
Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peeped from the ground, spotting
the gray debris.
Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endless grass.
Passing the yellow-speared wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields
uprisen,
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards, 30
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
Night and day journeys a coflSin.
VI
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,
With the pomp of the inlooped flags with the cities draped in black,
1 First published 1865-1866 (L. C, 1881). This and the following poem are the first two of a group of four
entitled Memories of President Lincoln.
io6 WALT WHITMAN
With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veiled women standing,
With processions long and windmg and the flambeaus of the night,
With the countless torclies lit, with the sdent sea of faces and the unbared heads,
With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the somber faces,
With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn, 40
With all the mournful voices of the dirges poured around the coffin,
The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs — where amid these you journey,
With the tolling tolling bells' perpetual clang.
Here, coffin that slowly passes,
I give you my sprig of lilac.
VII
(Nor for you, for one alone.
Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring.
For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death.
All over bouquets of roses,
O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies, 50
But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes.
With loaded arms I come, pouring for you.
For you and the coffins all of you O death.)
VIII
O western orb sailing the heaven,
Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walked.
As I walked in silence the transparent shadowy night.
As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after night,
As you drooped from the sky low down as if to my side (while the other stars all looked on).
As we wandered together the solemn night (for something I know not what kept me from
sleep), 60
As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full you were of woe,
As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent night.
As I watched where you passed and was lost in the netherward black of the night,
As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you sad orb.
Concluded, dropped in the night, and was gone.
IX
Sing on there in the swamp,
0 singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call,
1 hear, I come presently, I understand you.
But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detained me,
The star my departing comrade holds and detains me. 70
O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone.^
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love.''
Sea-winds blown from east and west.
Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till there on the prairies
meeting.
These and with these and the breath of my chant,
rii perfume the grave of him I love.
WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOORYARD BLOOMED 107
XI
O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?
And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
To adorn the burial-house of him I love? 80
Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,
With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright,
With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun, burning, expanding
the air.
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the trees prolific.
In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a wind-dapple here and there,
With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and shadows,
And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys.
And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen homeward returning.
XII
Lo, body and soul — this land.
My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships, 90
The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light, Ohio's shores and flashing
Missouri,
And ever the far-spreading prairies covered with grass and corn.
Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty.
The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes.
The gentle soft-born measureless light.
The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfilled noon.
The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,
Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.
XIII
Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird.
Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes, lOO
Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.
Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song.
Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
O liquid and free and tender!
O wild and loose to my soul — O wondrous singer!
You only I hear — yet the star holds me (but will soon depart).
Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me.
XIV
Now while I sat in the day and looked forth,
In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and the farmers preparing their
crops.
In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests, no
In the heavenly aerial beauty (after the perturbed winds and the storms).
Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and
women.
The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sailed.
And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor.
And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of
daily usages.
io8 WALT WHITMAN
And the streets how their throbbings throbbed, and the cities pent — lo, then and there,
Falhng upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,
Appeared the cloud, appeared the long black trail.
And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.
Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me, 120
And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me.
And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions,
I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not,
Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness,
To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.
And the singer so shy to the rest received me,
The gray-brown bird I know received us comrades three,
And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love.
From deep secluded recesses.
From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still, 130
Came the carol of the bird.
And the charm of the carol rapt me,
As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night,
And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.
Come lovely and soothing deathy
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving.
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later delicate death.
Praised he the fathomless universe,
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, 140
And for love, sweet love — hut praise! praise! praise!
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.
Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet.
Have nojie chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee ahove all,
I hring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
Approach strong deliveress.
When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead.
Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy hliss 0 death. 150
From me to thee glad serenades.
Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and f eastings for thee,
And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting.
And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
The night in silence under many a star.
The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,
And the soul turning to thee 0 vast and well-veiled death.
And the hody gratefully nestling close to thee.
WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOORYARD BLOOMED 109
Over the tree-to-ps I float thee a songy
Over the rising and sinking waves ^ over the myriad fields and the prairies wide, 160
Over the dense-packed cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,
I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee 0 death.
XV
To the tally of my soul,
Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,
With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night.
Loud in the pines and cedars dim,
Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume,
And I with my comrades there in the night.
While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,
As to fong panoramas of visions. 170
And I saw askant the armies,
I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,
Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierced with missiles I saw them,
And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,
And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs (and all in silence),
And the staffs all splintered and broken.
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war.
But I saw they were not as was thought, 180
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffered not.
The living remained and suffered, the mother suffered,
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffered.
And the armies that remained suffered.
XVI
Passing the visions, passing the night,
Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades' hands,
Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul.
Victorious song, death's outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song.
As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night.
Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy, 190
Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven.
As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses.
Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.
I cease from my song for thee.
From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee,
O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.
Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,
The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird.
And the tallying chant, the echo aroused in my soul, 200
With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe.
With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird.
no WALT WHITMAN
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved
so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands — and this for his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.
O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! ^
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red.
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for you the bugle trills, 10
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths — for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
The arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still.
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will.
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won: 20
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
THERE WAS A CHILD WENT FORTH ^
There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he looked upon, that object he became.
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,
Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.
The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the
phoebe-bird.
And the Third-month lambs and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal and the
cow's calf,
And the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pond-side.
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there, and the beautiful curious
liquid.
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads, all became part of him. lo
1 First published 1865 {L. G., 1871).
» First published 1855 (L. G., 1871). This and the following poem come from a group entitled Autumn Rivulets.
WHO LEARNS MY LESSON COMPLETE? in
The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him,
Winter-grain sprouts and those of the hght-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden,
And the apple-trees covered with blossoms and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and
the commonest weeds by the road.
And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the tavern whence he had
lately risen,
And the schoolmistress that passed on her way to the school.
And the friendly boys that passed, and the quarrelsome boys,
And the tidy and fresh-cheeked girls, and the barefoot negro boy and girl,
And all the changes of city and country wherever he went.
His own parents, he that had fathered him and she that had conceived him in her womb
and birthed him.
They gave this child more of themselves than that, lO
They gave him afterward every day, they became part of him.
The mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table,
The mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odor falling off her person
and clothes as she walks by.
The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, angered, unjust,
The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure.
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture, the yearning and swelling
heart.
Affection that will not be gainsaid, the sense of what is real, the thought if after all it should
prove unreal,
The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time, the curious whether and how.
Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?
Men and women crowding fast in the streets, if they are not flashes and specks what are
they? 20
The streets themselves and the fa9ades of houses, and goods in the windows.
Vehicles, teams, the heavy-planked wharves, the huge crossing at the ferries.
The village on the highland seen from afar at sunset, the river between.
Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown two miles
ofl^.
The schooner near by sleepily dropping down the tide, the little boat slack-towed astern, '
The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping.
The strata of colored clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint away solitary by itself, the spread
of purity it lies motionless in.
The horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud.
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will
always go forth every day.
WHO LEARNS MY LESSON COMPLETE? 1
Who learns my lesson complete?
Boss, journeyman, apprentice, churchman and atheist.
The stupid and the wise thinker, parents and offspring, merchant, clerk, porter and customer,
Editor, author, artist, and schoolboy — draw nigh and commence;
It is no lesson — it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
And that to another, and every one to another still.
1 First published 1855 (L. G., 1867).
112 WALT WHITMAN
The great laws take and effuse without argument,
I am of the same style, for I am their friend,
I love them quits and quits, I do not halt and make salaams.
I lie abstracted and hear beautiful tales of things and the reasons of things, lo
They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen.
I cannot say to any person what I hear — I cannot say it to myself — it is very wonderful.
It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe moving so exactly in its orbit for ever
and ever, without one jolt or the untruth of a single second,
I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor ten billions of years,
Nor planned and built one thing after another as an architect plans and builds a house.
I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman,
Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman.
Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else.
Is It wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal;
I know it is wonderful, but my eyesight is equally wonderful, and how I was conceived in
my mother's womb is equally wonderful, 20
And passed from a babe in the creeping trance of a couple of summers and winters to articu-
late and walk — all this is equally wonderful.
And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each otner without ever seeing
each other, and never perhaps to see each other, is every bit as wonderful.
And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful,
And that I can remind you, and you think them and know them to be true, is just
as wonderful.
And that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth, is equally wonderful,
And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally wonderful.
WHISPERS OF HEAVENLY DEATH ^
Whispers of heavenly death murmured I hear,
Labial gossip of night, sibilant chorals.
Footsteps gently ascending, mystical breezes wafted soft and low.
Ripples of unseen rivers, tides of a current flowing, forever flowing
(Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears ?)^
I see, just see skyward, great cloud-masses,
Mournfully slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing,
With at times a half-dimmed saddened far-off star,
Appearing and disappearing.
(Some parturition rather, some solemn immortal birth; 10
On the frontiers to eyes impenetrable.
Some soul is passing over.)
1 First published 1868 {L. G., 1871). From a group which has a general tide identical with the title of this
poem.
PREFACE TO LEAVES OF GRASS
"3
PREFACE TO LEAVES OF
GRASS, 1855 1
America does not repel the past, or what
the past has produced under its forms, or
amid other pohtics, or the idea of castes, or
the old reHgions — accepts the lesson with
calmness — is not impatient because the
slough still sticks to opinions and manners
and literature, while the life which served
its requirements has passed into the new
life of the new forms — perceives that the
corpse is slowly borne from the eating and
sleeping rooms of the house — perceives that
it waits a little while in the door — that it
was fittest for its days — that its action has
descended to the stalwart and well-shaped
heir who approaches — and that he shall be
fittest for his days.
The Americans, of all nations at any time
upon the earth, have probably the fullest
poetical nature. The United States them-
selves are essentially the greatest poem. In
the history of the earth hitherto, the largest
and most stirring appear tame and orderly
to their ampler largeness and stir. Here at
last is something in the doings of man that
corresponds with the broadcast doings of
the day and night. Here is action untied
from strings, necessarily blind to particulars
and details, magnificently moving in masses.
Here is the hospitality which for ever indi-
cates heroes. Here the performance, dis-
daining the trivial, unapproached in the
tremendous audacity of its crowds and
groupings, and the push of its perspective,
spreads with crampless and flowing breadth,
and showers its prolific and splendid ex-
travagance. One sees it must indeed own
the riches of the summer and winter, and
need never be bankrupt while corn grows
from the ground, or the orchards drop
1 This, the Preface to the first edition of Leaves of
Grass, is reprinted from Whitman's Complete Prose
Works. When Whitman included the Preface in this
volume he revised it, and it has seemed preferable, for
the purposes of students, to print the revised version.
Of this 1855 Preface Bliss Perry has said: "The book
is scarcely to be understood without it, and in the long
list of dissertations by poets upon the nature of poetry,
it would be difficult to point to one more vigorous and
impassioned, although much of it is as inconsecutive
as the essays of Emerson which helped to inspire it.
Its general theme is the inspiration which the United
States offers to the great poet."
apples, or the bays contain fish, or men
beget children upon women.
Other states indicate themselves in their
deputies — but the genius of the United
States is not best or most in its executives
or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or
authors, or colleges or churches or parlors,
nor even in its newspapers or inventors—
but always most in the common people,
south, north, west, east, in all its States,
through all its mighty amplitude. The
largeness of the nation, however, were
monstr(Tus without a corresponding large-
ness and generosity of the spirit of the
citizen. Not swarming states, nor streets
and steamships, nor prosperous business,
nor farms, nor capital, nor learning, may
suffice for the ideal of man — nor suffice the
poet. No reminiscences may suffice either.
A live nation can always cut a deep mark,
and can have the best authority the cheapest
— namely, from its own soul. This is the
sum of the profitable uses of individuals or
states, and of present action and grandeur,
and of the subjects of poets. (As if it were
necessary to trot back generation after
generation to the eastern records! As if the
beauty and sacredness of the demonstrable
must fall behind that of the mythical! As
if men do not make their mark out of any
times! As if the opening of the western
continent by discovery, and what has tran-
spired in North and South America, were
less than the small theater of the antique,
or the aimless sleep-walking of the middle
ages!) The pride of the United States
leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities,
and all returns of commerce and agriculture,
and all the magnitude of geography or shows
of exterior victory, to enjoy the sight and
realization of full-sized men, or one full-
sized man unconquerable and simple.
The American poets are to enclose old
and new, for America is the race of races.
The expression of the American poet is to
be transcendent and new. It is to be in-
direct, and not direct or descriptive or epic.
Its quality goes through these to much
more. Let the age and wars of other nations
be chanted, and their eras and characters
be illustrated, and that finish the verse.
Not so the great psalm of the republic.
Here the theme is creative, and has vista.
Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or
114
WAUr WHITMAN
obedience or legislation, the great poet never
stagnates. Obedience does not master him,
he masters it. High up out of reach he
stands, turning a concentrated light — he
turns the pivot with his finger — he baffles
the swiftest runners as he stands, and easily
overtakes and envelops them. The time
straying toward infidelity and confections
and persiflage he withholds by steady faith.
Faith is the antiseptic of the soul — it per-
vades the common people and preserves them
— they never give up believing and expecting
and trusting. There is that indescribable
ficshnera and unconsciousness about an
illiterate ptrson, that humbles and mocks
the power of the noblest expressive genius.
The poet sees for a certainty how one not a
great artist may be just as sacred and
perfect as the greatest artist.
The power to destroy or remold is freely
used by the greatest poet, but seldom the
power of attack. What is past is past. If
he does not expose superior models, and
prove himself by every step he takes, he
is not what is wanted. The presence of the
great poet conquers — not parleying, or
struggling, or any prepared attempts. Now
he has passed that way, see after him!
There is not left any vestige of despair, or
misanthropy, or cunning, or exclusiveness,
or the ignominy of a nativity or color, or
delusion of hell or the necessity of hell —
and no man thenceforward shall be degraded
for ignorance or weakness or sin. The
greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or
triviality. If he breathes into anything
that was before thought small, it dilates
with the grandeur and life of the universe.
He is a seer — he is individual — he is com-
plete in himself — the others are as good as
he, only he sees it, and they do not. He
have once just oper
pit, and given audi*
to the sunset, and 1
electric swiftness, s
confusion or jostlin;
1 he land and se^V
THE DEATH OF THE LION
229
Valhalla of her memory. Mrs. Wimbush
delights in her wit and says there is nothing
so charming as to hear Mr. Faraday draw
it out. He is perpetually detailed for this
job, and he tells me it has a peculiarly ex-
hausting effect. Every one is beginning —
at the end of two days — to sidle obse-
quiously away from her, and Mrs. Wimbush
pushes him again and again into the breach.
None of the uses I have yet seen him put to
irritate me quite so much. He looks very
fagged, and has at last confessed to me that
his condition makes him uneasy — has even
promised me that he will go straight home
instead of returning to his final engagements
in town. Last night I had some talk with
him about going to-day, cutting his visit
short; so sure am I that he will be better
as soon as he is shut up in his lighthouse. He
told me that this is what he would like to
do; reminding me, however, that the first
lesson of his greatness has been precisely
that he can't do what he likes. Mrs. Wim-
bush would never forgive him if he should
leave her before the Princess has received
the last hand. When I say that a violent
rupture with our hostess would be the best
thing in the world for him he gives me to
understand that if his reason assents to the
proposition his courage hangs woefully back.
He makes no secret of being mortally afraid
of her, and when I ask what harm she can
do him that she hasn't already done he
simply repeats: 'I'm afraid, I'm afraid!
Don't inquire too closely,' he said last
night; *only believe that I feel a sort of
terror. It's strange, when she's so kind!
At any rate, I would as soon overturn that
piece of priceless Sevres as tell her that I
must go before my date.' It sounds dread-
fully weak, but he has some reason, and he
pays for his imagination, vi^hich puts him (I
should hate it) in the place of others and
makes him feel, even against himself, their
feelings, their appetites, their motives. It's
indeed inveterately against himself that he
makes his imagination act. What a pity he
has such a lot of it! He's too beastly in-
telligent. Besides, the famous reading is
still to come off, and it has been postponed a
day, to allow Guy Walsingham to arrive. It
appears that this eminent lady is staying at
a house a few miles off, which means of
course that Mrs. Wimbush has forcibly
annexed her. She's to come over in a day or
two — Mrs. Wimbush wants her to hear Mr.
Paraday.
"To-day's wet and cold, and several of
the company, at the invitation of the Duke,
have driven over to luncheon at Bigwood.
I saw poor Paraday wedge himself, by com-
mand, into the little supplementary seat of
a brougham in which the Princess and our
hostess were already ensconced. If the front
glass isn't open on his dear old back per-
haps he'll survive. Bigwood, I believe, is
very grand and frigid, all marble and pre-
cedence, and I wish him well out of the
adventure. I can't tell you how much more
and more your attitude to him, in the midst
of all this, shines out by contrast. I never
willingly talk to these people about him, but
see what a comfort I find it to scribble to
you! I appreciate it — it keeps me warm;
there are no fires in the house. Mrs. Wim-
bush goes by the calendar, the temperature
goes by the weather, the weather goes by
God knows what, and the Princess is easily
heated. I have nothing but my acrimony to
warm me, and have been out under an
umbrella to restore my circulation. Coming
in an hour ago, I found Lady Augusta
Minch rummaging about the hall. When
I asked her what she was looking for she
said she had mislaid something that Mr.
Paraday had lent her. I ascertained in a
moment that the article in question is a
manuscript, and I have a foreboding that
it's the noble morsel he read me six weeks
ago. When I expressed my surprise that he
should have bandied about anything so
precious (I happen to know it's his only
copy — in the most beautiful hand in all the
world) Lady Augusta confessed to me that
she had not had it from himself, but from
Mrs. Wimbush, who had wished to give her
a glimpse of it as a salve for her not being
able to stay and hear it read.
*"Is that the piece he's to read,' I asked,
'when Guy Walsingham arrives .'''
'"It's not for Guy Walsingham they're
waiting now, it's for Dora Forbes,' Lady
Augusta said. 'She's coming, I believe,
early to-morrow. Meanwhile Mrs. Wim-
bush has found out about Azm, and is actively
wiring to him. She says he also must hear
him.'
"'You bewilder me a little,' I replied;
2;0
HENRY JAMES
'in the age \\c live in one gets lost among the
genders and the pronouns. The clear thing
is that Mrs. \\ inibush doesn't guard such a
treasure as jealously as she might.'
"'Poor dear, she has the Princess to
guard! Mr. Paraday lent her the manu-
script to look over.*
"'Did she speak as if it were the morning
paper.'"
"Lady Augusta stared — my irony was lo.st
upon her. 'She didn't have time, so she
gave me a chance first; because unfortu-
nately I go to-morrow to Bigwood.'
"'And your chance has only proved a
chance to lose it?'
"'I haven't lost it. I remember now —
it was very stupid of me to have forgotten.
I told my maid to give it to Lord Dori-
mont — or at least to his man.'
"'And Lord Dorimont went away directly
after luncheon
Of course he gave it back to my maid^
or else his man did,' said Lady Augusta.
*I daresay it's all right.'
"The conscience of these people is like a
summer sea. They haven't time to 'look
over' a priceless composition; they've only
time to kick it about the house. I suggested
that the 'man,' fired with a noble emulation,
had perhaps kept the work for his own
perusal; and her ladyship wanted to know
whether, if the thing didn't turn up again
in time for the session appointed by our
hostess, the author wouldn't have some-
thing else to read that would do just as well.
Their questions are too delightful! I de-
clared to Lady Augusta briefly that nothing
in the world can ever do so well as the thing
that does best; and at this she looked a
little confused and scared. But I added
that if the manuscript had gone astray our
little circle would have the less of an effort
of attention to make. The piece in question
was very long — it would keep them three
hours.
"'Three hours! Oh, the Princess will get
up!' said Lady Augusta.
"*I thought she was Mr. Paraday's
greatest admirer.'
"'I daresay she is — she's so awfully
clever. But what's the use of being a
Princess '
"'If you can't dissemble your love?' I
asked, as Lady Augusta was vague. She
said, at any rate, that she would question
her maid; and I am hoping that when I go
down to dinner I shall find the manuscript
has been recovered."
X
"It has not been recovered," I wrote
early the next day, "and I am moreover
much troubled about our friend. lie came
back from Bigwood with a chill and, being
allowed to have a fire in his room, lay down
awhile before dinner. I tried to send him
to bed, and indeed thought I had put him
in the way of it; but after I had gone to
dress Mrs. Wimbush came up to see him,
with the inevitable result that when I re-
turned I found him under arms and flushed
and feverish, though decorated with the
rare flower she had brought him for his
button-hole. He came down to dinner, but
Lady Augusta Minch was very shy of him.
To-day he's in great pain, and the advent
of ces dames — I mean of Guy Walsingham
and Dora Forbes — doesn't at all console
me. It does Mrs. Wimbush, however, for
she has consented to his remaining in bed,
so that he may be all right to-morrow for the
listening circle. Guy Walsingham is already
on the scene, and the doctor, for Paraday,
also arrived early. I haven't yet seen the
author of Obsessions^ but of course I've
had a moment by myself with the doctor.
I tried to get him to say that our invalid
must go straight home — I mean to-morrow
or next day; but he quite refuses to talk
about the future. Absolute quiet and
warmth and the regular administration of an
important remedy are the points he mainly
insists on. He returns this afternoon, and
I'm to go back to see the patient at one
o'clock, when he next takes his medicine.
It consoles me a little that he certainly
won't be able to read — an exertion he was
already more than unfit for. Lady Augusta
went off after breakfast, assuring me that
her first care would be to follow up the lost
manuscript. I can see she thinks me a
shocking busybody and doesn't under-
stand my alarm, but she will do what she
can, for she's a good-natured woman. 'So
are they all honorable men.' That was pre-
cisely what made her give the thing to Lord
Dorimont and made Lord Dorimont bag it.
THE DEATH OF THE LION
231
What use he has for it God only knows, I
have the worst forebodings, but somehow
I'm strangely without passion — desperately
calm. As I consider the unconscious, the
well-meaning ravages of our appreciative
circle I bow my head in submission to some
great natural, some universal accident; I'm
rendered almost indifferent, in fac^ quite
gay (ha-ha!) by the sense of immitigable
fate. Lady Augusta promises me to trace
the precious object and let me have it,
through the post, by the time Paraday is well
enough to play his part with it. The last
evidence is that her maid did give it to his
lordship's valet. One would think it was
some thrilling number of The Family
Budget. Mrs. Wimbush, who is aware of
the accident, is much less agitated by it than
she would doubtless be were she not for the
hour inevitably engrossed with Guy Wal-
singham."
Later in the day I informed my corre-
spondent, for whom indeed I kept a sort of
diary of the situation, that I had made the
acquaintance of this celebrity and that she
was a pretty little girl who wore her hair in
what used to be called a crop. She looked
so juvenile and so innocent that if, as Mr.
Morrow had announced, she was resigned to
the larger latitude, her superiority to preju-
dice must have come to her early. I spent
most of the day hovering about Neil Para-
day's room, but it was communicated to me
from below that Guy Walsingham, at
Prestidge, was a success. Towards evening
I became conscious somehow that her
superiority was contagious, and by the time
the company separated for the night I was
sure that the larger latitude had been
generally accepted. I thought of Dora
Forbes and felt that he had no time to lose.
Before dinner I received a telegram from
Lady Augusta Minch. "Lord Dorimont
thinks he must have left bundle in train —
inquire.'* How could I inquire — if I was
to take the word as command .f* I was too
worried and now too alarmed about Neil
Paraday. The doctor came back, and it was
an immense satisfaction to me to feel that he
was wise and interested. He was proud of
being called to so distinguished a patient,
but he admitted to me that night that my
friend was gravely ill. It was really a relapse,
a recrudescence of his old malady. There
could be no question of moving him: we
must at any rate see first, on the spot, what
turn his condition would take. Meanwhile,
on the morrow, he was to have a nurse. On
the morrow the dear man was easier, and my
spirits rose to such cheerfulness that I could
almost laugh over Lady Augusta's second
telegram: "Lord Dorimont's servant been
to station — nothing found. Push inquiries."
I did laugh, I am sure, as I remembered this
to be the mystic scroll I had scarcely allowed
poor Mr. Morrow to point his umbrella at.
Fool that I had been: the thirty-seven
influential journals wouldn't have destroyed
it, they would only have printed it. Of
course I said nothing to Paraday.
When the nurse arrived she turned me
out of the room, on which I went down-
stairs. I should premise that at breakfast
the news that our brilliant friend was doing
well excited universal complacency, and
the Princess graciously remarked that he
was only to be commiserated for missing the
society of Miss Collop. Mrs. Wimbush,
whose social gift never shone brighter than
in the dry decorum with which she accepted
this fizzle in her fireworks, mentioned to me
that Guy Walsingham had made a very
favorable impression on her Imperial High-
ness. Indeed I think every one did so, and
that, like the money-market or the national
honor, her Imperial Highness was con-
stitutionally sensitive. There was a certain
gladness, a perceptible bustle in the air,
however, which I thought slightly anom-
alous in a house where a great author lay
critically ill. '^ Le roy est mart — vive le roy":
I was reminded that another great author
had already stepped into his shoes. When I
came down again after the nurse had taken
possession I found a strange gentleman
hanging about the hall and pacing to and
fro by the closed door of the drawing-room.
This personage was florid and bald; he had
a big red mustache an J wore showy knicker-
bockers— characteristics all that fitted into
my conception of the identity of Dora
Forbes. In a moment I saw what had
happened: the author of The Other IV ay
Round had just alighted at the portals of
Prestidge, but had suffered a scruple to
restrain him from penetrating further.
I recognized his scruple when, pausing to
listen at his gesture of caution, I heard a
232
HENRY JAMES
shrill voice lifted ni a sort of rhythmic,
uncanny chant. 1 he famous rcadinj; had
begun, only it was the author of Obses-
sions who now furnished the sacrifice. The
new visitor whispered to me thai he judged
something was going on that he oughtn't to
interrupt.
"Miss CoUop arrived last night," I smiled,
"and the Princess has a thirst for the
inedity
Dora Forbes lifted his bushy brows.
"MissCollop.?"
"Guy Walsingham, your distinguished
confrere — or shall I say your formidable
rival?"
"Oh!" growled Dora Forbes. Then he
added: "Shall I spoil it if I go in.''"
"I should think nothing could spoil it!"
I ambiguously laughed.
Dora Forbes evidently felt the dilemma;
he gave an irritated crook to his mustache.
*' Shall I go in.''" he presently asked.
We looked at each other hard a moment;
then I expressed something bitter that was
in me, expressed it in an infernal "Do!"
After this I got out into the air, but not so
fast as not to hear, when the door of the
drawing-room opened, the disconcerted drop
of Miss Collop's public manner: she must
have been in the midst of the larger latitude.
Producing with extreme rapidity, Guy
Walsingham has just published a work in
which amiable people who are not initiated
have been pained to see the genius of a
sister-novelist held up to unmistakable
ridicule; so fresh an exhibition does it seem
to them of the dreadful way men have
always treated women. Dora Forbes, it is
true, at the present hour, is immensely
pushed by Mrs. Wimbush, and has sat for
his portrait to the young artists she protects,
sat for it not only in oils but in monumental
alabaster.
What happened at Prestidge later in the
day is of course contemporary history. If
the interruption I had whimsically sanc-
tioned was almost a scandal, what is to be
said of that general dispersal of the company
which, under the doctor's rule, began to take
place in the evening.? His rule was soothing
to behold, small comfort as I was to have at
the end. He decreed in the interest of his
patient an absolutely soundless house and a
consequent break-up of the party. Little
country practitioner as he was, he literally
packed off the I'rincess. She departed as
promptly as if a revolution had broken out,
and Guy Walsingham emigrated with her.
I was kindly permitted to remain, and this
was not denied even to Mrs. Wimbush.
The privilege was withheld indeed from
Dora Forbes; so Mrs. Wimbush kept her
latest capture temporarily concealed. This
was so little, however, her usual way of
dealing with her eminent friends that a
couple of days of it exhausted her patience,
and she went up to town with him in great
publicity. The sudden turn for the worse
her afflicted guest had, after a brief improve-
ment, taken on the third night raised an
obstacle to her seeing him before her retreat;
a fortunate circumstance doubtless, for she
was fundamentally disappointed in him.
This was not the kind of performance for
which she had invited him to Prestidge, or
invited the Princess. Let me hasten to add
that none of the generous acts which have
characterized her patronage of intellectual
and other merit have done so much for her
reputation as her lending Neil Paraday the
most beautiful of her numerous homes to di£
in. He took advantage to the utmost of the
singular favor. Day by day I saw him sink,
and I roamed alone about the empty ter-
races and gardens. His wife never came
near him, but I scarcely noticed it: as I
paced there with rage in my heart I was too
full of another wrong. In the event of his
death it would fall to me perhaps to bring
out in some charming form, with notes, with
the tenderest editorial care, that precious
heritage of his written project. But where
zvas that precious heritage, and were both
the author and the book to have been
snatched from us.'' Lady Augusta wrote me
that she had done all she could and that
poor Lord Dorimont, who had really been
worried to death, was extremely sorry. I
couldn't have the matter out with Mrs.
Wimbush, for I didn't want to be taunted
by her with desiring to aggrandize myself
by a public connection with Mr. Faraday's
sweepings. She had signified her willingness
to meet the expense of all advertising, as
indeed she was always ready to do. The
last night of the horrible series, the night
before he died, I put my ear closer to his
pillow.
THE SPECIAL TYPE
233
"That thing I read you that morning, you
know.
"In your garden that dreadful day?
Yes!"
"Won't it do as it is?"
"It would have been a glorious book."
"It is a glorious book," Neil Paraday
murmured, "Print it as it stands —
beautifully."
"Beautifully!" I passionately promised.
It may be imagined whether, now that he
is gone, the promise seems to me less sacred.
I am convinced that if such pages had ap-
peared in his lifetime the Abbey would
hold him to-day. I have kept the adver-
tising in my own hands, but the manuscript
has not been recovered. It's impossible, and
at any rate intolerable, to suppose it can
have been wantonly destroyed. Perhaps
some hazard of a blind hand, some brutal
ignorance has lighted kitchen-fires with it.
Every stupid and hideous accident haunts
my meditations. My undiscourageable
search for the lost treasure would make a
long chapter. Fortunately I have a devoted
associate in the person of a young lady who
has every day a fresh indignation and a
fresh idea, and who maintains with intensity
that the prize will still turn up. Sometimes
I believe her, but I have quite ceased to
believe myself. The only thing for us, at
all events, is to go on seeking and hoping
together; and we should be closely united
by this firm tie even were we not at present
by another.
THE SPECIAL TYPE ^
I NOTE it as a wonderful case of its kind —
the finest of all perhaps, in fact, that I have
ever chanced to encounter. The kind, more-
over, is the greatest kind, the roll recruited,
for our high esteem and emulation, from
history and fiction, legend and song. In the
way of service and sacrifice for love I've
really known nothing go beyond it. How-
ever, you can judge. My own sense of it
happens just now to be remarkably rounded
off by the sequel — more or less looked for on
her part — of the legal step taken by Mrs,
Brivet. I hear from America that, a decent
^ Reprinted with the permission of Messrs. Charles
Scribner's Sons from the volume of James's tales en-
titled TJi^ Better Sort, first published in 1903.
interval being held to have elapsed since
her gain of her divorce, she is about to marry
again — an event that will, it would seem,
put an end to any question of the disclosure
of the real story. It's this that's the real
story, or will be, with nothing wanting, as
soon as I shall have heard that her husband
(who, on his side, has only been waiting for
her to move first) has sanctified his union
with Mrs. Cavenham.
She was, of course, often in and out, Mrs.
Cavenham, three years ago, when I was
painting her portrait; and the more so that
I found her, I remember, one of those com-
paratively rare sitters who present them-
selves at odd hours, turn up without an
appointment. The thing is to get most
women to keep those they do make; but
she used to pop in, as she called it, on the
chance, letting me know that if I had a
moment free she was quite at my service.
When I hadn't the moment free she liked to
stay to chatter, and she more than once
expressed to me, I recollect, her theory that
an artist really, for the time, could never
see too much of his model. I must have
shown her rather frankly that I understood
her as meaning that a model could never
see too much of her artist. I understood in
fact everything, and especially that she was,
in Brivet's absence, so unoccupied and rest-
less that she didn't know what to do with
herself. I was conscious in short that it
was he who would pay for the picture, and
that gives, I think, the measure of my en-
lightenment. If I took such pains and bore
so with her folly, it was fundamentally for
Brivet.
I was often at that time, as I had often
been before, occupied — for various "sub-
jects"— with Mrs. Dundene, in connection
with which a certain occasion comes back
to me as the first slide in the lantern. If I
had invented my story I couldn't have made
it begin better than with Mrs. Cavenham's
irruption during the presence one morning
of that lady. My door, by some chance, had
been unguarded, and she was upon us with-
out a warning. This was the sort of thing
my model hated — the one, I mean, who,
after all, sat mainly to oblige; but I remem-
234
HENRY JAMES
ber how wtll she hchaved. She was not
dressed for company, though indeed a dress
was never strictly necessary to her best
effect. I recall that I had a moment of
uncertainty, but I must have dropped the
name of each for the other, as it was Mrs.
Cavenham's line always, later on, that I had
made them acquainted; and inevitably,
though I wished her not to stay and got rid
of her as soon as possible, the two women,
of such different places in the scale, but of
such almost equal beauty, were face to face
for some minutes, of which I was not even
at the moment unaware that they made an
extraordinary use for mutual inspection. It
was sufficient; they from that instant knew
each other.
"Isn't she lovely.''" I remember asking —
and quite w^ithout the spirit of mischief —
when I came back from restoring my visitor
to her cab.
"Yes, aw^fully pretty. But I hate her."
"Oh," I laughed, "she's not so bad as
that."
"Not so handsome as I, you mean?" And
my sitter protested. "It isn't fair of you to
speak as if I were one of those who can't bear
even at the worst — or the best — another
woman's looks. I should hate her even if
she were ugly."
" But what have you to do with her?'*
She hesitated; then with characteristic
looseness: "What have I to do with any-
one.'^
"Well, there's no one else I know of that
you do hate."
"That shows," she replied, "how good a
reason there must be, even if I don't know it
yet.
She knew it in the course of time, but I
have never seen a reason, I must say, operate
so little for relief. As a history of the hatred
of Alice Dundene my anecdote becomes
wondrous indeed. Meanwhile, at any rate,
I had Mrs. Cavenham again with me for her
regular sitting, and quite as curious as I had
expected her to be about the person of the
previous time.
"Do you mean she isn't, so to speak, a
lady?" she asked after I had, for reasons of
my own, fenced a little. "Then if she's not
'professional' either, what is she?"
"Well," I returned as I got at work, "she
escapes, to my mind, any classification save
as one of the most beautiful and good-
natured of women."
"I see her beauty," Mrs. Cavenham said.
"It's immense. Do you mean that her good-
nature's as great?"
I had to think a little. "On the whole,
yes.
"Then I understand. That represents a
greater quantity than /, I think, should ever
have occasion for."
"Oh, the great thing's to be sure to have
enough," I growled.
But she laughed it off. "Enough, cer-
tainly, is as good as a feast!"
It was — I forg.^t how long, some months —
after this that Frank Brivet, whom I had
not seen for two years, knocked again at my
door. I didn't at all object to him at my
other work as I did to Mrs. Cavenham, but
it was not till he had been in and out several
times that Alice — which is what most people
still really call her — chanced to see him and
received in such an extraordinary way the
impression that was to be of such advantage
to him. She had been obliged to leave me
that day before he went — though he stayed
but a few minutes later; and it was not till
the next time we were alone together that I
was struck with her sudden interest, which
became frankly pressing. I had met her, to
begin with, expansively enough.
"An American? But what sort — don't
you know\'' There are so many."
I didn't mean it as an offense, but in the
matter of men, and though her acquaintance
wuth them is so large, I always simplify with
her. " The sort. He's rich.'*
"And how rich?"
"Why, as an American. Disgustingly."
I told her on this occasion more about
him, but it was on that fact, I remember,
that, after a short silence, she brought out
with a sigh: "Well, I'm sorry. I should
have liked to love him for himself."
II
Quite apart from having been at school
with him, I'm conscious — though at times he
so puts me out — that I've a taste for Frank
Brivet. I'm quite aware, by the same
token — and even if when a man's so rich
it's difficult to tell — that he's not everyone's
affinity. I was struck, at all events, from
THE SPECIAL TYPE
235
the first of the affair, with the way he clung
to me and seemed incHned to haunt my
studio. He's fond of art, though he has some
awful pictures, and more or less under-
stands mine; but it wasn't this that brought
him. Accustomed as I was to notice what
his wealth everywhere does for him, I was
rather struck with his being so much thrown
upon me and not giving London — the big
fish that rises so to the hook baited with
gold — more of a chance to perform to him.
I very soon, however, understood. He had
his reasons for wishing not to be seen much
with Mrs. Cav^enham, and, as he was in love
with her, felt the want of some machinery
for keeping temporarily away from her. I
was his machinery, and, when once I per-
ceived this, was willing enough to turn his
wheel. His situation, moreover, became
interesting from the moment I fairly grasped
it, which he soon enabled me to do. His old
reserve on the subject of Mrs. Brivet went
to the winds, and it's not my fault if I let
him see how little I was shocked by his
confidence. His marriage had originally
seemed to me to require much more explana-
tion than anyone could give, and indeed in
the matter of women in general, I confess,
I've never seized his point of view. His
inclinations are strange, and strange, too,
perhaps, his indifferences. Still, I can enter
into some of his aversions, and I agreed with
him that his wife was odious.
"She has hitherto, since w^e began practi-
cally to live apart," he said, "mortally hated
the idea of doing anything so pleasant for
me as to divorce me. But I've reason to
believe she has now changed her mmd.
She'd like to get clear."
I waited a moment. "For a man.?"
"Oh, such a jolly good one! Remson
Sturch."
I wondered. "Do you call him good.'*"
"Good for her. If she only can be got to
be — which it oughtn't to be difficult to make
her — fool enough to marry him, he'll give
her the real size of his foot, and I shall be
avenged in a manner positively ideal."
"Then will she institute proceedings?"
"She can't, as things stand. She has
nothing to go upon. I've been," said poor
Brivet, "I positively have, so blameless."
I thought of Mrs. Cavenham, and, though I
said nothing, he went on after an instant
as if he knew it. "They can't put a finger.
I've been so damned particular."
I hesitated. "And your idea is now not
to be particular any more?"
"Oh, about her," he eagerly replied,
"always!" On which I laughed out and he
colored. "But my idea is nevertheless, at
present," he went on, "to pave the way;
that is, I mean, if I can keep the person
you're thinking of so totally out of it that
not a breath in the whole business can
possibly touch her."
"I see," I reflected. "She isn't willing?"
He stared. "To be compromised? Why
the devil should she be?"
"Why shouldn't she — for you? Doesn't
she lov^e you?"
"Yes, and it's because she does, dearly,
that I don't feel the right way to repay her
is by spattering her over."
"Yet if she stands," I argued, "straight in
the splash !"
"She doesn't!" he interrupted me, with
some curtness. "She stands a thousand
miles out of it; she stands on a pinnacle;
she stands as she stands in your charming
portrait — lovely, lonely, untouched. And so
she must remain."
"It's beautiful, it's doubtless inevitable,"
I returned after a little, "that you should
feel so. Only, if your wife doesn't divorce
you for a woman you love, I don't quite
see how she can do it for the woman you
on t.
"Nothing is more simple," he declared;
on which I saw he had figured it out rather
more than I thought. "It will be quite
enough if she believes I love her."
"If the lady in question does — or Mrs.
Brivet?"
"Mrs. Brivet — confound her! If she
believes I love somebody else. I must have
the appearance, and the appearance must of
course be complete. All I've got to do is to
take up
"To take up ?" I asked, as he paused.
"Well, publicly, with someone or other;
someone who could easily be squared. One
would undertake, after all, to produce the
impression."
"On your wife naturally, you mean?"
"On my wife, and on the person con-
cerned."
I turned it over and did justice to his
236
HENRY JAMES
ingenuity. "But what impression would
you undertake to produce on ?"
**\Vell?" he inquired as I just faltered.
"On the person not concerned. How
would the lady you just accused me of having
in mind be affected toward such a pro-
ceeding.'"*
He had to think a little, but he thought
with success. "Oh, I'd answer for her."
"To the other lady?" I laughed.
He remained quite grave. "To myself.
She'd leave us alone. As it would be for
her good, she'd understand."
I was sorry for him, but he struck me as
artless. "Understand, in that interest, the
'spattering' of another person i*"
He colored again, but he was sturdy. "It
must of course be exactly the right person —
a special type. Someone who, in the first
place," he explained, "wouldn't mind, and
of whom, in the second, she wouldn't be
jealous."
I followed perfectly, but it struck me as
important all round that we should be clear.
"But wouldn't the danger be great that any
woman who shouldn't have that effect — the
effect of jealousy — upon her wouldn't have
it either on your wife.^"
"Ah," he acutely returned, "my wife
wouldn't be warned. She wouldn't be *in
the know.'"
"I see." I quite caught up. "The two
other ladies distinctly would."
But he seemed for an instant at a loss.
"Wouldn't it be indispensable only as
regards one.''"
"Then the other would be simply sacri-
ficed.^"
"She would be," Brivet splendidly put it,
"remunerated." I was pleased even with
the sense of financial power betrayed by the
way he said it, and I at any rate so took
the measure of his intention of generosity
and his characteristically big view of the
matter that this quickly suggested to me
what at least might be his exposure. "But
suppose that, in spite of 'remuneration,'
this secondary personage should perversely
like you-f* She would have to be indeed, as
you say, a special type, but even special
types may have general feelings. Suppose
she should like you too much."
It had pulled him up a little. "What do
you mean by 'too much'?'*
"Well, more than enough to leave the
case quite as simple as you'd require it."
"Oh, money always simplifies. Besides,
I should make a point of being a brute."
And on my laughing at this; "I should pay
her enough to keep her down, to make her
easy. But the thing,'* he went on with a
drop back to the less mitigated real — "the
thing, hang it! is first to find her."
"Surely,'* I concurred; "for she should
have to lack, you see, no requirement what-
ever for plausibility. She must be, for
instance, not only 'squareable,' but — before
anything else even — awfully handsome."
"Oh, 'awfully'!'* He could make light of
thai, which was what Mrs. Cavenham was.
"It wouldn't do for her, at all events," I
maintained, "to be a bit less attractive
than "
"Well, than who.?" he broke in, not only
with a comic effect of disputing my point,
but also as if he knew whom I was thinking
of.
Before I could answer him, however, the
door opened, and we were interrupted by a
visitor — a visitor who, on the spot, in a
flash, primed me with a reply. But I had
of course for the moment to keep it to myself.
"Than Mrs. Dundene!"
Ill
I HAD nothing more than that to do with
it, but before I could turn round it was done;
by which I mean that Brivet, whose previous
impression of her had, for some sufficient
reason, failed of sharpness, now jumped
straight to the perception that here to his
hand for the solution of his problem was the
missing quantity and the appointed aid.
They were in presence on this occasion, for
the first time, half an hour, during which he
sufficiently showed me that he felt himself
to have found the special type. He was
certainly to that extent right that nobody
could — in those days in particular — without
a rapid sense that she was indeed "special,"
spend any such time in the company of our
extraordinary friend. I couldn't quarrel
with his recognizing so quickly what I had
myself instantly recognized, yet if it did in
truth appear almost at a glance that she
would, through the particular facts of situa-
tion, history, aspect, tone, temper, beauti>
THE SPECIAL TYPE
237
fully "do," I felt from the first so affected
by the business that I desired to wash my
hands of it. There was something I wished
to say to him before it went further, but after
that I cared only to be out of it. I may as
well say at once, however, that I never was
out of it; for a man habitually ridden by the
twin demons of imagination and observation
is never — enough for his peace — out of any-
thing. But I wanted to be able to apply to
either, should anything happen, *'*Thou
canst not say / did it!'** What might in
particular happen was represented by what
I said to Brivet the first time he gave me a
chance. It was what I had wished before
the affair went further, but it had then
already gone so far that he had been twice —
as he immediately let me know — to see her
at home. He clearly desired me to keep up
with him, which I was eager to declare
impossible; but he came again to see me
only after he had called. Then I instantly
made my point, which was that she was
really, hang it! too good for his fell purpose.
"But, my dear man, my purpose is a
sacred one. And if, moreover, she herself
doesn't think she's too good "
"Ah," said I, "she's in love with you, and
so it isn't fair."
He wondered. "Fair to me?^*
"Oh, I don't care a button for you! What
I'm thinking of is her risk."
"And what do you mean by her risk?"
"Why, her finding, of course, before you've
done with her, that she can't do without
you."
He met me as if he had quite thought of
that. "Isn't it much more my risk?"
"Ah, but you take it deliberately, walk
into it with your eyes open. What I want
to be sure of, liking her as I do, is that she
fully understands."
He had been moving about my place with
his hands in his pockets, and at this he
stopped short. "How much do you like her?"
"Oh, ten times more than she likes me;
so that needn't trouble you. Does she
understand that it can be only to help
somebody else?"
"Why, my dear chap, she's as sharp as a
steam whistle."
"So that she also already knows who the
other person is?"
He took a turn again, then brought out.
"There's no other person for her but me.
Of course, as yet, there are things one
doesn't say; I haven't set straight to work
to dot all my i's, and the beauty of her, as
she's really charming — and would be charm-
ing in any relation — is just exactly that I
don't expect to have to. We'll work it out
all right, I think, so that what I most wanted
just to make sure of from you was what
you've been good enough to tell me. I
mean that you don't object — for yourself."
I could with philosophic mirth allay that
scruple, but what I couldn't do was to let
him see what really most worried me. It
stuck, as they say, in my crop that a woman
like — yes, when all was said and done —
Alice Dundene should simply minister to the
convenience of a woman like Rose Caven-
ham. "But there's one thing more." This
was as far as I could go. "I may take from
you then that she not only knows it's for
your divorce and remarriage, but can fit the
shoe on the very person?"
He waited a moment. "Well, you may
take from me that I find her no more of a
fool than, as I seem to see, many other
fellows have found her.'*
I too was silent a little, but with a superior
sense of being able to think it all out further
than he. "She's magnificent!"
"Well, so am I!" said Brivet. And for
months afterward there was much — in fact
everything — in the whole picture to justify
his claim. I remember how it struck me as
a lively sign of this that Mrs. Cavenham,
at an early day, gave up her pretty house in
Wilton Street and withdrew for a time to
America. That was palpable design and
diplomacy, but Tm afraid that I quite as
much, and doubtless very vulgarly, read into
it that she had had money from Brivet to
go. I even promised myself, I confess,
the entertainment of finally making out
that, whether or no the marriage should
come off, she would not have been the person
to find the episode least lucrative.
She left the others, at all events, com-
pletely together, and so, as the plot, with
this, might be said definitely to thicken, it
came to me in all sorts of ways that the
curtain had gone up on the drama. It came
to me, I hasten to add, much less from the
two actors themselves than from other
quarters — the usual sources, which never
238
HENRY JAMES
fail, of chatter; for after my friends' direc-
tion was fairly taken they had the good
taste on either side to handle it, in talk, with
gloves, not to expose it to what I should
have called the dancer of definition. I even
seemed to divine that, allowing for needful
preliminaries, they dealt even with each
other on this same unformulated plane, and
that it w^ell might be that no relation in
London at that moment, between a remark-
able man and a beautiful woman, had more
of the general air of good manners. I saw
for a long time, directly, but little of them,
for they were naturally much taken up, and
Mrs. Dundene in particular intermitted, as
she had never yet done in any complication
of her checkered career, her calls at my
studio. As the months went by I couldn't
but feel — partly, perhaps, for this very
reason — that their undertaking announced
itself as likely not to fall short of its aim. I
gathered from the voices of the air that
nothing whatever was neglected that could
make it a success, and just this vision it was
that made me privately project wonders into
it, caused anxiety and curiosity often again
to revisit me, and led me in fine to say to
myself that so rich an effect could be
arrived at on either side only by a great deal
of heroism. As the omens markedly de-
veloped I supposed the heroism had likewise
done so, and that the march of the matter
was logical I inferred from the fact that even
though the ordeal, all round, was more pro-
tracted than might have been feared, Mrs.
Cavenham made no fresh appearance. This
I took as a sign that she knew she was
safe — took indeed as the feature not the
least striking of the situation constituted in
her interest. I held my tongue, naturally,
about her interest, but I watched it from a
distance with an attention that, had I been
caught in the act, might have led to a mis-
take about the direction of my sympathy. I
had to make it my proper secret that, while
I lost as little as possible of what was being
done for her, I felt more and more that I
myself could never have begun to do it.
IV
She came back at last, however, and one
of the first things she did on her arrival was
to knock at my door and let me know im-
mediately, to smooth the way, that she was
there on particular business. I was not to
be surprised — though even if I were she
shouldn't mind — to hear that she wished to
bespeak from me, on the smallest possible
delay, a portrait, full-length for preference,
of our delightful friend Mr. Brivet. She
brought this out with a light perfection of
assurance of which the first effect — I
couldn't help it — was to make me show
myself almost too much amused for good
manners. She first stared at my laughter,
then wonderfully joined in it, looking mean-
while extraordinarily pretty and elegant —
more completely handsome in fact, as well
as more completely happy, than I had ever
yet seen her. She was distinctly the better,
I quickly saw, for what was being done for
her, and it was an odd spectacle indeed that
while, out of her sight and to the exclusion
of her very name, the good work went on,
it put roses in her cheeks and rings on her
fingers and the sense of success in her heart.
What had made me laugh, at all events, was
the number of other ideas suddenly evoked
by her request, two of which, the next
moment, had disengaged themselves with
particular brightness. She wanted, for all
her confidence, to omit no precaution, to
close up every issue, and she had acutely
conceived that the possession of Brivet's
picture — full-length, above all! — would con-
stitute for her the strongest possible appear-
ance of holding his supreme pledge. If that
had been her foremost thought her second
then had been that if I should paint him he
would have to sit, and that in order to sit he
would have to return. He had been at this
time, as I knew, for many weeks in foreign
cities — which helped moreover to explain to
me that Mrs. Cavenham had thought it
compatible with her safety to reopen her
London house. Everything accordingly
seemed to make for a victory, but there zuas
such a thing, her proceeding implied, as
one's — at least as her — susceptibility and
her nerves. This question of his return I of
course immediately put to her; on which
she immediately answered that it was
expressed in her very proposal, inasmuch as
this proposal was nothing but the offer that
Brivet had himself made her. The thing
was to be his gift; she had only, he had
assured her, to choose her artist and arrange
THE SPECIAL TYPE
239
the time; and she had amiably chosen me —
chosen me for the dates, as she called them,
immediately before us. I doubtless — but
I don't care — give the measure of my native
cynicism in confessing that I didn't the least
avoid showing her that I saw through her
game. "Well, I'll do him," I said, "if he'll
come himself and ask me."
She wanted to know, at this, of course, if I
impugned her veracity. "You don't believe
what I tell you.'' You're afraid for your
money .^"
I took it in high good-humor. "For my
money not a bit."
"For what then.?"
I had to think first how much I could say,
which seemed to me, naturally, as yet but
little. "I know perfectly that whatever
happens Brivet always pays. But let him
come; then we'll talk."
"Ah, well," she returned, "you'll see if he
doesn't come." And come he did in fact —
though without a word from myself directly
— at the end of ten days; on which we im-
mediately got to work, an idea highly
favorable to it having meanwhile shaped
itself in my own breast. Meanwhile too,
however, before his arrival, Mrs. Cavenham
had been again to see me, and this it was
precisely, I think, that determined my idea.
My present explanation of what afresh
passed between us is that she really felt the
need to build up her security a little higher
by borrowing from my own vision of what
had been happening. I had not, she saw,
been very near to that, but I had been at
least, during her time in America, nearer
than she. And I had doubtless somehow
"aggravated" her by appearing to dis-
believe in the guarantee she had come in
such pride to parade to me. It had in any
case befallen that, on the occasion of her
second visit, what I least expected or
desired — her avowal of being "in the know"
— suddenly went too far to stop. When she
did speak she spoke with elation. "Mrs.
Brivet has filed her petition."
" For getting rid of him ? "
"Yes, in order to marry again; which is
exactly what he wants her to do. It's
wonderful — and, in a manner, I think, quite
splendid — the way he has made it easy for
her. He has met her wishes handsomely —
obliged her in every particular."
As she preferred, subtly enough, to put it
all as if it were for the sole benefit of his wife,
I was quite ready for this tone; but I
privately defied her to keep it up. "Well,
then, he hasn't labored in vain."
"Oh, it couldn't have been in vain. What
has happened has been the sort of thing that
she couldn't possibly fail to act upon."
"Too great a scandal, eh.'*"
She but just paused at it. "Nothing
neglected, certainly, or omitted. He was
not the man to undertake it "
"And not put it through.'' No, I should
say he wasn't the man. In any case he
apparently hasn't been. But he must have
found the job "
"Rather a bore?" she asked as I had
hesitated.
"Well, not so much a bore as a delicate
matter."
She seemed to demur. "Delicate?'*
"Why, your sex likes him so."
"But isn't just that what has made it
easy
"Easy for him — yes," I after a moment
admitted.
But it wasn't what she meant. "And not
difficult, also, for them'*
This was the nearest approach I was to
have heard her make, since the day of the
meeting of the two women at my studio, to
naming Mrs. Dundene. She never, to the
end of the affair, came any closer to her in
speech than by the collective and promiscu-
ous plural pronoun. There might have been
a dozen of them, and she took cognizance,
in respect to them, only of quantity. It was
as if it had been a way of showing how little
of anything else she imputed. Quality, as
distinguished from quantity, was what she
had. "Oh, I think," I said, "that we can
scarcely speak for them."
"Why not? They must certainly have
had the most beautiful time. Operas,
theaters, suppers, dinners, diamonds, car-
riages, journeys hither and yon with him,
poor dear, telegrams sent by each from
everywhere to everywhere and always lying
about, elaborate arrivals and departures at
stations for everyone to see, and, in fact,
quite a crowd usually collected — as many
witnesses as you like. Then," she wound
up, "his brougham standing always — half
the day and half the night — at their doors.
240
HENRY JAMES
He has had to keep a brougham, and the
proper sort of man, just for that alone. In
other words unlimited publicity."
" I see. What more can they have wanted ?
Yes," I pondered, "they like, for the most
part, we suppose, a studied, outrageous
affichagey and they must have thoroughly
enjoyed it."
"Ah, but it was only that."
I wondered. "Only what.''"
"Only affiche. Only outrageous. Only
the form of — well, of what would definitely
serve. He never saw them alone."
I wondered — or at least appeared to — still
more. "Never.?"
"Never. Never once." She had a won-
derful air of answering for it. "I know."
I saw that, after all, she really believed she
knew, and I had indeed, for that matter, to
recognize that I myself believed her knowl-
edge to be sound. Only there went with it
a complacency, an enjoyment of having
really made me see what could be done for
her, so little to my taste that for a minute or
two I could scarce trust myself to speak:
she looked somehow, as she sat there, so
lovely, and yet, in spite of her loveliness — or
perhaps even just because of it — so smugly
selfish; she put it to me with so small a
consciousness of anything but her personal
triumph that, while she had kept her skirts
clear, her name unuttered and her reputation
untouched, "they" had been in it even more
than her success required. It was their
skirts, their name and their reputation that,
in the proceedings at hand, would bear the
brunt. It was only after waiting a while
that I could at last say: "You're perfectly
sure then of Mrs. Brivet's intention.'*"
"Oh, we've had formal notice."
"And he's himself satisfied of the suffi-
ciency :
"Of the sufficiency .''"
"Of what he has done.'*
She rectified. "Of what he has appeared
to do."
"That is then enough?"
"Enough," she laughed, "to send him to
the gallows!" To which I could only reply
that all was well that ended well.
V
All for me, however, as it proved, had
not ended yet. Brivet, as I have mentioned,
duly reappeared to sit for me, and Mrs.
Cavenham, on his arrival, as consistently
went abroad. He confirmed to me that
lady's news of how he had "fetched," as he
called it, his wife — let me know, as decently
owing to me after what had passed, on the
subject, between us, that the forces set in
motion had logically operated; but he made
no other allusion to his late accomplice — for
I now took for granted the close of the con-
nection— than was conveyed in this intima-
tion. Hfe spoke — and the effect was almost
droll — as if he had had, since our previous
meeting, a busy and responsible year and
wound up an affair (as he was accustomed to
wind up affairs) involving a mass of detail;
he even dropped into occasional reminiscence
of what he had seen and enjoyed and dis-
liked during a recent period of rather far-
reaching adventure; but he stopped just as
short as Mrs. Cavenham had done — and,
indeed, much shorter than she — of intro-
ducing Mrs. Dundene by name into our talk.
And what was singular in this, I soon saw,
was — apart from a general discretion — that
he abstained not at all because his mind was
troubled, but just because, on the contrary,
it was so much at ease. It was perhaps even
more singular still, meanwhile, that, though
I had scarce been able to bear Mrs. Caven-
ham's manner in this particular, I found I
could put up perfectly with that of her
friend. She had annoyed me, but he didn't —
I give the inconsistency for what it is worth.
The obvious state of his conscience had
always been a strong point in him and one
that exactly irritated some people as much as
it charmed others; so that if, in general, it
was positively, and in fact quite aggressively
approving, this monitor, it had never held
its head so high as at the juncture of which I
speak. I took all this in with eagerness, for
I saw how it would play into my work.
Seeking as I always do, instinctively, to
represent sitters in the light of the thing,
whatever it may be, that facially, least
wittingly or responsibly, gives the pitch of
their aspect, I felt immediately that I should
have the clue for making a capital thing of
Brivet were I to succeed in showing him in
just this freshness of his cheer. His cheer
was that of his being able to say to himself
that he had got all he wanted precisely as
he wanted: without having harmed a fly.
THE SPECIAL TYPE
241
He had arrived so neatly where most men
arrive besmirched, and what he seemed to
cry out as he stood before my canvas —
wishing everyone well all round — was:
"See how clever and pleasant and practi-
cable, how jolly and lucky and rich I've
been!" I determined, at all events, that I
would make some such characteristic words
as these cross, at any cost, the footlights, as
it were, of my frame.
Well, I can't but feel to this hour that I
really hit my nail — that the man is fairly
painted in the light and that the work
remains as yet my high-water mark. He
himself was delighted with it — and all the
more, I think, that before it was finished he
received from America the news of his
liberation. He had not defended the suit —
as to which judgment, therefore, had been
expeditiously rendered; and he was accord-
ingly free as air and with the added sweetness
of every augmented appearance that his wife
was herself blindly preparing to seek chas-
tisement at the hands of destiny. There
being at last no obstacle to his open associa-
tion with Mrs. Cavenham, he called her
directly back to London to admire my
achievement, over which, from the very
first glance, she as amiably let herself go.
It was the very view of him she had desired
to possess; it was the dear man in his inti-
mate essence for those who knew him; and
for any one who should ever be deprived of
him it would be the next best thing to the
sound of his voice. We of course by no means
lingered, however, on the contingency of
privation, which was promptly swept away
in the rush of Mrs. Cavenham's vision of
how straight also, above and beyond, I had,
as she called it, attacked. I couldn't quite
myself, I fear, tell how straight, but Mrs.
Cavenham perfectly could, and did, for
everybody: she had at her fingers' ends all
the reasons why the thing would be a tteasure
even for those who had never seen ** Frank."
I had finished the picture, but was, accord-
ing to my practice, keeping it near me a
little, for afterthoughts, when I received
from Mrs. Dundene the first visit she had
paid me for many a month. "I've come,'*
she immediately said, "to ask you a favor";
and she turned her eyes, for a minute, as if
contentedly full of her thought, round the
large workroom she already knew so well and
in which her beauty had really rendered
more services than could ever be repaid.
There were studies of her yet on the walls;
there were others thrust away in corners;
others still had gone forth from where she
stood and carried to far-away places the
reach of her hngering look. I had greatly,
almost inconveniently missed her, and I
don't know why it was that she struck me
now as more beautiful than ever. She had
always, for that matter, had a way of seem-
ing each time a little different and a little
better. Dressed very simply in black ma-
terials, feathers and lace, that gave the
impression of being light and fine, she had
indeed the air of a special type, but quite
as some great lady might have had it. She
looked like a princess in Court mourning.
Oh, she had been a case for the petitioner —
was everything the other side wanted!
"Mr. Brivet," she went on to say, "has
kindly oflPered me a present. I'm to ask of
him whatever in the world I most desire."
I knew in an instant, on this, what was
coming, but I was at first wholly taken up
with the simplicity of her allusion to her
late connection. Had I supposed that, like
Brivet, she wouldn't allude to it at all? or
had I stupidly assumed that if she did it
would be with ribaldry and rancor? I
hardly know; I only know that I suddenly
found myself charmed to receive from her
thus the key of my own freedom. There was
something I wanted to say to her, and she
had thus given me leave. But for the mo-
ment I only repeated as with amused inter-
est: "Whatever in the world ?"
"Whatever in all the world.'*
"But that's immense, and in what way
can poor / help ?"
"By painting him for me. I want a
portrait of him."
I looked at her a moment in silence. She
was lovely. "That's what — 'in all the
world' — you've chosen?"
"Yes — thinking it over: full-length. I
want it for remembrance, and I want it as
you will do it. It's the only thing I do
want.
"Nothing else?"
"Oh, it's enough." I turned about — -she
was wonderful. I had whisked out of sight
for a month the picture I had produced for
Mrs. Cavenham, and it was now completely
242
HENRY JAMES
covered with a large piece of stuff. I stood
there a little, thinking of it, and she went
on as if she feared I might be unwilling.
** Caji't you do it?"
It showed me that she had not heard from
him of my having painted him, and this,
further, was an indication that, his purpose
effected, he had ceased to see her. "I sup-
pose you know," I presently said, "what
you've done for him.?"
"Oh yes; it was what I wanted."
"It was what he wanted!" I laughed.
"Well, I want what he wants."
"Even to his marrying Mrs. Cavenham.''"
- She hesitated. "As well her as anyone,
from the moment he couldn't marry me."
"It was beautiful of you to be so sure of
that," I returned.
"How could I be anything else but sure.''
He doesn't so much as know me!" said Alice
Dundene.
"No," I declared, "I verily believe he
doesn't. There's your picture," I added,
unveiling my work.
She was amazed and delighted. "I may
have that?"
"So far as Tm concerned — absolutely."
"Then he had himself the beautiful
thought of sitting for me."*"
I faltered but an instant. "Yes."
Her pleasure in what I had done was a joy
to me. "Why, it's of a truth 1 It's
perfection."
"I think it is."
"It's the whole story. It's life."^
"That's what I tried for," I said; and
I added to myself: "Why the deuce do we.'"'
"It will be him for me," she meanwhile
went on. "I shall live with it, keep it all to
myself, and — do you know what it will
do.^* — it will seem to make up."
"To make up?"
"I never saw him alone," said Mrs.
Dundene.
I am still keeping the thing to send to her,
punctually, on the day he's married; but I
had of course, on my understanding with her,
a tremendous bout with Mrs. Cavenham,
who protested with indignation against my
"base treachery" and made to Brivet an
appeal for redress which, enlightened, face
to face with the magnificent humility of his
other friend's selection, he couldn't, for
shame, entertain. All he was able to do
was to suggest to me that I might for one or
other of the ladies, at my choice, do him
again; but I had no difficulty in replying
that my best was my best and that what was
done was done. He assented with the awk-
wardness of a man in dispute between
women, and Mrs, Cavenham remained
furious. "Can't 'they' — of all possible
things, think! — take something else?"
"Oh, they want him!"
"Him?" It was monstrous.
"To live with," I explained — "to make
up."
"To make up for what?"
"Why, you know, they never saw him
alone." ^
HENRY ADAMS (1838-1918)
Henry Brooks Adams was the son of Charles Francis Adams, the grandson of John Quincy Adams,
and the great-grandson of John Adams. He was born in Boston on i6 February, 1838. He was
graduated from Harvard College twenty years later, and was chosen Class Orator by his classmates.
In the fall of 1858 he went to Germany with the intention of studying civil law at Berlin. He attended
only one lecture, but he did study to some effect the German language. The winter of 1859-1860 he
spent in Italy and then, after a few months in France, returned to Boston — only to be taken down to
Washington by his father, a member of the House of Representatives, as his private secretary. In
the spring of 1861 his father was appointed Ambassador to England, and Henry went with him, still
acting as his private secretary. He lived in England, with several intervals of travel on the Continent,
until 1868, and during the latter part of this period contributed several essays to the North American
Review. He had abandoned all intention of ever studying the law when he had gone to England,
and now, upon his return, he hoped to become known as a political writer, and to win, if not office,
at least leadership and influence as a reformer in the Democratic party. He began well enough. One
of his essays was reprinted by the Democratic National Committee and thousands of copies were cir-
culated through the country. But his observation of the press and of conditions in Washington in
1869 and 1870 convinced him that his aim was mistaken, for he felt forced to conclude that the Repub-
licans were so firmly intrenched as to make any hope of reform chimerical for at least a generation, and
he had no taste for leadership which, in such circumstances, was bound to be without practical result.
Accordingly he was tempted when, in 187c, he was asked to become an assistant professor of history
at Harvard and, at the same time, editor of the North American Review. He protested that he knew no
history, but he finally accepted the double appointment, and taught medieval history at Harvard
until 1877. He then resigned his post, tiring of it because he felt that his hard work had to be done
unintelligently and that it brought no commensurate returns either to himself or to his students.
Adams now threw himself into the study of American history in the early years of the nineteenth
century, going to live in Washington for the purpose (he had married, and in 1884 he began to build
himself a home in Washington). In 1879 he published a biography of Albert Gallatin and an edition
of his writings. In the following year he published (anonymously) a satirical novel. Democracy, in 1882
a life of John Randolph, and in 1884 another satirical novel (over a pseudonym) entitled Esther. These
three books all have interest and value, and the two novels deserve to be read much more widely than
hitherto they have been, but the great work of this period was his History of the United States of Amer-
ica during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison (9 vols., 1889-1891), over which he spent
years of labor in Washington and in Europe. This may justly be called a masterpiece, and indeed it
is the best piece of historical literature concerning America which has yet been written. It is finely
conceived, exact in scholarship, written from a full background, and excellent in literary form. Adams
also published in 1891 a collection of his essays, entitled Historical Essays. He had intended to con-
tinue his History, and had collected materials for so doing, but several circumstances conspired to
prevent this. The death of his wife induced in him a profound reaction, similar in character to that
which he had earlier experienced at the sudden and accidental death of his sister, and there swept
over him a conviction of the futility of life itself and of his own work which never afterwards quite
left him. This was reinforced by the quiet reception of his great History. The only tangible result
he had seen of his political efforts, in 1869 and 1870, had been that a Republican senator had likened
him to a begonia, showy but not useful. Now his History elicited an honorary degree (1892) from
Western Reserve Uni-versity and the presidency (for 1894) of the American Historical Association,
but he could not discover that the work itself had more than three serious readers, and he felt that
his expenditure of time and money had been excessive for this result. Furthermore, he had long felt
the influence of modern science and of its pretensions to exactness and finality, and he had begun to
think that such work as he and other historians were engaged upon was no better than mere antiquarian
research, showy but not useful. The historian, if he was to be more than a dilettante or smatterer,
must become a scientist, and this meant that his work must remain without foundation or value until
he could discover the law of social development.
243
244
HENRY ADAMS
Such was the tenor of a provocative letter which Adams sent (in lien of a presidential address)
to the American Historical Association in December, 1894. And, though he did not say so, he had
already been definitely stimulated to attack this problem by an hypothesis concerning social develop-
ment propounded by his younger brother, Brooks Adams. He had read his brother's manuscript
(entitled, when later published. The Lazv of Civilizatioyi and Decay) in the summer of 1S93, and had
complained that, though the hypothesis seemed to him correct, it was not adequately supported. 1 he
theory was, briefly, that human societies develop in an inevitably repeated cycle from a state of relative
simplicity and high integration to a state of high complexity producing rapid disintegration, or that
history is a repeated tale of developments from unity to chaos or anarchy. Adams resolved to test
this theory and to try to demonstrate it. The effort led him into a long course of historical and scien-
tific research, which finally convinced him of the theory's truth, though he modified it by concluding
that the evolution of organic life may be defined as the progressive degradation of vital energy, which
means simply that the more complex and highly specialized an organism is, the lower it is in the
scale of being, so that if man and the social organism are the last words in evolution they are also
merely the heralds of their own approaching extinction in a chaotic flux of matter incapable of
producing or sustaining life.
It was Adams's effort, if not to demonstrate — for he came to recognize that demonstration was
practically or perhaps finally impossible — at least to make impressive to men's imaginations this con-
clusion, which led him to write the three books which in recent years have made him famous. These
are: Mont Sauit Michel ayid Chartres (1904), The Education of Henry Adams (1907), and A Letter to
American Teachers of History (1910). The first is a study of the spirit of the Middle Ages which is
a work of consummate art, and which has been universally recognized as the best study of its subject
to be found in the English language. The second is in form an ironical autobiography, too long, but
packed with matter of absorbing interest. The third is a direct exposition of the theory which the
first two are intended to illustrate. Without an understanding both of that theory and of Adams's
purpose in these books the first two mentioned above cannot be fully understood, and this applies
with especial force to the Education^ which is profoundly misleading if read simply as an autobiog-
raphy. The last book which Adams wrote was a short biography of George Cabot Lodge (191 1). He
died on 27 March, 1918.
HISTORY OF THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA
DURING THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF JEFFERSON
AND MADISON^
VOLUME I
CHAPTER n
POPULAR CHARACTERISTICS
The growth of character, social and
national, — the formation of men's minds, —
more interesting than any territorial or
industrial growth,^ defied the tests of
censuses and surveys. No people could be
expected, least of all when in infancy, to
understand the intricacies of its own char-
acter, and rarely has a foreigner been gifted
with insight to explain what natives did not
comprehend. Only with diffidence could
the best-informed Americans venture, in
• The two chapters here reprinted are used with the
permission of Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons.
2 The preceding chapter deals with physical and eco-
nomical conditions in the United States at the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century.
1800, to generalize on the subject of their
own national habits of life and thought. Of
all American travelers President Dwight^
was the most experienced; yet his four
volumes of travels were remarkable for no
trait more uniform than their reticence in
regard to the United States. Clear and
emphatic wherever New England was in
discussion, Dwight claimed no knowledge
of other regions. Where so good a judge
professed ignorance, other observers were
likely to mislead; and Frenchmen like
Liancourt, Englishmen like Weld, or Ger-
mans like Billow, were almost equally
worthless authorities on a subject which
none understood. The newspapers of the
time were little more trustworthy than the
books of travel, and hardly so well written.
The literature of a higher kind was chiefly
limited to New England, New York, and
Pennsylvania. From materials so poor no
precision of result could be expected. A
few customs, more or less local; a few
prejudices, more or less popular; a few
traits of thought, suggesting habits of
3 Of Yale College.
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
245
mind, — must form the entire material for
a study more important than that of poHtics
or economics.
The standard of comfort had much to
do with the standard of character; and in
the United States, except among the slaves,
the laboring class enjoyed an ample supply
of the necessaries of life. In this respect,
as in some others, they claimed superiority
over the laboring class in Europe, and the
claim would have been still stronger had
they shown more skill in using the abun-
dance that surrounded them. The Due de
Liancourt, among foreigners the best and
kindest observer, made this remark on the
mode of life he saw in Pennsylvania:
There is a contrast of cleanliness with its oppo-
site which to a stranger is very remarkable. The
people of the country are as astonished that one
should object to sleeping two or three in the same
bed and in dirty sheets, or to drink from the same
dirty glass after half a score of others, as to see
one neglect to wash one's hands and face of a
morning. Whiskey diluted with water is the
ordinary country drink. There is no settler,
however poor, whose family does not take coffee
or chocolate for breakfast, and always a little salt
meat; at dinner, salt meat, or salt fish, and eggs;
at supper again salt meat and coffee. This is also
the common regime of the taverns.
An amusing, though quite untrustworthy
Englishman named Ashe, who invented an
American journey in 1806, described the
fare of a Kentucky cabin:
The dinner consisted of a large piece of salt
bacon, a dish of hominy, and a tureen of squirrel
broth. I dined entirely on the last dish, which I
found incomparably good, and the meat equal to
the most delicate chicken. The Kentuckian ate
nothing but bacon, which indeed is the favorite
diet of all the inhabitants of the State, and drank
nothing but whiskey, which soon made him more
than two-thirds drunk. In this last practice he
is also supported by the public habit. In a coun-
try, then, where bacon and spirits form the favor-
ite summer repast, it cannot be just to attribute
entirely the causes of infirmity to the climate. No
people on earth live with less regard to regimen.
They eat salt meat three times a day, seldom or
never have any vegetables, and drink ardent
spirits from morning till night. They have not
only an aversion to fresh meat, but a vulgar prej-
udice that it is unwholesome. The truth is, their
stomachs are depraved by burning liquors, and
they have no appetite for anything but what is
high-flavored and strongly impregnated by salt.
Salt pork three times a day was regarded
as an essential part of American diet. In
the Chainbearer^ Cooper described what he
called American poverty as it existed in
1784. **As for bread," said the mother,
"I count that for nothing. We always
have bread and potatoes enough; but I
hold a family to be in a desperate way when
the mother can see the bottom of the pork-
barrel. Give me the children that's raised
on good sound pork afore all the game in
the country. Game's good as a relish, and
so's bread; but pork is the staff of life.
. . . My children I calkerlate to bring up
on pork."
Many years before the time to which
Cooper referred, Poor Richard asked:
"Maids of America, who gave you bad
teeth. f*" and supplied the answer: "Hot
soupings and frozen apples." Franklin's
question and answer were repeated in a
wider sense by many writers, but none was
so emphatic as Volney:
I will venture to say [declared Volney] that if
a prize were proposed for the scheme of a regimen
most calculated to injure the stomach, the teeth,
and the health in general, no better cculd be in-
vented than that of the Americans. In the morn-
ing at breakfast they deluge their stomach with a
quart of hot water, impregnated with tea, or so
slightly with coffee that it is mere colored water;
and they swallow, almost without chewing, hot
bread, half baked, toast soaked in butter, cheese
of the fattest kind, slices of salt or hung beef, ham,
etc., all which are nearly insoluble. At dinner
they have boiled pastes under the name of pud-
dings, and the fattest are esteemed the most
delicious; all their sauces, even for roast beef, are
melted butter; their turnips and potatoes swim in
hog's lard, butter, or fat; under the name of pie
or pumpkin, their pastry is nothing but a greasy
paste, never sufficiently baked. To digest these
viscous substances they take tea almost instantly
after dinner, making it so strong that it is abso-
lutely bitter to the taste, in which state it affects
the nerves so powerfully that even the English find
it brings on a more obstinate restlessness than
coffee. Supper again introduces salt meats or
oysters. As Chastellux says, the whole day
passes in heaping indigestions on one another;
and to give tone to the poor, relaxed, and wearied
stomach, they drink Madeira, rum, French
brandy, gin, or malt spirits, which complete the
ruin of the nervous system.
An American breakfast never failed to
interest foreigners, on account of the variety
246
HENRY ADAMS
and abundance of its dishes. On the main
lines of travel, fresh meat and vegetables
were invariably served at all meals; but
Indian corn was the national crop, and
Indian corn was eaten three times a day in
another form as salt pork. The rich alone
could afford fresh meat. Ice-chests were
hardly known. In the country fresh meat
could not regularly be got, except in the
shape of poultry or game; but the hog cost
nothing to keep, and very little to kill and
preserve. Thus the ordinary rural American
was brought up on salt pork and Indian
corn, or rye; and the effect of this diet
showed itself in dyspepsia.
One of the traits to which Liancourt
alluded marked more distinctly the stage of
social development. By day or by night,
privacy was out of the question. Not
only must all men travel in the same coach,
dine at the same table, at the same time,
on the same fare, but even their beds were
in common, without distinction of persons.
Innkeepers would not understand that a
diffe/^rt arrangement was possible. When
the Engt^*«/i\ traveler Weld reached Elkton,
on the maiA road from Philadelphia to
Baltimore, he asked the landlord what
accommodation he had. "Don't trouble
yourself about that," was the reply; *'I
have no less than eleven beds in one room
alone." This primitive habit extended
over the whole country from Massachusetts
to Georgia, and no American seemed to
revolt against the tyranny of innkeepers.
"At New York I was lodged with two
others, in a back room on the ground
floor," wrote, in 1796, the Philadelphian
whose complaints have already been men-
tioned. "What can be the reason for that
vulgar, hoggish custom, common in America,
of squeezing three, six, or eight beds into
one room.^"
Nevertheless, the Americans were on the
whole more neat than their critics allowed.
"You have not seen the Americans," was
Cobbett's reply, in 1819, to such charges;
"you have not seen the nice, clean, neat
houses of the farmers of Long Island, in
New England, in the Quaker counties of
Pennsylvania; you have seen nothing but
the smoke-dried ultra-montanians." Yet
Cobbett drew a sharp contrast between the
laborer's neat cottage familiar to him in
Surrey and Hampshire, and the "shell of
boards" which the American occupied, "all
around him as barren as a sea-beach." He
added, too, that "the example of neatness
was wanting"; no one taught it by showing
its charm. Felix de Beaujour, otherwise
not an enthusiastic American, paid a warm
compliment to the country in this single
respect, although he seemed to have the
cities chiefly in mind:
American neatness must possess some very at-
tractive quality, since it seduces every traveler;
and there is no one of them who, in returning to his
own country, does not wish to meet again there
that air of ease and neatness which rejoiced his
sight during his stay in the United States.
Almost every traveler discussed the
question whether the Americans were a
temperate people, or whether they drank
more than the English. Temperate they
certainly were not, when judged by a modern
standard. Every one acknowledged that
in the South and West drinking was occa-
sionally excessive; but even in Pennsylvania
and New England the universal taste for
drams proved habits by no means strict.
Every grown man took his noon toddy as
a matter of course; and although few were
seen publicly drunk, many were habitually
affected by liquor. The earliest temperance
movement, ten or twelve years later, was
said to have had its source in the scandal
caused by the occasional intoxication of
ministers at their regular meetings. Cobbett
thought drinking the national disease; at
all hours of the day, he said, young men,
"even little boys, at or under twelve years
of age, go into stores and tip off their
drams." The mere comparison with Eng-
land proved that the evil was great, for
the English and Scotch were among the
largest consumers of beer and alcohol on
the globe.
In other respects besides sobriety Ameri-
can manners and morals were subjects of
much dispute, and if judged by the dia-
tribes of travelers like Thomas Moore and
H. W. Billow, were below the level of
Europe. Of all classes of statistics, moral
statistics were least apt to be preserved.
Even in England, social vices could be
gauged only by the records of criminal and
divorce courts; in America, police was
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
247
wanting and a divorce suit almost, if not
quite, unknown. Apart from some coarse-
ness, society must have been pure; and the
coarseness was mostly an English inheritance.
Among New Englanders, Chief-Justice Par-
sons was the model of judicial, social, and
religious propriety; yet Parsons, in 1808,
presented to a lady a copy of Tom JoneSy
with a letter calling attention to the ad-
ventures of Molly Seagrim and the useful-
ness of describmg vice. Among the social
sketches in the Portfolio were many allu-
sions to the coarseness of Philadelphia
society, and the manners common to tea-
parties. *'I heard from married ladies,'*
said a writer in February, 1803, ''whose
station as mothers demanded from them a
guarded conduct, — from young ladies, whose
age forbids the audience of such conversation,
and who using it modesty must disclaim,
— indecent allusions, indelicate expressions,
and even at times immoral innuendoes.
A loud laugh or a coarse exclamation fol-
lowed each of these, and the young ladies
generally went through the form of raising
their fans to their faces."
Yet public and private records might be
searched long, before they revealed evidence
of misconduct such as filled the press and
formed one of the commonest topics of
conversation in the society of England and
France. Almost every American family,
however respectable, could show some
victim to intemperance among its men,
but few were mortified by a public scandal
due to its women.
If the absence of positive evidence did not
prove American society to be as pure as its
simple and primitive condition implied, the
same conclusion would be reached by ob-
serving the earnestness with which critics
collected every charge that could be brought
against it, and by noting the substance of
the whole. Tried by this test, the society of
1800 was often coarse and sometimes brutal,
but, except for intemperance, was moral.
Indeed, its chief offense, in the eyes of
Europeans, was dullness. The amusements
of a people were commonly a fair sign of
social development, and the Americans
were only beginning to amuse themselves.
The cities were small and few in number, and
the diversions were such as cost little and
required but elementary knowledge. In
New England, although the theater had
gained a firm foothold in Boston, Puritan
feelings still forbade the running of horses.
The principal amusements of the inhabitants
[said Dwight] are visiting, dancing, music, con-
versation, walking, riding, sailing, shooting at a
mark, draughts, chess, and unhappily, in some
of the larger towns, cards and dramatic exhibi-
tions. A considerable amusement is also fur-
nished in many places by the examination and
exhibitions of the superior schools; and a more
considerable one by the public exhibitions of col-
leges. Our countrymen also fish and hunt.
Journeys taken for pleasure are very numerous,
and are a very favorite object. Boys and young
men play at foot-ball, cricket, quoits, and at many
other sports of an athletic cast, and in the winter
are peculiarly fond of skating. Riding in a sleigh,
or sledge, is also a favorite diversion in New
England.
President Dwight was sincere in his belief
that college commencements and sleigh-
riding satisfied the wants of his people; he
looked upon whist as an unhappy dissipa-
tion, and upon the theater as immoral.
He had no occasion to condemn horse-
racing, for no race-course was to be found in
New England. The horse and the dog
existed only in varieties little suited for sport.
In colonial days New England produced
one breed of horses worth preserving and
developing, — the Narragansett pacer; but,
to the regret even of the clergy, this animal
almost disappeared, and in 1800 New Eng-
land could show nothing to take its place.
The germ of the trotter and the trotting-
match, the first general popular amusement,
could be seen in almost any country village,
where the owners of horses were in the habit
of trotting what were called scratch-races,
for a quarter or half a mile from the door
of the tavern, along the public road. Perhaps
this amusement had already a right to be
called a New England habit, showing defined
tastes; but the force of the popular instinct
was not fully felt in Massachusetts, or
even in New York, although there it was
given full play. New York possessed a
race-course, and made in 1792 a great
stride toward popularity by importing the
famous stallion "Messenger" to become the
source of endless interest for future genera-
tions; but Virginia was the region where
the American showed his true character as a
248
HENRY ADAMS
lover of sport. Long before the Revolu-
tion the race-course was commonly estab-
lished in Virginia and Maryland; English
running-horses of pure blood — descendants
of the Darley Arabian and the Godolphin
Arabian — were imported, and racing be-
came the chief popular entertainment. The
long Revolutionary War, and the general
ruin it caused, checked the habit and de-
teriorated the breed; but with returning
prosperity Virginia showed that the instinct
was stronger than ever. In 1798 ** Diomed,"
famous as the sire of racers, was imported
into the State, and future rivalry between
Virginia and New York could be foreseen.
In 1800 the Virginia race-course still re-
mained at the head of American popular
amusements.
In an age when the Prince of Wales and
crowds of English gentlemen attended
every prize-fight, and patronized Tom Crib,
Dutch Sam, the Jew Mendoza, and the
negro Molyneux, an Englishman could
hardly have expected that a Virginia race-
course should be free from vice; and perhaps
travelers showed best the general morality
of the people by their practice of dwelling
on Virginia vices. They charged the Vir-
ginians with fondness for horse-racing,
cock-fighting, betting, and drinking; but
the popular habit which most shocked them,
and with which books of travel filled pages of
description, was the so-called rough-and-
tumble fight. The practice was not one on
which authors seemed likely to dwell; yet
foreigners like Weld, and Americans like
Judge Longstreet in Georgia Scenes^ united
to give it a sort of grotesque dignity like
that of a bull-fight, and under their treat-
ment it became interesting as a popular
habit. The rough-and-tumble fight differed
from the ordinary prize-fight, or boxing-
match, by the absence of rules. Neither
kicking, tearing, biting, nor gouging was
forbidden by the law of the ring. Brutal
as the practice was, it was neither new nor
exclusively Virginian. The English travel-
ers who described it as American barbarism,
might have seen the same sight in York-
shire at the same date. The rough-and-
tumble fight was English in origin, and was
brought to Virginia and the Carolinas in
early days, whence it spread to the Ohio and
Mississippi. The habit attracted general
notice because of its brutality in a society
that showed few brutal instincts. Friendly
foreigners like Liancourt were honestly
shocked by it; others showed somewhat too
plainly their pleasure at finding a vicious
habit which they could consider a natural
product of democratic society. Perhaps
the description written by Thomas Ashe
showed best not only the ferocity of the
fight, but also the antipathies of the writer,
for Ashe had something of the artist in his
touch, and he felt no love for Americans.
The scene was at Wheeling. A Kentuckian
and a Virginian were the combatants.
Bulk and bone were in favor of the Kentuckian;
science and craft in that of the Virginian. The
former promised himself victory from his power;
the latter from his science. Very few rounds had
taken place or fatal blows given, before the Vir-
ginian contracted his whole form, drew up his
arms to his face, with his hands nearly closed in
a concave by the fingers being bent to the full
extension of the flexors, and summoning up all
his energy for one act of desperation, pitched
himself into the bosom of his opponent. Before
the effects of this could be ascertained, the sky
was rent by the shouts of the multitude; and I
could learn that the Virginian had expressed as
much beauty and skill in his retraction and bound,
as if he had been bred in a menagerie and practiced
action and attitude among panthers and wolves.
The shock received by the Kentuckian, and the
want of breath, brought him instantly to the
ground. The Virginian never lost his hold.
Like those bats of the South who never quit the
subject on which they fasten till they taste blood,
he kept his knees in his enemy's body; fixing his
claws in his hair and his thumbs on his eyes, gave
them an instantaneous start from their sockets.
The sufferer roared aloud, but uttered no com-
plaint. The citizens again shouted with joy.
Ashe asked his landlord whether this
habit spread down the Ohio.
I understood that it did, on the left-hand side,
and that I would do well to land there as little as
possible. ... I again demanded how a stranger
was to distinguish a good from a vicious house of
entertainment. " By previous Inquiry, or, if that
was impracticable, a tolerable judgment could be
formed from observing in the landlord a possession
or an absence of ears."
The temper of the writer was at least as
remarkable in this description as the scene
he pretended to describe, for Ashe's Travels
were believed to have been chiefly imaginary;
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
249
but no one denied the roughness of the
lower classes in the South and Southwest,
nor was roughness wholly confined to them.
No prominent man m Western society
bore himself with more courtesy and dignity
than Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, who in
l8(X) was candidate for the post of major-
general of State militia, and had previously
served as Judge on the Supreme Bench of
his State; yet the fights in which he had
been engaged exceeded belief.
Border society was not refined, but among
its vices, as its virtues, few were permanent,
and little idea could be drawn of the char-
acter that would at last emerge. The
Mississippi boatman and the squatter on
Indian lands were perhaps the most dis-
tinctly American type then existing, as far
removed from the Old World as though
Europe were a dream. Their language and
imagination showed contact with Indians.
A traveler on the levee at Natchez, in 1808,
overheard a quarrel in a flatboat near by:
"I am a man; I am a horse; I am a team,"
cried one voice; "I can whip any man in all Ken-
tucky, by God!" *T am an alligator," cried the
other; "half man, half horse; can whip any man
on the Mississippi, by God!" 'T am a man,"
shouted the first; "have the best horse, best dog,
best gun, and handsomest wife in all Kentucky,
by God!" "I am a Mississippi snapping turtle,"
rejoined the second; "have bear's claws, alligator's
teeth, and the devil's tail; can whip any man, by
Godri
And on this usual formula of defiance the
two fire-eaters began their fight, biting,
gouging, and tearing. Foreigners were
deeply impressed by barbarism such as this,
and orderly emigrants from New England
and Pennsylvania avoided contact with
Southern drinkers and fighters; but even
then they knew that with a new generation
such traits must disappear, and that little
could be judged of popular character from
the habits of frontiersmen. Perhaps such
vices deserved more attention when found
in the older communities, but even there
they were rather survivals of English low-
life than products of a new soil, and they
were given too much consequence in the
tales of foreign travelers.
1 A rough-and-tumble fight preceded by speeches of
this kind is described by Mark Twain in The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn.
This was not the only instance where
foreigners were struck by what they con-
sidered popular traits, which natives rarely
noticed. Idle curiosity was commonly rep-
resented as universal, especially in the
Southern settler who knew no other form
of conversation:
Frequently have I been stopped by one of them
[said Weld], and without further preface asked
where I was from, if I was acquainted with any
news, where bound to, and finally my name.
"Stop, Mister! why, I guess now you be coming
from the new State?" "No, sir." "Why, then,
I guess as how you be coming from Kentuck.^"
"No, sir." "Oh, why, then, pray now where
might you be coming from?" "From the low
country." "Why, you must have heard all the
news, then; pray now. Mister, what might the
price of bacon be in those parts?" "Upon my
word, my friend, I can't inform you." "Ay, ay;
I see. Mister, you be'ent one of us. Pray now,
Mister, what might your name be?"
Almost every writer spoke with annoyance
of the inquisitorial habits of New England
and the impertinence of American curiosity.
Complaints so common could hardly have
lacked foundation, yet the Americans as a
people were never loquacious, but inclined
to be somewhat reserved, and they could
not recognize the accuracy of the descrip-
tion. President Dwight repeatedly ex-
pressed astonishment at the charge, and
asserted that in his large experience it had
no foundation. Forty years later, Charles
Dickens found complaint with Americans
for taciturnity. Equally strange to modern
experience were the continual complaints in
books of travel that loungers and loafers,
idlers of every description, infested the
taverns, and annoyed respectable travelers
both native and foreign. Idling seemed to be
considered a popular vice, and was commonly
associated with tippling. So completely did
the practice disappear in the course of an-
other generation that it could scarcely be re-
called as offensive; but in truth less work was
done by the average man in 1800 than in
aftertimes, for there was actually less work
to do. "Good country this for lazy fel-
lows," wrote Wilson from Kentucky; "they
plant corn, turn their pigs into the woods,
and in the autumn feed upon corn and
pork. They lounge about the rest of the
year." The roar of the steam-engine had
250
HENRY ADAMS
never been heard in the land, and the
earner's wagon was three weeks between
Phihulelpliia and I'ittsburgh. What need
for haste when days counted for so httle?
Why not lounge about the tavern when
life had no better amusement to offer? Why
mind one's own business when one's business
would take care of itself?
Yet however idle the American some-
times appeared, and however large the class
of tavern loafers may have actually been,
the true American was active and indus-
trious. No immigrant came to America
for ease or idleness. If an English farmer
bought land near New York, Philadelphia,
or Baltimore, and made the most of his
small capital, he found that while he could
earn more money than in Surrey or Devon-
shire, he worked harder and suffered greater
discomforts. The climate was trying; fever
was common; the crops ran new risks from
strange insects, drought, and violent weather;
the weeds were annoying; the flies and
mosquitoes tormented him and his cattle;
laborers were scarce and indifferent; the
slow and magisterial ways of England,
where everything was made easy, must be
exchanged for quick and energetic action;
the farmer's own eye must see to every
detail, his own hand must hold the plough
and the scythe. Life was more exacting,
and every such man in America was required
to do, and actually did, the work of two
such men in Europe. Few English farmers
of the conventional class took kindly to
American ways, or succeeded in adapting
themselves to the changed conditions.
Germans were more successful and became
rich; but the poorer and more adventurous
class, who had no capital, and cared nothing
for the comforts of civilization, went West,
to find a harder lot. When, after toiling for
weeks, they reached the neighborhood of
Genessee or the banks of some stream in
southern Ohio or Indiana, they put up a
rough cabin of logs with an earthen floor,
cleared an acre or two of land, and planted
Indian corn between the tree-stumps, —
lucky if, like the Kentuckian, they had a pig
to turn into the woods. Between April and
October, Albert Gallatin used to say, Indian
corn made the penniless immigrant a capital-
ist. New settlers suffered many of the ills
that would have afflicted an army marching
and fighting in a country of dense forest and
swamp, with one sore misery besides, — that
whatever trials the men endured, tiie burden
bore most heavily upon the women and chil-
dren. The chance of being shot or scalped
by Indians was hardly worth considering
when compared with the certainty of malarial
fever, or the strange disease called milk-
sickness, or the still more depressing home-
sickness, or the misery of nervous pros-
tration, which wore out generation after
generation of women and children on the
frontiers, and left a tragedy in every log-cabin.
Not for love of ease did men plunge into the
wilderness. Few laborers of the Old World
endured a harder lot, coarser fare, or anxieties
and responsibilities greater than those of the
Western emigrant. Not merely because he
enjoyed the luxury of salt pork, whiskey, or
even coffee three times a day did the Ameri-
can laborer claim superiority over the
European.
A standard far higher than the average
was common to the cities; but the city popu-
lation was so small as to be trifling. Boston,
New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore to-
gether contained one hundred and eighty
thousand inhabitants; and these were the
only towns containing a white population of
more than ten thousand persons. In a total
population of more than five millions, this
number of city people, as Jefferson and his
friends rightly thought, was hardly American,
for the true American was supposed to be
essentially rural. Their comparative luxury
was outweighed by the squalor of nine hun-
dred thousand slaves alone.
From these slight notices of national
habits no other safe inference could be drawn
than that the people were still simple. The
path their development might take was one
of the many problems with which their
future was perplexed. Such few habits as
might prove to be fixed, offered little
clew to the habits that might be adopted in
the process of growth, and speculation was
useless where change alone could be con-
sidered certain.
If any prediction could be risked, an
observer might have been warranted in sus-
pecting that the popular character was
likely to be conservative, for as yet this
trait was most marked, at least in the older
societies of New England, Pennsylvania,
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
251
and Virginia. Great as were the material
obstacles in the path of the United States,
the greatest obstacle of all was in the human
mind. Down to the close of the eighteenth
century no change had occurred in the world
which warranted practical men in assuming
that great changes Were to come. After-
ward, as time passed, and as science devel-
oped man's capacity to control Nature's
forces, old-fashioned conservatism vanished
from society, reappearing occasionally, like
the stripes on a mule, only to prove its former
existence; but during the eighteenth century
the progress of America, except in political
paths, had been less rapid than ardent
reformers wished, and the reaction which
followed the French Revolution made it
seem even slower than it was. In 1723
Benjamin Franklin landed at Philadelphia,
and with his loaf of bread under his arm
walked along Market Street toward an im-
mortality such as no American had then
conceived. He died in 1790, after witness-
ing great political revolutions; but the
intellectual revolution was hardly as rapid
as he must, in his youth, have hoped.
In 1732 Franklin induced some fifty per-
sons to found a subscription library, and his
example and energy set a fashion which was
generally followed. In 1800 the library he
founded was still in existence; numerous
small subscription libraries on the same
model, containing fifty or a hundred vol-
umes, were scattered in country towns; but
all the public libraries in the United States —
collegiate, scientific, or popular, endowed or
unendowed — could hardly show fifty thou-
sand volumes, including duplicates, fully one
third being still theological.
Haifa century had passed since Franklin's
active mind drew the lightning from heaven,
and decided the nature of electricity. No
one in America had yet carried further his
experiments in the field which he had made
American. This inactivity was commonly
explained as a result of the long Revolu-
tionary War; yet the war had not prevented
population and wealth from increasing, until
Philadelphia in 1800 was far in advance of
the Philadelphia which had seen Franklin's
kite flying among the clouds.
In the year 1753 Franklin organized the
postal system of the American colonies,
making it self-supporting. No record was
preserved of the number of letters then car-
ried in proportion to the population, but in
1800 the gross receipts for postage were
^320,000, toward which Pennsylvania con-
tributed most largely, — the sum of ^55,000.
From letters the Government received in
gross $290,000. The lowest rate of letter-
postage was then eight cents. The smallest
charge for letters carried more than a hun-
dred miles was twelve and a half cents. If
on an average ten letters were carried for a
dollar, the whole number of letters was
2,900,000, — about one a year for every grown
inhabitant.
Such a rate of progress could not be called
rapid even by conservatives, and more than
one stanch conservative thought it unreason-
ably slow. Even in New York, where foreign
influence was active and the rewards of
scientific skill were comparatively liberal,
science hardly kept pace with wealth and
population.
Noah Webster, who before beginning his
famous dictionary edited the New York
Commercial Advertiser^ and wrote on all sub-
jects with characteristic confidence, com-
plained of the ignorance of his countrymen.
He claimed for the New Englanders an
acquaintance with theology, law, politics,
and light English literature; "but as to clas-
sical learning, history (civil and ecclesiasti-
cal), mathematics, astronomy, chemistry,
botany, and natural history, excepting here
and there a rare instance of a man who is
eminent in some one of these branches, we
may be said to have no learning at all, or a
mere smattering." Although defending his
countrymen from the criticisms of Dr. Priest-
ley, he admitted that "our learning is super-
ficial in a shameful degree, . . . our colleges
are disgracefully destitute of books and
philosophical apparatus, . . . and I am
ashamed to own that scarcely a branch of
science can be fully investigated in America
for want of books, especially original works.
This defect of our libraries I have experienced
myself in searching for materials for the
History of Epidemic Diseases. ... As to
libraries, we have no such things. There are
not more than three or four tolerable libra-
ries in America, and these are extremely im-
perfect. Great numbers of the most valuable
authors have not found their way across t-h?
Atlantic."
252
HENRY ADAMS
Tliis complaint was made in the year 1800,
and was the more significant because it
showed that Webster, a man equally at home
in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston,
thought his country's deficiencies greater than
could be excused or explained by its circum-
stances. George Ticknor felt at least equal
difficulty in explaining the reason why, as
late as 18 14, even good schoolbooks were
rare in Boston, and a copy of Euripides in the
original could not be bought at any book-
seller's shop in New England. For some
reason, the American mind, except in politics,
seemed to these students of literature in a
condition of unnatural sluggishness; and such
complaints were not confined to literature or
science. If Americans agreed in any opinion,
they were united in wishing for roads; but
even on that point whole communities
showed an indifference, or hostility, that
annoyed their contemporaries. President
Dwight was a somewhat extreme conserva-
tive in politics and religion, while the State
of Rhode Island was radical in both respects;
but Dwight complained with bitterness
unusual in his mouth that Rhode Island
showed no spirit of progress. The subject
of his criticism was an unfinished turnpike-
road across the State.
The people of Providence expended upon this
road, as we are informed, the whole sum permitted
by the Legislature. This was sufficient to make
only those parts which I have mentioned. The
turnpike company then applied to the Legislature
for leave to expend such an additional sum as
would complete the work. The Legislature re-
fused. The principal reason for the refusal, as
alleged by one of the members, it is said, was the
following: that turnpikes and the establishment
of religious worship had their origin in Great Brit-
ain, the government of which was a monarchy
and the inhabitants slaves; that the people of
Massachusetts and Connecticut were obliged by
law to support ministers and pay the fare of turn-
pikes, and were therefore slaves also; that if they
chose to be slaves they undoubtedly had a right
to their choice, but that free-born Rhode Islanders
ought never to submit to be priest-ridden, nor to
pay for the privilege of traveling on the highway.
This demonstrative reasoning prevailed, and the
road continued in the state which I have men-
tioned until the year 1805. It was then com-
pleted, and free-born Rhode Islanders bowed their
necks to the slavery of traveling on a good road.
President Dwight seldom indulged in sar-
casm or exaggeration such as he showed in
this instance; but he repeated only matters
of notoriety in charging some of the most
democratic communities with unwillingness
to pay for good roads. If roads were to exist,
they must be the result of public or private
enterprise; and if the public in certain States
would neither construct roads nor permit
corporations to construct them, the entire
Union must suffer for want of communica-
tion. So strong was the popular prejudice
against paying for the privilege of traveling
on a highway that in certain States, like
Rhode Island and Georgia, turnpikes were
long unknown, while in Virginia and North
Carolina the roads were little better than
where the prejudice was universal.
In this instance the economy of a simple
and somewhat rude society accounted in part
for indifference; in other cases, popular preju-
dice took a form less easily understood. So
general was the hostility to Banks as to offer
a serious obstacle to enterprise. The popu-
larity of President Washington and the use-
fulness of his administration were impaired
by his support of a national bank and a fund-
ing system. Jefferson's hostility to all the
machinery of capital was shared by a great
majority of the Southern people and a large
minority in the North. For seven years the
New York legislature refused to charter the
first banking company in the State; and when
in 1791 the charter was obtained, and the
Bank fell into Federalist hands, Aaron Burr
succeeded in obtaining banking privileges for
the Manhattan Company only by concealing
them under the pretense of furnishing a sup-
ply of fresh water to the city of New York.
This conservative habit of mind was more
harmful in America than in other communi-
ties, because Americans needed more than
older societies the activity which could alone
partly compensate for the relative feebleness
of their means compared with the magnitude
of their task. Some instances of sluggishness,
common to Europe and America, were hardly
credible. For more than ten years in Eng-
land the steam-engines of Watt had been
working, in common and successful use,
causing a revolution in industry that threat-
ened to drain the world for England's advan-
tage; yet Europe during a generation left
England undisturbed to enjoy the monop-
oly of steam. France and Germany were
England's rivals in commerce and manufac-
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
253
tures, and required steam for self-defense;
while the United States were commercial
allies of England, and needed steam neither
for mines nor manufactures, but their need
was still extreme. Every American knew
that if steam could be successfully applied to
navigation, it must produce an immediate
increase of wealth, besides an ultimate settle-
ment of the most serious material and politi-
cal difficulties of the Union. Had both the
national and State Governments devoted
millions of money to this object, and had the
citizens wasted, if necessary, every dollar in
their slowly filling pockets to attain it, they
would have done no more than the occasion
warranted, even had they failed; but failure
was not to be feared, for they had with their
own eyes seen the experiment tried, and they
did not dispute its success. For America this
question had been settled as early as 1789,
when John Fitch — a mechanic, without edu-
cation or wealth, but with the energy of
genius — invented engine and paddles of his
own, with so much success that during a
whole summer Philadelphians watched his
ferry-boat plying daily against the river cur-
rent. No one denied that his boat was
rapidly, steadily, and regularly moved
against wind and tide, with as much cer-
tainty and convenience as could be expected
in a first experiment; yet Fitch's company
failed. He could raise no more money; the
public refused to use his boat or to help him
build a better; they did not want it, would
not believe in it, and broke his heart by their
contempt. Fitch struggled against failure,
and invented another boat moved by a screw.
The Eastern public still proving indifferent,
he wandered to Kentucky, to try his fortune
on the Western waters. Disappointed there,
as in Philadelphia and New York, he made
a deliberate attempt to end his life by drink;
but the process proving too slow, he saved
twelve opium pills from the physician's pre-
scription, and was found one morning dead.
Fitch's death took place in an obscure
Kentucky inn, three years before Jefferson,
the philosopher president, entered the White
House. Had Fitch been the only inventor
thus neglected, his peculiarities and the
defects of his steamboat might account for
his failure; but he did not stand alone. At
the same moment Philadelphia contained
another inventor, Oliver Evans, a man so in-
genious as to be often called the American
Watt. He, too, invented a locomotive steam-
engine which he longed to bring into common
use. The great services actually rendered
by this extraordinary man were not a tithe
of those he would gladly have performed, had
he found support and encouragement; but
his success was not even so great as that of
Fitch, and he stood aside while Livingston
and Fulton, by their greater resources and
influence, forced the steamboat on a skeptical
public.
While the inventors were thus ready, and
while State legislatures were offering mis-
chievous monopolies for this invention, which
required only some few thousand dollars of
ready money, the Philosophical Society of
Rotterdam wrote to the American Philo-
sophical Society at Philadelphia, requesting
to know what improvements had been made
in the United States in the construction of
steam-engines. The subject was referred to
Benjamin H. Latrobe, the most eminent
engineer in America, and his Report, pre-
sented to the Society in May, 1803, pub-
Hshed in the Transactions, and transmitted
abroad, showed the reasoning on which con-
servatism rested.
During the general lassitude of mechanical
exertion which succeeded the American Revolu-
tion [said Latrobe], the utility of steam-engines
appears to have been forgotten; but the subject
afterward started into very general notice in a
form in which it could not possibly be attended
with much success. A sort of mania began to
prevail, which indeed has not yet entirely sub-
sided, for impelling boats by steam-engines. . . .
For a short time a passage-boat, rowed by a steam-
engine, was established between Bordentown and
Philadelphia, but it was soon laid aside. . . .
There are indeed general objections to the use of
the steam-engine for impelling boats, from which
no particular mode of application can be free.
These are, first, the weight of the engine and of
the fuel; second, the large space it occupies; third,
the tendency of its action to rack the vessel and
render it leaky; fourth, the expense of mainte-
nance; fifth, the irregularity of its motion and the
motion of the water in the boiler and cistern, and
of the fuel-vessel in rough water; sixth, the diffi-
culty arising from the liability of the paddles or
oars to break If light, and from the weight, If made
strong. Nor have I ever heard of an instance,
verified by other testimony than that of the in-
ventor, of a speedy and agreeable voyage having
been performed in a steamboat of any construe-
254
HENRY ADAMS
tlon. I am well aware that there are still many
very respectahlc and ingenious men who consider
the application of the steam-engine to the purpose
of navigation as highly important and as very
practicahle, especially on the rapid waters of the
Mississippi, and who would feel themselves almost
offended at the expression of an opposite opinion.
And perhaps some of the objections against it
may be obviated. That founded on the expense
and weight of the fuel may not for some years
exist in the Mississippi, where there is a redun-
dance of wood on the banks; but the cutting and
loading will be almost as great an evil.
Within four years the steamboat was run-
ning, and Latrobe was its warmest friend.
The dispute was a contest of temperaments,
a divergence between minds, rather than a
question of science; and a few visionaries
such as those to whom Latrobe alluded —
men like Chancellor Livingston, Joel Barlow,
John Stevens, Samuel L. Mitchill, and
Robert Fulton — dragged society forward.
What but skepticism could be expected
among a people thus asked to adopt the
steamboat, when as yet the ordinary atmo-
spheric steam-engine, such as had been in
use in Europe for a hundred years, was prac-
tically unknown to them, and the engines of
Watt were a fable.? Latrobe's Report further
said that in the spring of 1803, when he
wrote, five steam-engines were at work in
the United States, — one lately set up by the
Manhattan Water Company in New York
to supply the city with water; another in
New York for sawing timber; two in Phila-
delphia, belonging to the city, for supplying
water and running a rolling and slitting mill;
and one at Boston employed in some manu-
facture. All but one of these were probably
constructed after 1800, and Latrobe
neglected to say whether they belonged to
the old Newcomen type, or to Watt's manu-
facture, or to American invention; but he
added that the chief American improvement
on the steam-engine had been the construc-
tion of a wooden boiler, which developed
sufficient power to work the Philadelphia
pump at the rate of twelve strokes, of six
feet, per minute. Twelve strokes a minute,
or one stroke every five seconds, though not
a surprising power, might have answered its
purpose, had not the wooden boiler, as
Latrobe admitted, quickly decomposed, and
steam-leaks appeared at every bolt-hole.
If so eminent and so intelligent a man as
Latrobe, who had but recently emigrated in
the prime of life from England, knew little
about Watt, and nothing about Oliver Evans,
whose experience would have been well
worth communicating to any philosophical
society in Europe, the more ignorant and
unscientific public could not feel faith in a
force of which they knew nothing at all.
For nearly two centuries the Americans had
struggled on foot or horseback over roads
not much better than trails, or had floated
down rushing streams in open boats momen-
tarily in danger of sinking or upsetting. They
had at length, in the Eastern and Middle
States, reached the point of constructing
turnpikes and canals. Into these undertak-
ings they put sums of money relatively large,
for the investment seemed safe and the prof-
its certain. Steam as a locomotive power
was still a visionary idea, beyond their expe-
rience, contrary to European precedent, and
exposed to a thousand risks. They regarded
it as a delusion.
About three years after Latrobe wrote his
Report on the steam-engine, Robert Fulton
began to build the boat which settled forever
the value of steam as a locomotive power.
According to Fulton's well-known account of.
his own experience, he suffered almost as
keenly as Fitch, twenty years before, under
the want of popular sympathy:
When I was building my first steamboat at
New York [he said, according to Judge Story's
report], the project was viewed by the public
either with indifference or with contempt as a
visionary scheme. My friends indeed were civil,
but they were shy. They listened with patience
to my explanations, but with a settled cast of
incredulity upon their countenances. I felt the
full force of the lamentation of the poet, —
"Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land,
All fear, none aid you, and few understand."
As I had occasion to pass daily to and from the
building-yard while my boat was in progress, I
have often loitered unknown near the idle groups
of strangers gathering in little circles, and heard
various inquiries as to the object of this new vehi-
cle. The language was uniformly that of scorn, or
sneer, or ridicule. The loud laugh often rose at
my expense; the dry jest; the wise calculation of
losses and expenditures; the dull but endless repe-
tition of the Fulton Folly. Never did a single
encouraging remark, a bright hope, or a warm
wish cross my path.
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
255
Possibly Fulton and Fitch, like otiicr in-
ventors, may have exaggerated the public
apathy and contempt; but whatever was the
precise force of the innovating spirit, con-
servatism possessed the world by right.
Experience forced on men's minds the con-
viction that what had ever been must ever
be. At the close of the eighteenth century
nothing had occurred which warranted the
belief that even the material difficulties of
America could be removed. Radicals as
extreme as Thomas Jefferson and Albert
Gallatio were contented with avowing no
higher aim than that America should repro-
duce the simpler forms of European repub-
lican society without European vices; and
even this their opponents thought visionary.
The United States had thus far made a single
great step in advance of the Old World, —
they had agreed to try the experiment of
embracing half a continent in one republican
system; but so little were they disposed to
feel confidence in their success, that Jeffer-
son himself did not look on this American
idea as vital; he would not stake the future
on so new an invention. ** Whether we
remain in one confederacy," he wrote in
1804, "or form into Atlantic and Mississippi
confederations, I believe not very important
to the happiness of either part." Even over
his liberal mind history cast a spell so strong,
that he thought the solitary American ex-
periment of political confederation "not very
important" beyond the AUeghanies.
The task of overcoming popular inertia in
a democratic society was new, and seemed
to offer peculiar difficulties. Without a sci-
entific class to lead the way, and without a
wealthy class to provide the means of experi-
ment, the people of the United States were
still required, by the nature of their problems,
to become a speculating and scientific nation.
They could do little without changing their
old habit of mind, and without learning to
love novelty for novelty's sake. Hitherto
their timidity in using money had been pro-
portioned to the scantiness of their means.
Henceforward they were under every induce-
ment to risk great stakes and frequent losses
in order to win occasionally a thousand fold.
In the colonial state they had naturally
accepted old processes as the best, and
European experience as final authority. As
an independent people, with half a continent
to civilize, they could not afford to waste
time in following European examples, but
must devise new processes of their own. A
world which assumed that what had been
must be, could not be scientific; yet in order
to make the Americans a successful people,
they must be roused to feel the necessity of
scientific training. Until they were satisfied
that knowledge was money, they would not
insist upon high education; nor until they
saw with their own eyes stones turned into
gold, and vapor into cattle and corn, would
they learn the meaning of science.
CHAPTER VI
AMERICAN IDEALS
Nearly every foreign traveler who visited
the United States during these early years,
carried away an impression sober if not sad.
A thousand miles of desolate and dreary
forest, broken here and there by settlements;
along the sea-coast a few flourishing towns
devoted to com.merce; no arts, a provincial
literature, a cancerous disease of negro
slavery, and differences of political theory
fortified within geographical lines, — what
could be hoped for such a country except to
repeat the story of violence and brutality
which the world already knew by heart, until
repetition for thousands of years had wearied
and sickened mankind .f* Ages must probably
pass before the interior could be thoroughly
settled; even Jefferson, usually a sanguine
man, talked of a thousand years with
acquiescence, and in his first Inaugural
Address, at a time when the Mississippi
River formed the Western boundary, spoke
of the country as having "room enough for
our descendants to the hundredth and
thousandth generation." No prudent per-
son dared to act on the certainty that when
settled, one government could comprehend
the whole; and when the day of separation
should arrive, and America should have her
Prussia, Austria, and Italy, as she already
had her England, France, and Spain, what
else could follow but a return to the old con-
ditions of local jealousies, wars, and corrup-
tion which had made a slaughter-house of
Europe.^*
The mass of Americans were sanguine and
self-confident, partly by temperament, but
partly also by reason of ignorance; for they
256
HENRY ADAMS
knew little of the difficulties which sur-
rounded a complex society. The Due de
Liancourt, like many critics, was struck by
this trait. Among other instances, he met
with one in the person of a Pennsylvania
miller, Thomas Lea, "a sound American
patriot, persuading himself that nothing
good is done, and that no one has any brains,
except in America; that the wit, the imagi-
nation, the genius of Europe are already in
decrepitude"; and the duke added: "This
error is to be found in almost all Americans,
— legislators, administrators, as well as mil-
lers, and is less innocent there." In the year
1796 the House of Representatives debated
whether to insert in the Reply to the Presi-
dent's Speech a passing remark that the
nation was **the freest and most enlightened
in the world," — a nation as yet in swaddling-
clothes, which had neither literature, arts,
sciences, nor history; nor even enough nation-
ality to be sure that it was a nation. The
moment was peculiarly ill-chosen for such a
claim, because Europe was on the verge of
an outburst of genius. Goethe and Schiller,
Mozart and Haydn, Kant and Fichte,
Cavendish and Herschel were making way
for Walter Scott, Wordsworth, and Shelley,
Heine and Balzac, Beethoven and Hegel,
Oersted and Cuvier, great physicists, biolo-
gists, geologists, chemists, mathematicians,
metaphysicians, and historians by the score.
Turner was painting his earliest landscapes,
and Watt completing his latest steam-
engine; Napoleon was taking command of
the French armies, and Nelson of the English
fleet; investigators, reformers, scholars, and
philosophers swarmed, and the influence of
enlightenment, even amid universal war, was
working with an energy such as the world
had never before conceived. The idea that
Europe was in her decrepitude proved only
ignorance and want of enlightenment, if not
of freedom, on the part of Americans, who
could only excuse their error by pleading
that notwithstanding these objections, in
matters which for the moment most con-
cerned themselves Europe was a full century
behind America. If they were right in
thinking that the next necessity of human
progress was to lift the average man upon
an intellectual and social level with the most
favored, they stood at least three genera-
tions nearer than Europe to their common
goal. The destinies of the United States
were certainly staked, without reserve or
escape, on the soundness of this doubtful
and even improbable principle, ignoring or
overthrowing the institutions of church,
aristocracy, family, army, and political inter-
vention, which long experience had shown
to be needed for the safety of society.
Europe might be right in thinking that with-
out such safeguards society must come to an
end; but even Europeans must concede that
there was a chance, if no greater than one in
a thousand, that America might, at least for
a time, succeed. If this stake of temporal
and eternal welfare stood on the winning
card; if man actually should become more
virtuous and enlightened, by mere process of
growth, without church or paternal author-
ity; if the average human being could accus-
tom himself to reason with the logical pro-
cesses of Descartes and Newton! — what
then .?
Then, no one could deny that the United
States would win a stake such as defied
mathematics. With all the advantages of
science and capital, Europe must be slower
than America to reach the common goal.
American society might be both sober and
sad, but except for negro slavery it was
sound and healthy in every part. Stripped
for the hardest work, every muscle firm and
elastic, every ounce of brain ready for use,
and not a trace of superfluous flesh on his
nervous and supple body, the American
stood in the world a new order of man. From
Maine to Florida, society was in this respect
the same, and was so organized as to use its
human forces with more economy than could
be approached by any society of the world
elsewhere. Not only were artificial barriers
carefully removed, but every influence that
could appeal to ordinary ambition was
applied. No brain or appetite active enough
to be conscious of stimulants could fail to
answer the intense incentive. Few human
beings, however sluggish, could long resist
the temptation to acquire power; and the
elements of power were to be had in America
almost for the asking. Reversing the old-
world system, the American stimulant in-
creased in energy as it reached the lowest and
most ignorant class, dragging and whirling
them upward as in the blast of a furnace.
The penniless and homeless Scotch or Irish
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
257
immigrant was caught and consumed by it;
for every stroke of the ax and the hoe made
him a capitaHst, and made gentlemen of his
children. Wealth was the strongest agent
for moving the mass of mankind; but politi-
cal power was hardly less tempting to the
more intelligent and better-educated swarms
of American-born citizens, and the instinct
of activity, once created, seemed heritable
and permanent in the race.
Compared with this lithe young figure,
Europe was actually in decrepitude. Mere
class distinctions, the patois or dialect of the
peasantry, the fixity of residence, the local
costumes and habits marking a history that
lost itself in the renewal of identical genera-
tions, raised from birth barriers which para-
lyzed half the population. Upon this mass
of inert matter rested the Church and the
State, holding down activity of thought.
Endless wars withdrew many hundred thou-
sand men from production, and changed them
into agents of waste; huge debts, the evidence
of past wars and bad government, created
interests to support the system and fix its
burdens on the laboring class; courts, with
habits of extravagance that shamed com-
mon-sense, helped to consume private
economies. All this might have been borne;
but behind this stood aristocracies, sucking
their nourishment from industry, producing
nothing themselves, employing little or no
active capital or intelligent labor, but press-
ing on the energies and ambition of society
with the weight of an incubus. Picturesque
and entertaining as these social anomalies
were, they were better fitted for the theater
or for a museum of historical costumes than
for an active workshop preparing to compete
with such machinery as America would soon
command. From an economical point of
view, they were as incongruous as would
have been the appearance of a medieval
knight in helmet and armor, with battle-ax
and shield, to run the machinery of Ark-
wright's cotton-mill; but besides their bad
economy they also tended to prevent the rest
of society from gaining a knowledge of its
own capacities. In Europe, the conservative
habit of mind was fortified behind power.
During nearly a century Voltaire himself —
the friend of kings, the wit and poet, histo-
rian and philosopher of his age — had carried
on, in daily terror, in exile and excommuni-
cation, a protest against an intellectual
despotism contemptible even to its own sup-
porters. Hardly was Voltaire dead, when
Priestley, as great a man if not so great a
wit, trying to do for England what Voltaire
tried to do for France, was mobbed by the
people of Birmingham and driven to
America. Where Voltaire and Priestley
failed, common men could not struggle; the
weight of society stifled their thought. In
America the balance between conservative
and liberal forces was close; but in Europe
conservatism held the physical power of
government. In Boston a young Buck-
minster might be checked for a time by his
father's prayers or commands in entering
the path that led toward freer thought; but
youth beckoned him on, and every reward
that society could oflFer was dangled before
his eyes. In London or Paris, Rome, Madrid,
or Vienna, he must have sacrificed the
worldly prospects of his life.
Granting that the American people were
about to risk their future on a new experi-
ment, they naturally wished to throw aside
all burdens of which they could rid them-
selves. Believing that in the long run inter-
est, not violence, would rule the world, and
that the United States must depend for
safety and success on the interests they
could create, they were tempted to look
upon war and preparations for war as the
worst of blunders; for they were sure that
every dollar capitalized in industry was a
means of overthrowing their enemies more
effective than a thousand dollars spent on
frigates or standing armies. The success of
the American system was, from this point
of view, a question of economy. If they
could relieve themselves from debts, taxes,
armies, and government interference with
industry, they must succeed in outstripping
Europe in economy of production; and
Americans were even then partly aware that
if their machine were not so weakened by
these economies as to break down in the
working, it must of necessity break down
every rival. If their theory was sound, when
the day of competition should arrive, Europe
might choose between American and Chi-
nese institutions, but there would be no
middle path; she might become a con-
federated democracy, or a wreck.
Whether these ideas were sound or weak,
258
HENRY ADAMS
they seemed self-evident to those Northern
democrats who, hke Albert Gallatin, were
comparatively free from slave-owning the-
ories, and understood the practical forces of
society. If Gallatin wished to reduce the
interference of government to a minimum,
and cut down expenditures to nothing, he
aimed not so much at saving money as at
using it with the most certain effect. The
revolution of iSoo^ was in his eyes chiefly
political, because it was social; but as a
revolution of society, he and his friends
hoped to make it the most radical that had
occurred since the downfall of the Roman
empire. Their ideas were not yet cleared by
experience, and were confused by many con-
tradictory prejudices, but wanted neither
breadth nor shrewdness.
Many apparent inconsistencies grew from
this undeveloped form of American thought,
and gave rise to great confusion in the differ-
ent estimates of American character that
were made both at home and abroad.
That Americans should not be liked was
natural; but that they should not be under-
stood was more significant b\" far. After the
downfall of the P'rench republic they had
no right to expect a kind word from Europe,
and during the next twenty years they rarely
received one. The liberal movement of
Europe was cowed, and no one dared express
democratic sympathies until the Napoleonic
tempest had passed. With this attitude
Americans had no right to find fault, for
Europe cared less to injure them than to
protect herself. Nevertheless, observant
readers could not but feel surprised that
none of the numerous Europeans who then
wrote or spoke about America seemed to
study the subject seriously. The ordinary
traveler was apt to be little more reflective
than a bee or an ant, but some of these
critics possessed powers far from ordinary;
yet Talleyrand alone showed that had he
but seen America a few years later than he
did, he might have suggested some suflRcient
reason for apparent contradictions that per-
plexed him in the national character. The
other travelers — great and small, from the
Due de Liancourt to Basil Hall, a long and
suggestive list — were equally perplexed.
They agreed in observing the contradictions,
^I,e., the election of Jefferson to the Presidency.
but all, including Talleyrand, saw only
sordid motives. Talleyrand expressed ex-
treme astonishment at the apathy of Ameri-
cans in the face of religious sectarians; but
he explained it by assuming that the Ameri-
can ardor of the moment was absorbed in
money-making. The explanation was evi-
dently insufficient, for the Americans were
capable of feeling and showing excitement,
even to their great pecuniary injury, as they
frequently proved; but in the foreigner's
range of observation, love of money was the
most conspicuous and most common trait
of American character. "There is, perhaps,
no civilized country in the world," wrote
Felix de Beaujour, soon after 1800, "where
there is less generosity in the souls, and in
the heads fewer of those illusions which
make the charm or the consolation of life.
Man here weighs everything, calculates
everything, and sacrifices everything to his
interest." An Englishman named Fearon,
in 1818, expressed the same idea with more
distinctness: "In going to America, I would
say generally, the emigrant must expect to
find, not an economical or cleanly people;
not a social or generous people; not a people
of enlarged ideas; not a people of liberal
opinions, or toward whom you can express
your thoughts free as air; not a people
friendly to the advocates of liberty in
Europe; not a people who understand liberty
from investigation and principle; not a peo-
ple who comprehend the meaning of the
words 'honor' and 'generosity.'" Such
quotations might be multiplied almost with-
out limit. Rapacity was the accepted expla-
nation of American peculiarities; yet every
traveler was troubled by inconsistencies that
required explanations of a different kind.
"It is not in order to hoard that the Ameri-
cans are rapacious," observed Liancourt as
early as 1796. The extravagance, or what
economical Europeans thought extravagance,
with which American women were allowed
and encouraged to spend money, was as
notorious in 1790 as a century later; the
recklessness with which Americans often
risked their money, and the liberality with
which they used it, were marked even then,
in comparison with the ordinary European
habit. Europeans saw such contradictions,
but made no attempt to reconcile them. No
foreigner of that day — neither poet, painter.
HISTORY' OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
259
nor philosopher — could detect in American
life anything higher than vulgarity; for it
was something beyond the range of their
experience, which education and culture had
not framed a formula to express. Moore
came to Washington, and found there no
loftier inspiration than any Federalist
rhymester of Dennie's school.
Take Christians, Mohawks, democrats and all.
From the rude wigwam to the Congress hall, —
From man the savage, whether slaved or free,
To man the civilized, less tame than he:
'Tis one dull chaos, one unfertile strife
Betwixt half-polished and half-barharous life;
Where every ill the ancient world can brew
Is mixed WMth every grossness of the new;
Where all corrupts, though little can entice,
And nothing's known of luxury but vice.
Moore's tw^o small volumes of Epistles,
printed in 1807, contained much more so-
called poetry of the same tone, — poetry
more polished and less respectable than that
of Barlow and Dwight; while, as though to
prove that the Old World knew what gross-
ness was, he embalmed in his lines the slan-
ders which the Scotch libeler Callender
invented against Jefferson:
The weary statesman for repose hath fled
From halls of council to his negro's shed;
Where, blest, he woos some black Aspasia's grace,
And dreams of freedom in his slave's embrace.
To leave no doubt of his meaning, he ex-
plained in a footnote that his allusion was
to the President of the United States; and
yet even Moore, trifler and butterfly as he
was, must have seen, if he w^ould, that be-
tween the morals of politics and society in
America and those then prevailing in Europe,
there was no room for comparison, — there
was room only for contrast.
Moore was but an echo of fashionable
England in his day. He seldom affected
moral sublimity; and had he in his w^ander-
ings met a race of embodied angels, he would
have sung of them or to them in the slightly
erotic notes which were so well received in
the society he loved to frequent and flatter.
His remarks upon American character be-
trayed more temper than truth; but even
in this respect he expressed only the com-
mon feeling of Europeans, which was echoed
by the Federalist society of the United
States. Englishmen especially indulged in
unbounded invective against the sordid
character of American society, and in shap-
ing their national policy on this contempt
they carried their theory into practice with
so much energy as to produce its own refu-
tation. To their astonishment and anger,
a day came when the Americans, in defiance
of self-interest and in contradiction of all the
qualities ascribed to them, insisted on declar-
ing war; and readers of this narrative will
be surprised at the cry of incredulity, not
unmixed with terror, with which English-
men started to their feet when they woke
from their delusion on seeing what they had
been taught to call the meteor flag of Eng-
land, which had burned terrific at Copen-
hagen and Trafalgar, suddenly waver and
fall on the bloody deck of the Guerriere.
Fearon and Beaujour, with a score of other
contemporary critics, could see neither gen-
erosity, economy, honor, nor ideas of any
kind in the American breast; yet the obsti-
nate repetition of these denials itself be-
trayed a lurking fear of the social forces
whose strength they were candid enough to
record. What was it that, as they com-
plained, turned the European peasant into
a new man within half an hour after landing
at New York? Englishmen were never at a
loss to understand the poetry of more prosaic
emotions. Neither they nor any of their
kindred failed in later times to feel the
"large excitement" of the country boy,
whose "spirit leaped within him to be gone
before him," when the lights of London first
flared in the distance; yet none seemed ever
to feel the larger excitement of the American
immigrant. Among the Englishmen who
criticized the United States was one greater
than Moore, — one who thought himself at
home only in the stern beauty of a moral
presence. Of all poets, living or dead,
Wordsworth felt most keenly what he called
the still, sad music of humanity; yet the
highest conception he could create of
America was not more poetical than that of
any Cumberland beggar he might have met
in his morning walk:
Long-wished-for sight, the Western World ap-
peared;
And when the ship was moored, I leaped ashore
Indignantly, — resolved to be a man.
Who, having o'er the past no power, would live
No longer in subjection to the past.
26o
HENRY ADAMS
Witli abject mind — from a tyrannic lord
Inviting penance, fruitlessly endured.
So, like a fugitive whose feet have cleared
Some boundary which his followers may not cross
In prosecution of their deadly chase,
Respiring, I looked round. How bright the sun,
The breeze how soft! Can anything produced
In the Old World compare, thought I, for power
And majesty, with this tremendous stream
Sprung from the desert? And behold a city
Fresh, youthful, and aspiring! . . .
Sooth to say,
On nearer view, a motley spectacle
Appeared, of high pretensions — unreproved
But by the obstreperous voice of higher still;
Big passions strutting on a petty stage,
Which a detached spectator may regard
Not unamused. But ridicule demands
Quick change of objects; and to laugh alone,
... in the very center of the crowd
To keep the secret of a poign-ant scorn,
... is least fit
For the gross spirit of mankind.^
Thus Wordsworth, although then at his prime,
indulging in what sounded like a boast that
he alone had felt the sense sublime of some-
thing interfused, whose dwelling is the light
of setting suns, and the round ocean, and the
living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind
of man, — even he, to whose moods the heavy
and the weary weight of all this unintelli-
gible world was lightened by his deeper sym-
pathies with nature and the soul, could do
no better, when he stood in the face of
American democracy, than "keep the secret
of a poignant scorn."
Possibly the view of Wordsworth and
Moore, of Weld, Dennie, and Dickens was
right. The American democrat possessed
little art of expression, and did not watch
his own emotions with a view of uttering
them either in prose or verse; he never told
more of himself than the world might have
assumed without listening to him. Only
with diffidence could history attribute to
such a class of men a wider range of thought
or feeling than they themselves cared to
proclaim. Yet the difficulty of denying or
even ignoring the wider range was still greater,
for no one questioned the force or the scope of
an emotion which caused the poorest peasant
in Europe to see what was invisible to poet
and philosopher, — the dim outline of a
mountain-summit across the ocean, rising
1 The Excursion^ Bk. Ill, 11. 870-911.
high above the mist and mud of American
democracy. As though to call attention to J
some such difficulty, European and Ameri-
can critics, while affirming that Americans
were a race without illusions or enlarged
ideas, declared in the same breath that J
Jefferson was a visionary whose theories 1
would cause the heavens to fall upon them.
Year after year, with endless iteration, in J
every accent of contempt, rage, and despair, '
they repeated this charge against Jefferson.
Every foreigner and Federalist agreed that
he was a man of illusions, dangerous to
society and unbounded in power of evil; but
if this view of his character was right, the
same visionary qualities seemed also to be
a national trait, for every one admitted that
Jefferson's opinions, in one form or another,
were shared by a majority of the American
people.
Illustrations might be carried much fur-
ther, and might be drawn from every social
class and from every period in national
history. Of all presidents, Abraham Lin-
coln has been considered the most typical
representative of American society, chiefly
because his mind, with all its practical
qualities, aiso inclined, in certain directions,
to idealism. Lincoln was born in 1809, the
moment when American character stood in
lowest esteem. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a
more distinct idealist, was born in 1803.
William Ellery Channing, another idealist,
was born in 1780. Men like John Fitch,
Oliver Evans, Robert Fulton, Joel Barlow,
John Stevens, and Eli Whitney were all
classed among visionaries. The whole soci-
ety of Quakers belonged in the same cate-
gory. The records of the popular religious,
sects abounded in examples of idealism and
illusion to such an extent that the masses
seemed hardly to find comfort or hope in any
authority, however old or well established.
In religion as in politics, Americans seemed
to require a system which gave play to their
imagination and their hopes.
Some misunderstanding must always take
place when the observer is at cross-purposes
with the society he describes. Wordsworth
might have convinced himself by a moment's
thought that no country could act on the
imagination as America acted upon the in-
stincts of the ignorant and poor, without
some quality that deserved better treatment
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
261
than poignant scorn; but perhaps this was
only one among innumerable cases in which
the unconscious poet breathed an atmos-
phere which the self-conscious poet could
not penetrate. With equal reason he might
have taken the opposite view, — that the
hard, practical, money-getting American
democrat, who had neither generosity nor
honor nor imagination, and who inhabited
cold shades where fancy sickened and where
genius died, was in truth living in a world of
dream, and acting a drama more instinct
with poetry than all the avatars of the East,
walking in gardens of emerald and rubies,
in ambition already ruling the world and
guiding Nature with a kinder and wiser
hand than had ever yet been felt in human
history. From this point his critics never
approached him, — they stopped at a stone's
throw; and at the moment when they
declared that the man's mind had no illu-
sions, they added that he was a knave or
a lunatic. Even on his practical and sordid
side, the American might easily have been
represented as a victim to illusion. If the
Englishman had lived as the American
speculator did, — in the future, — the hyper-
bole of enthusiasm would have seemed less
monstrous. "Look at my wealth!" cried
the American to his foreign visitor. "See
these solid mountains of salt and iron, of
lead, copper, silver, and gold! See these
magnificent cities scattered broadcast to the
Pacific! See my cornfields rustling and
waving in the summer breeze from ocean to
ocean, so far that the sun itself is not high
enough to mark where the distant moun-
tains bound my golden seas! Look at this
continent of mine, fairest of created worlds,
as she lies turning up to the sun's never-
failing caress her broad and exuberant
breasts, overflowing with milk for her
hundred million children! See how she
glows with youth, health, and love!" Per-
haps it was not altogether unnatural that
the foreigner, on being asked to see what
needed centuries to produce, should have
looked about him with bewilderment and
indignation. "Gold! cities! cornfields! con-
tinents! Nothing of the sort! I see nothing
but tremendous wastes, where sickly men
and women are dying of home-sickness or
are scalped by savages! mountain-ranges a
thousand miles long, with no means of get-
ting to them, and nothing in them when you
get there! swamps and forests choked with
their own rotten ruins! nor hope of better
for a thousand years! Your story is a
fraud, and you are a liar and swindler!"
Met in rhis spirit, the American, half per-
plexed and half defiant, retaliated by calling
his antagonist a fool, and by mimicking his
heavy tricks of manner. For himself he
cared little, but his dream was his whole
existence. The men who denounced him
admitted that they left him in his forest-
swamp quaking with fever, but clinging in
the delirium of death to the illusions of his
dazzled brain. No class of men could be
required to support their convictions with a
steadier faith, or pay more devotedly with
their persons for the mistakes of their judg-
ment. Whether imagination or greed led
them to describe more than actually existed,
they still saw no more than any inventor or
discoverer must have seen in order to give
him the energy of success. They said to the
rich as to the poor, "Come and share our
limitless riches! Come and help us bring to
light these unimaginable stores of wealth
and power!" The poor came, and from them
were seldom heard complaints of deception
or delusion. Within a moment, by the mere
contact of a moral atmosphere, they saw the
gold and jewels, the summer cornfields and
the glowing continent. The rich for a long
time stood aloof, — they were timid and
narrow-minded; but this was not all, —
between them and the American democrat
was a gulf. »
The charge that Americans were too fond
of money to win the confidence of Europeans
was a curious inconsistency; yet this was a
common belief. If the American deluded
himself and led others to their death by
baseless speculations; if he buried those he
loved in a gloomy forest where they quaked
and died while he persisted in seeing there a
splendid, healthy, and well-built city, — no
one could deny that he sacrificed wife and
child to his greed for gain, that the dollar
was his god, and a sordid avarice his demon.
Yet had this been the whole truth, no
European capitalist would have hesitated
to make money out of his grave; for, avarice
against avarice, no more sordid or meaner
type existed in America than could be shown
on every 'Change in Europe. With much
262
HENRY ADAMS
more reason Americans nii^lit have siispcctcd
that in America En^Hslimen found every-
where a silent influence, which they found
nowhere in Europe, and which had notliinj;
to do with avarice or with the dolhir, hut,
t)n the contrary, seemed Hkely at any mo-
ment to sacrifice tlie dollar in a cause and
for an object so illusory that most Enj^lish-
meri could not endure to hear it discussed.
European travelers who passed throup;h
America noticed that everywhere, in the
W hite House at Washington and in log-
cabins beyond the Alleghanies, except for a
few Federalists, every American, from Jeffer-
son and Gallatin down to the poorest
squatter, seemed to nourish an idea that he
was doing what he could to overthrow the
tyranny which the past had fastened on the
human mind. Nothing was easier than to
laugh at the ludicrous expressions of this
simple-minded conviction, or to cry out
against its coarseness, or grow angry with
its prejudices; to see its nobler side, to feel
the beatings of a heart underneath the
sordid surface of a gross humanity, was not
so easy. Europeans seemed seldom or
never conscious that the sentiment could
possess a noble side, but found only matter
for complaint in the remark that every
American democrat believed himself to
be working for the overthrow of tyranny,
aristocracy, hereditary privilege, and priest-
hood, wherever they existed. Even where
the American did not openly proclaim this
conviction in v^ords, he carried so dense an
atmosphere of the sentiment with him in
his daily life as to give respectable Europeans
an uneasy sense of remoteness.
Of all historical problems, the nature of a
national character is the most difficult and
the most important. Readers will be
troubled, at almost every chapter of the
coming narrative, by the want of some
formula to explain what share the popular
imagination bore in the system pursued by
government. The acts of the American people
during the administrations of Jeff^erson and
Madison were judged at the time by no
other test. According as bystanders believed
American character to be hard, sordid, and
free from illusion, they were severe and
even harsh in judgment. This rule guided
the governments of England and France.
Federalists in the United States, knowing
more of the circumstances, often attributed
to the democratic instinct a visionary (juality
which they regarded as sentimentality, and
charged with many bad c()nse(juences. If
their view was correct, history could occupy
itself to no better purpose than in ascertain-
ing the nature and force of the (juality which
was charged with results so serious; but
nothing was more elusive than the spirit of
American democracy. Jefferson, the liter-
ary representative of the class, spoke
chiefly for Virginians, and dreaded so greatly
his own reputation as a visionary that he
seldom or never uttered his whole thought,
Gallatin and Madison were still more
cautious. The press in no country could
give shape to a mental condition so shadowy.
1 he people themselves, although millions in
number, could not have expressed their finer
instincts had they tried, and might not have
recognized them if expressed by others.
In the early days of colonization, every
new settlement represented an idea and
proclaimed a mission, Virginia was founded
by a great, liberal movement aiming at the
spread of English liberty and empire. The
Pilgrims of Plymouth, the Puritans of
Boston, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, all
avowed a moral purpose, and began by
making institutions that consciously re-
flected a moral idea. No such character
belonged to the colonization of 1800, From
Lake Erie to Florida, in long, unbroken
line, pioneers were at work, cutting into the
forests with the energy of so many beavers,
and with no more express moral purpose
than the beavers they drove away. The
civilization they carried with them was
rarely illumined by an idea; they sought
room for no new truth, and aimed neither at
creating, like the Puritans, a government
of saints, nor, like the Quakers, one of love
and peace; they left such experiments
behind them, and wrestled only with the
hardest problems of frontier life. No
wonder that foreign observers, and even the
educated, well-to-do Americans of the sea-
coast, could seldom see anything to admire
in the ignorance and brutality of frontiers-
men, and should declare that virtue and
wisdom no longer guided the United States!
What they saw was not encouraging. To a
new society, ignorant and semi-barbarous,
a mass of demagogues insisted on apply-
HISTORY OF THE UNO KD STATES OF AMERICA
263
inj; every stimulant tliat could niflanie
its worst appetites, while at the same in-
stant takine; away every influence that had
hitherto helped to restrain its passions.
Greed for wealth, lust for power, yearning
for the blank void of savage freedom such
as Indians and wolves delighted in, — these
were the fires that flamed under the caldron
of American society, in which, as conserva-
tives believed, the old, well-proven, con-
servative crust of religion, government,
family, and even common respect for age,
education, and experience was rapidly
melting away, and was indeed already
broken into fragments, swept about by the
seething mass of scum ever rising in greater
quantities to the surface.
Against this Federalist and conservative
view of democratic tendencies, democrats
protested in a thousand forms, but never
in any mode of expression which satisfied
them all, or explained their whole character.
Probably Jefl^erson came nearest to the mark,
for he represented the hopes of science as
well as the prejudices of Virginia; but
Jefferson's writings may be searched from
beginning to end without revealing the
whole measure of the man, far less of the
movement. Here and there in his letters
a suggestion was thrown out, as though by
chance, revealing larger hopes, — as in 1815,
at a moment of despondency, he wrote: "I
fear from the experience of the last twenty-
five years that morals do not of necessity
advance hand in hand with the sciences. "^
In 1800, in the flush of triumph, he believed
that his task in the world was to establish
a democratic republic, with the sciences for
an intellectual field, and physical and moral
advancement keeping pace with their ad-
vance. Without an excessive introduction
of more recent ideas, he might be imagined
to define democratic progress, in the some-
what affected precision of his French
philosophy: "Progress is either physical or
intellectual. If we can bring it about that
men are on the average an inch taller in the
next generation than in this; if they are an
inch larger round the chest; if their brain
is an ounce or two heavier, and their life a
' Franklin, a believer with Jefferson in the progress
of the race, likewise doubted its extension to the sphere
of morals. See his letter to Priestley, quoted by W.
C. Bruce, Benjamin Franklin Self-Revealed, I, 109.
year or two longer, — that is progress. If
fifty years hence the average man shall
invariably argue from two ascertained
premises where he now jumps to a conclu-
sion from a single supposed revelation, — that
is progress! I expect it to be made here,
under our democratic stimulants, on a great
scale, until every man is potentially an
athlete in body and an Aristotle in mind."
To this doctrine the New Englander replied,
"What will you do for moral progress?"
Every possible answer to this question
opened a chasm. No doubt Jefferson held
the faith that men would improve morally
with their physical and intellectual growth;
but he had no idea of any moral improve-
ment other than that which came by nature.
He could not tolerate a priesthood, a state
church, or revealed religion. Conservatives,
who could tolerate no society without such
pillars of order, were, from their point of
view, right in answering, "Give us rather
the worst despotism of Europe, — there our
souls at least may have a chance of salva-
tion!" Jo their minds vice and virtue
were not relative, but fixed terms. The
Church was a divine institution. Hcrw
could a ship hope to reach port when the
crew threw overboard sails, spars, and
compass, unshipped their rudder, and all
the long day thought only of eating and
drinking. Nay, even should the new
experiment succeed in a worldly sense, what
was a man profited if he gained the whole
world, and lost his own soul? The Lord
God was a jealous God, and visited the sins
of the parents upon the children; but what
worse sin could be conceived than for a
whole nation to join their chief in chanting
the strange hymn with which Jefferson, a
new false prophet, was deceiving and
betraying his people: "It does me no injury
for my neighbor to say there are twenty
Gods or no God!"
On this ground conservatism took its
stand, as it had hitherto done with success
in every similar emergency in the world's
history, and fixing its eyes on moral stand-
ards of its own, refused to deal with the
subject as further open to argument. The
two parties stood facing opposite ways, and
could see no common ground of contact.
Yet even then one part of the American
social system was proving itself to be rich
264
HENRY ADAMS
in results. The average American was
more intelligent than the average European,
and was becoming every year still more
active-minded as the new movement of
society caught him up and swept him
through a life of more varied experiences.
On all sides the national mind responded
to its stimulants. Deficient as the American
was in the machinery of higher instruction;
remote, poor; unable by any exertion to
acquire the training, the capital, or even
the elementary textbooks he needed for a
fair development of his natural powers, —
his native energy and ambition already
responded to the spur applied to them.
Some of his triumphs were famous through-
out the world; for Benjamin Franklin had
raised high the reputation of American
printers, and the actual President of the
United States, who signed with Franklin
the treaty of peace with Great Britain, was
the son of a small farmer, and had himself
kept a school in his youth. In both these
cases social recognition followed success;
but the later triumphs of the American
mind were becoming more and more popular.
John Fitch was not only one of the poorest,
but one of the least-educated Yankees who
ever made a name; he could never spell
with tolerable correctness, and his life
ended as it began, — in the lowest social
obscurity. Eli Whitney was better educated
than Fitch, but had neither wealth, social
influence, nor patron to back his ingenuity.
In the year 1800 Eli Terry, another Con-
necticut Yankee of the same class, took
into his employ two young men to help him
make wooden clocks, and this was the capital
on which the greatest clock-manufactory
in the world began its operations. In 1797
Asa Whittemore, a Massachusetts Yankee,
invented a machine to make cards for
carding wool, which "operated as if it had a
soul," and became the foundation for a
hundred subsequent patents. In 1790 Jacob
Perkins, of Newburyport, invented a ma-
chine capable of cutting and turning out
two hundred thousand nails a day; and then
invented a process for transferring engraving
from a very small steel cylinder to copper,
which revolutionized cotton-printing. The
British traveler Weld, passing through
Wilmington, stopped, as Liancourt had
done before him, to see the great flour-mills
on the Brandy wine. "The improvements,"
he said, "which have been made in the
machinery of the flour-mills in America are
very great. The chief of these consist in a
new application of the screw, and the intro-
duction of what are called elevators, the
idea of which was evidently borrowed
from the chain-pump." This was the inven-
tion of Oliver Evans, a native of Delaware,
whose parents were in very humble life, but
who was himself, in spite of every disad-
vantage, an inventive genius of the first
order. Robert Fulton, who in 1800 was in
Paris with Joel Barlow, sprang from the
same source in Pennsylvania. John Stevens,
a native of New York, belonged to a more
favored class, but followed the same im-
pulses. All these men were the outcome of
typical American society, and all their
inventions transmuted the democratic in-
stinct into a practical and tangible shape.
Who would undertake to say that there
was a limit to the fecundity of this teeming
source.'* Who that saw only the narrow,
practical, money-getting nature of these
devices could venture to assert that as they
wrought their end and raised the standard of
millions, they would not also raise the
creative power of those millions to a higher
plane.'' If the priests and barons who set
their names to Magna Charta had been told
that in a few centuries every swine-herd
and cobbler's apprentice would write and
read with an ease such as few kings could
then command, and reason with better
logic than any university could then practice,
the priest and baron would have been more
mcredulous than any man who was told in
1800 that within another five centuries the
ploughboy would go a-field whistling a
sonata of Beethoven, and figure out in
quaternions the relation of his furrows.
The American democrat knew so little of art
that among his popular illusions he could not
then nourish artistic ambition; but leaders
like Jeff^erson, Gallatin, and Barlow might
w'ithout extravagance count upon a coming
time when diffused ease and education
should bring the masses into familiar con-
tact with higher forms of human achieve-
ment, and their vast creative power, turned
toward a nobler culture, might rise to the
level of that democratic genius which found
expression in the Parthenon; might revel in
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
265
the delights of a new Buonarotti and a richer
Titian; might create for five hundred milHon
people the America of thought and art
which alone could satisfy their omnivorous
ambition.
Whether the illusions, so often affirmed
and so often denied to the American people,
took such forms or not, these were in effect
the problems that lay before American
society: Could it transmute its social power
into the higher forms of thought? Could it
provide for the moral and intellectual needs
of mankind? Could it take permanent
political shape? Could it give new life to
religion and art? Could it create and
maintain in the mass of mankind those
habits of mind which had hitherto be-
longed to men of science alone? Could it
physically develop the convolutions of the
human brain? Could it produce, or was
it compatible with, the differentiation of a
higher variety of the human race? Noth-
ing less than this was necessary for its
complete success.
SIDNEY LANIER (1842-1881)
Lanier was born at Macon, Georgia, on 3 February, 1842. His father was a lawyer there, the
descendant of an English family one of whose members had come to Virgmia in 1716, and several
members of which had been musicians in seventeenth-century England. Lanier's passit)n for music
showed itself when he was yet a mere child, and his remarkable ability, Irkewise, to use a great vari-
ety of musical instruments skillfully, even though he had no instruction. When he was fourteen he
entered Oglethorpe University. His studies were interrupted for a year (1858-1859) while he held a
clerkship in the Macon post-office, but he was graduated from Oglethorpe with high honors in i860.
His decision concerning his life's work was not reached without a struggle. He was appointed a tutor
in his college immediately upon his graduation, but that was only a temporary post in his ejes, and
he thought anxiously about the future. He wrote in a note-book at this time: "I am more than all
perplexed by this fact: that the prime inclination — that is, natural bent (which I have checked,
though) of my nature is to music, and for that I have the greatest talent; indeed, not boasting, for
God gave it me, I have an extraordinary musical talent, and feel it within me plainly that I could rise
as high as any composer. But I cannot bring myself to believe that I was intended for a musician,
because it seems so small a business in comparison with other things which, it seems to me, I might
do." (E. Mims, Sidney Lanier.) He had become an accomplished flute-player, enchanting all who
heard him, as he continued to do throughout his life, but his doubt about a musical career was rein-
forced by practical considerations, and he finally decided that, after a second year at Oglethorpe, he
would go for a period of study in Germany in order to qualify himself for a professorship in an Ameri-
can college. Then came the Civil War, which turned all his plans awry and sent him at once into
the Confederate army, where he served, taking part in several battles, until he was made a prisoner
late in 1864. Upon his release (February, 1865) he made his way back to Georgia, physically weak-
ened and ill. His mother had just died from tuberculosis, and the disease now attacked him.
The remainder of his life was an unending struggle against poverty and tuberculosis. His design
of foreign study had to be abandoned, and he soon found that, if poverty was the result of the War
in his own family, so was it also throughout the South. He was a hotel clerk in Montgomery, Ala-
bama, for some months, and there, in the spring of 1867, he finished a novel which he had begun in
1863. He took it to New York and succeeded tn getting it published (1867); but Tiger Lilies, as it was
called, while it attracted some favorable attention, did not materially change his situation, and he now
turned to school-teaching in Prattville, Alabama. In December, 1867, he was married to Mary Day, of
Macon. He found his teaching in Prattville unendurable, he could not obtain a post in a college,
and it was impossible for him to earn a living from literary work. Hence in 1868 he returned to
Macon, to study and practice the law in his father's office. He remained there five years, but h£ had
not given up — could not give up — his hope of a larger career. He seems to have begun writing poe-
try in 1865, and he had published some verse in periodicals in following years; and by 1873 poetry
had come to stand beside music in his eyes. He now felt that he might not live much longer, and
that he must without more delay attempt to accomplish something lasting in art. He proposed to
leave Macon and the law and take his chances farther north. His father not unnaturally protested
against the hazards of this plan, and received this moving answer: "My dear father, think how, for
twenty years, through poverty, through pain, through weariness, through sickness, through the uncon-
genial atmosphere of a farcical college and of a bare army and then of an exacting business life,
through all the discouragement of being wholly unacquainted with literary people and literary ways,
— I say, think how, in spite of all these depressing circumstances, and of a thousand more which I
could enumerate, these two figures of music and of poetry have steadily kept in my heart so that I
could not banish them. Does it not seem to you as to me that I begin to have the right to enroll
myself among the devotees of these two sublime arts, after having followed them so long and so humbly,
and through so much bitterness.'"'
Follow them Lanier did, settling, after a brief experience of New York, in Baltimore, where he
obtained a position as flutist in the Peabody Symphony Orchestra. In Baltimore he remained until
his death, always very poor, but managing by literary hack-work of various kinds, by occasional lec-
tures, and by his flute to make a bare living, and also to secure a little time for the writing of verse.
266
THE MARSHES OF GLYxNN
267
He began to obtain recognition as a poet In 1 875, and published a volume, entitled simply Poems, in 1877.
In 1879 he was made a lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University. In 1880 he published The Science
of English Verse. Meanwhile tuberculosis had continued to weaken him, and he died in the North
Carolina mountains on 7 September, 1881. Two volumes which grew out of his lectures at Johns
Hopkins were posthumously published: The English Novel and the Principle of Its Development (1883)
and Shakespeare and His Forerunners (1902). An acquaintance of Lanier's wrote of him after his
death: "Intellectually he seemed , . . not so much to have arrived as to be on the way — with a beau-
tiful fervor and eagerness about things, as if he had never had all that he longed for in books and
study and thought." This happily expresses the impression which both his three volumes of prose and
many of his poems inevitably make upon the reader. He was a man of talent, perhaps a man of genius,
but his life of hardship and illness made his development late and incomplete, so that all save a very
few of his poems represent a promise rather than a fulfillment. Those few, however, have a musical
quality so rare and full that they have kept his name alive and have gained him a secure place, even
though a small one, in American literature.
THE MARSHES OF GLYNN ^
Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided
and woven
With intricate shades of the vines that myr-
iad-cloven
Clamber the forks of the multiform
boughs, —
Emerald tv^ilights, —
Virginal shy lights,
Wrought of the leaves to allure to the
whisper of vows,
When lovers pace timidly down through the
green colonnades
Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark
woods,
Of the heavenly woods and glades,
That run to the radiant marginal sand-
beach within 10
The wide sea-marshes of Glynn; —
Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day
fire, —
Wildwood privacies, closets of lone de-
sire,
Chamber from chamber parted with waver-
ing arras of leaves, —
Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to
the soul that grieves,
Pure with a sense of the passing of saints
through the wood.
Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with
good;—
1 Fii'st published in 1879. The marshes referred to
are on the coast of Georgia, near Brunswick. As now
printed among Lanier's poems this is the fourth of four
Hymns 0/ the Marshes. This and the following poems
by Lanier are here reprinted with the permission of
Messrs. Charles Scrihner's Sons, and they have been
arranged in the same relative order as in Messrs,
Scribner's collective edition.
O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades
of the vine.
While the riotous noon-day sun of the June-
day long did shine
Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you
fast in mine; 20
But now when the noon is no more, and riot
is rest.
And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate
of the West,
And the slant yellow beam down the wood-
aisle doth seem
Like a lane into heaven that leads from a
dream, —
Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken
the soul of the oak,
And my heart is at ease from men, and the
wearisome sound of the stroke
Of the scythe of time and the trowel of
trade is low.
And belief overmasters doubt, and I know
that I know.
And my spirit is grown to a lordly great
compass within,
That the length and the breadth and the
sweep of the marshes of Glynn 30
Will work me no fear like the fear they have
wrought me of yore
When length was fatigue, and when breadth
was but bitterness sore.
And when terror and shrinking and dreary
unnamable pain
Drew over me out of the merciless miles of
the plain, —
Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face
The vast sweet visage of space.
To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am
drawn,
268
SIDNEY LANIER
Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a
belt of the dawn,
For a mete and a mark
To the forest-dark: — 40
So:
Affable live-oak, leaning low, —
Thus — with your favor — soft, with a rev-
erent hand
(Not lightly touching your person. Lord of
the land!),
Bending your beauty aside, with a step I
stand
On the firm-packed sand,
Free
By a world of marsh that borders a world of
sea.
Sinuous southward and sinuous northward
the shimmering band
Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the
marsh to the folds of the land. 50
Inward and outward to northward and
southw^ard the beach-lines linger and
curl
As a silver-wrought garment that clings to
and follows the firm sweet limbs of a
girl-
Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again
into sight.
Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim
gray looping of light.
And what if behind me to westward the wall
of the woods stands high .''
The world lies east: how ample, the marsh
and the sea and the sky!
A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-
high, broad in the blade.
Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with
a light or a shade,
Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain,
To the terminal blue of the main. 60
Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the
terminal sea.?
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
From the weighing of fate and the sad discus-
sion of sin,
By the length and the breadth and the sweep
of the marshes of Glynn.
Ye marshes, how candid and simple and no-
thing-withholding and free
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer
yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the
rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who
hath mightily won
God out of knowledge and good out of infi-
nite pain
And sight out of blindness and purity out of
a stain. 70
As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the
watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness
of God:
I will fly in the greatness of God as the
marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt
the marsh and the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in
the sod
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness
of God:
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the great-
ness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes
of Glynn.
And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out
of his plenty the sea
Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-
tide must be: 80
Look how the grace of the sea doth go
About and about through the intricate chan-
nels that flow
Here and there.
Everywhere,
Till his waters have flooded the uttermost
creeks and the low-lying lanes,
And the marsh is meshed with a million
veins.
That like as with rosy and silvery essences
flow
In the rose-and-silver evening glow.
Farewell, my lord Sun!
The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets
run 90
'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the
marsh-grass stir;
Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that
westward whir;
Passeth, and all is still; and the currents
cease to run;
And the sea and the marsh are one.
FROM THE FLATS
269
How still the plains of the waters be!
The tide is in his ecstasy.
The tide is at his highest height:
And it is night.
And now from the Vast of the Lord will the
waters of sleep
Roll in on the souls of men, 100
But who will reveal to our waking ken
The forms that swim and the shapes that
creep
Under the waters of sleep?
And I w^ould I could know what swimmeth
below when the tide comes in
On the length and the breadth of the mar-
velous marshes of Glynn.
THE SONG OF THE
CHATTAHOOCHEE '
Out of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall.
Split at the rock and together again.
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a lover's pain to attain the plain
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the valleys of Hall. 10
All down the hills of Habersham,
All through the valleys of Hall,
The rushes cried Abide^ abide^
The willful waterweeds held me thrall.
The laving laurel turned my tide.
The ferns and the fondling grass said Stayy
The dewberry dipped for to work delay,
And the little reeds sighed Abide^ abide.
Here in the hills of Habersham^
Here in the valleys of Hall. 20
High o'er the hills of Habersham,
Veiling the valleys of Hall,
The hickory told me manifold
Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall
Wrought me her shadowy self to hold.
The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine,
Overleaning, with flickering meaning and
sign.
Said, Pass noty so coldy these manifold
Deep shades of the hills of Habersharriy
These glades in the valleys of Hall. 30
• First published in 1877.
And oft in the hills of Habersham,
And oft in the valleys of Hall,
The white quartz shone, and the smooth
brook-stone
Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl.
And many a luminous jewel lone
— Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist,
Ruby, garnet, and amethyst —
Made lures with the lights of streaming
stone -. ]
In the clefts of the hills of Habersham,
In the beds of the valleys of Hall. 40
But oh, not the hills of Habersham,
And oh, not the valleys of Hall
Avail: I am fain for to water the plain.
Downward the voices of Duty call —
Downward, to toil and be mixed with the
main,
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to
turn,
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn.
And the lordly main from beyond the plain
Calls o'er the hills of Habersham,
Calls through the valleys of Hall. 50
FROM THE FLATS 1
What heartache — ne'er a hill!
Inexorable, vapid, vague and chill
The drear sand-levels drain my spirit low.
With one poor word they tell me all they
know;
Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my
pain.
Do drawl it o'er again and o'er again.
They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot
name:
Always the same, the same.
Nature hath no surprise, 9
No ambuscade of beauty 'gainst mine eyes
From brake or lurking dell or deep defile;
No humors, frolic forms — this mile, that
mile;
No rich reserves or happy-valley hopes
Beyond the bend of roads, the distant
slopes.
Her fancy fails, her wild is all run tame:
Ever the same, the same.
' First published in 1877. Written in the same year
at Tampa, Florida.
270
SIDNEY LANIER
Oil might I through these tears
But ghinpse some hill my Georgia high
uprears,
Where white the quartz and pink the pebble
shine,
The hickory heavenward strives, the musca-
dine 20
Swings o'er the slope, the oak's far-falling
shade
Darkens the dogwood in the bottom glade.
And down the hollow from a ferny nook
Bright leaps a living brook!
THE SYMPHONY 1
*'0 Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead!
The lime needs heart — 'tis tired of head:
We're all for love," the violins said.
"Of what avail the rigorous tale
Of bill for coin and box for bale?
Grant thee, O Trade! thine uttermost hope:
Level red gold with blue sky-slope.
And base it deep as devils grope:
When all's done, what hast thou won
Of the only sweet that's under the sun ? 10
Ay, canst thou buy a single sigh
Of true love's least, least ecstasy?"
Then, with a bridegroom's heart-beats
trembling,
All the mightier strings assembling
Ranged them on the violins' side
As when the bridegroom leads the bride.
And, heart in voice, together cried:
"Yea, what avail the endless tale
Of gain by cunning and plus by sale?
Look up the land, look down the land, 20
The poor, the poor, the poor, they stand
Wedged by the pressing of Trade's hand
Against an inward-opening door
That pressure tightens evermore:
They sigh a monstrous foul-air sigh
For the outside leagues of liberty,
Where Art, sweet lark, translates the sky
Into a heavenly melody.
'Each day, all day' (these poor folks say),
*In the same old year-long, drear-long
way, 30
We weave in the mills and heave in the
kilns.
We sieve mine-meshes under the hills.
And thieve much gold from the Devil's bank
tills.
To relieve, O God, what manner of ills.'' —
' First published in 1875.
The beasts, they hunger, and eat, and die;
And so do we, and the world's a sty;
Hush, fellow-swine: why nuzzle and cry?
Szvinehood hath 110 remedy
Say many men, and hasten by.
Clamping the nose and blinking the eye. 40
But who said once, in the lordly tone,
Alan shall not live by bread alone
But all that cometh from the Throne?
Hath God said so?
But Trade saith No:
And the kilns and the curt-tongued mills say
Go!
There* s 'plenty that cany if you cant: we
know.
Move out, if you think you re underpaid.
The poor are prolific; we're not afraid;
Trade is trade.'** 50
Thereat this passionate protesting
Meekly changed, and softened till
It sank to sad requesting
And suggesting sadder still:
"And oh, if men might some time see
How piteous-false the poor decree
That trade no more than trade must be!
Does business mean. Die, you — live, I?
Then 'Trade is trade' but sings a lie:
*Tis only war grown miserly. 60
If business is battle, name it so:
War-crimes less will shame it so.
And widows less will blame it so.
Alas, for the poor to have some part
In yon sweet living lands of Art,
Makes problem not for head, but heart.
Vainly might Plato's brain revolve it:
Plainly the heart of a child could solve it."
And then, as when from words that seem but
rude
We pass to silent pain that sits abrood 70
Back in our heart's great dark and solitude,
So sank the strings to gentle throbbing
Of long chords change-marked with sob-
bing-
Motherly sobbing, not distinctlier heard
Than half wing-openings of the sleeping
bird.
Some dream of danger to her young hath
stirred.
Then stirring and demurring ceased, and lo!
Every least ripple of the strings' song-flow
Died to a level with each level bow
And made a great chord tranquil-surfaced
so, 80
THE SYMPHONY
271
As a brook beneath his curving bank doth go
To Hnger in the sacred dark and green
Where many boughs the still pool ovcrlean
And many leaves make shadow with their
sheen.
But presently
A velvet flute-note fell down pleasantly
Upon the bosom of that harmony,
And sailed and sailed incessantly,
As if a petal from a wild-rose blown
Had fluttered down upon that pool of tone
And boatwise dropped o' the convex side 91
And floated down the glassy tide
And clarified and glorified
The solemn spaces where the shadows bide.
From the warm concave of that fluted note
Somewhat, half song, half odor, forth did
float.
As if a rose might somehow be a throat:
"When Nature from her far-off glen
Flutes her soft messages to men.
The flute can say them o'er again; 100
Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone,
Breathes through life's strident polyphone
The flute-voice in the world of tone.
Sweet friends,
Man's love ascends
To finer and diviner ends
Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends:
For I, e'en I,
As here I lie,
A petal on a harmony, no
Demand of Science whence and why
Man's tender pain, man's inward cry.
When he doth gaze on earth and sky.?
I am not overbold:
I hold
Full powers from Nature manifold.
I speak for each no-tongucd tree
That, spring by spring, doth nobler be,
And dumbly and most wistfully
His mighty prayerful arms outspreads 120
Above men's oft-unheeding heads,
And his big blessing downward sheds.
I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves,
Lichens on stones and moss on eaves.
Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves;
Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes.
And briery mazes bounding lanes.
And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains.
And milky stems and sugary veins;
For every long-armed woman-vine 130
That round a piteous tree doth twine;
For passionate odors, and divine
Pistils, and petals crystalline;
All purities of shady springs.
All shynesses of film-winged things
That fly from tree-trunks and bark-rings;
All modesties of mountain-fawns
That leap to covert from wild lawns.
And tremble if the day but dawns;
All sparklings of small beady eyes 140
Of birds, and sidelong glances wise
Wherewith the jay hints tragedies;
All piquancies of prickly burs.
And smoothnesses of downs and furs
Of eiders and of minevers;
AH limpid honeys that do lie
At stamen-bases, nor deny
The humming-birds' fine roguery.
Bee-thighs, nor any butterfly;
All gracious curves of slender wings, 150
Bark-mottlings, fiber-spiralings,
Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings;
Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell
Wherewith in every lonesome dell
Time to himself his hours doth tell;
All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones,
Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans,
And ni|;;ht's unearthly under-tones;
All placid lakes and waveless deeps,
All cool reposing mountain-steeps, 160
Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps; —
Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights,
And warmths, and mysteries, and mights.
Of Nature's utmost depths and heights,
— These doth my timid tongue present.
Their mouthpiece and leal instrument
And servant, all love-eloquent.
I heard, when ^ All for love' the violins cried:
So, Nature calls through all her system wide.
Give me thy lovey 0 maiiy so long denied. 170
Much time is run, and man hath changed his
ways.
Since Nature, in the antique fable-days.
Was hid from man's true love by proxy
fays.
False fauns and rascal gods that stole her
praise.
The nymphs, cold creatures of man's colder
brain.
Chilled Nature's streams till man's warm
heart was fain
Never to lave its love in them again.
Later, a sweet Voice Love thy neighbor said;
Then first the bounds of neighborhood out-
spread
Beyond all confines of old ethnic dread. 180
1-]!
J^IDNEY LANIER
Vainly the Jew might wag his covenant
head:
\ill men are neighbors ^ so the sweet Voice
said.
So, when man's arms had circled all man's
race,
The liberal compass of his warm embrace
Stretched bigger yet in the dark bounds of
space;
With hands a-grope he felt smooth Nature's
grace,
Drew her to breast and kissed her sweet-
heart face:
Yea, man found neighbors in great hills and
trees
And streams and clouds and suns and birds
and bees.
And throbbed with neighbor-loves in loving
these. 190
But oh, the poor! the poor! the poor!
That stand by the inward-opening door
Trade's hand doth tighten ever more.
And sigh their monstrous foul-air sigh
For the outside hills of liberty,
Where Nature spreads her wild blue sky
For Art to make into melody!
Thou Trade! thou king of the modern days!
Change thy ways,
Change thy ways; 200
Let the sweaty laborers file
A little while,
A little while,
Where Art and Nature sing and smile.
Trade! is thy heart all dead, all dead?
And hast thou nothing but a head?
I'm all for heart," the flute-voice said.
And into sudden silence fled.
Like as a blush that while 'tis red
Dies to a still, still w'hite instead. 210
Thereto a thrilling calm succeeds,
Till presently the silence breeds
A little breeze among the reeds
That seems to blow by sea-marsh weeds:
Then from the gentle stir and fret
Sings out the melting clarionet,
Like as a lady sings w-hile yet
Her eyes with salty tears are wet.
"O Trade! O Trade!" the Lady said,
"I too will wish thee utterly dead 220
If all thy heart is in thy head.
For O my God! and O my God!
What shameful ways have women trod
At beckoning of Trade's golden rod!
Alas when sighs are traders' lies,
And heart's-ease eyes and violet eyes
Are merchandise!
O purchased lips that kiss with pain!
O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch
stain!
O trafficked hearts that break in twain!
an(
230
at my sisters
— And yet what wonder
crime?
So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy
prime,
Men love not women as in olden time.
Ah, not in these cold merchantable days
Deem men their life an opal gray, where
plays
The one red Sweet of gracious ladies'-praise.
Now, comes a suitor with sharp prying
eye-
Says, Herey you Lady^ if you II sell, I'll buy:
Comej heart for heart — a trade? What!
weeping? why?
Shame on such wooers' dapper mercery!
I would my lover kneeling at my feet 241
In humble manliness should cry, 0 sweet!
I know not if thy heart my heart will greet:
I ask not if thy love my love can meet:
Whatever thy worshipful soft tongue shall say^
Vll kiss thine answer^ be it yea or nay:
I do but know I love thee, and I pray
To be thy knight until my dying day.
Woe him that cunning trades in hearts con-
trives!
Base love good women to base loving
drives. 250
If men loved larger, larger were our lives;
And wooed they nobler, won they nobler
wives."
There thrust the bold straightforward horn
To battle for that lady lorn,
With heartsome voice of mellow scorn,
Like any knight in knighthood's morn.
"Now comfort thee," said he,
"Fair Lady.
For God shall right thy grievous wrong.
And man shall sing thee a true-love song.
Voiced in act his whole life long, 261
Yea, all thy sweet life long.
Fair Lady.
Where's he that craftily hath said,
The day of chivalry is dead?
I'll prove that lie upon his head,
Or I will die instead.
Fair Lady.
THE SYMPHONY
''-IS
Is Honor gone into his grave?
Hath Faith become a caitiff knave, 270
And Selfhood turned into a slave
To work in Mammon's cave,
Fair Lady?
Will Truth's long blade ne'er gleam again?
Hath Giant Trade in dungeons slain
All great contempts of mean-got gain
And hates of inward stain,
Fair Lady?
For aye shall name and fame be sold,
And place be hugged for the sake of gold,
And smirch-robed Justice feebly scold 281
At Crime all money-bold.
Fair Lady?
Shall self-wrapt husbands aye forget
Kiss-pardons for the daily fret
Wherewith sweet wifely eyes are wet —
Blind to lips kiss-wise set —
Fair Lady?
Shall lovers higgle, heart for heart,
Till wooing grows a trading mart 290
Where much for little, and all for part.
Make love a cheapening art.
Fair Lady?
Shall woman scorch for a single sin
That her betrayer may revel in,
And she be burnt, and he but grin
When that the flames begin.
Fair Lady?
Shall ne'er prevail the woman's plea,
We maids zuoiild far., far zvhiter he 300
// that our eyes might sometimes see
Men maids in purity y
Fair Lady?
Shall Trade aye salve his conscience-aches
With jibes at Chivalry's old mistakes —
The wars that o'erhot knighthood makes
For Christ's and ladies' sakes,
Fair Lady?
Now by each knight that e'er hath prayed
To fight like a man and love like a maid, 310
Since Pembroke's life, as Pembroke's blade,
r the scabbard, death, was laid.
Fair Lady,
I dare avouch my faith is bright
That God doth right and God hath might.
Nor time hath changed His hair to white,
Nor His dear love to spite,
Fair Lady.
I doubt no doubts: I strive, and shrive my
clay.
And fight my fight in the patient modern
way 320
For true love and for thee! ah me! and pray
To be thy knight until my dying day.
Fair Lady."
Made end that knightly horn, and spurred
away
Into the thick of the melodious fray.
And then the hautboy played and smiled.
And sang like any large-eyed child,
Cool-hearted and all undefiled.
"Huge Trade!" he said,
"Would thou wouldst lift me on thy head
And run where'er my finger led! 331
Once said a Man — and wise was He —
Never shalt thou the heavens see^
Save as a little child thou be."
Then o'er sea-lashings of commingling tunes
The ancient wise bassoons.
Like weird
Gray-beard
Old harpers sitting on the high sea-dunes,
Chanted runes: 340
" Bright-waved gain, gray-waved loss,
The sea of all doth lash and toss.
One wave forvvard and one across:
But now 'twas trough, now 'tis crest,
And worst doth foam and flash to best,
And curst to blest.
"Life! Life! thou sea-fugue, writ from east
to west.
Love, Love alone can pore
On thy dissolving score
Of harsh half-phrasings, 350
Blotted ere writ.
And double erasings
Of chords most fit.
Yea, Love, sole music-master blest,
May read thy weltering palimpsest.
To follow Time's dying melodies through,
And never to lose the old in the new,
And ever to solve the discords true —
Love alone can do.
And ever Love hears the poor-folks* cry-
ing, 360
And ever Love hears the women's sighing,
And ever sweet knighthood's death-defying,
And ever wise childhood's deep implying,
But never a trader's glozing and lying.
"And yet shall Love himself be heard,
Though long deferred, though long deferred:
O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred:
Music is Love in search of a word."
274
SIDNEY LANIER
STRUGGLE '
My soul is like the oar that momently
Dies in a desperate stress beneath the
wave,
Then glitters out again and sweeps the sea:
Each second I'm new-born from some new
grave.
SONG FOR THE JACQUERIE
May the maiden,
Violet-laden
Out of the violet sea,
1 Written not long before Lanier's death and pub-
lished posthumously.
2 Composed at Macon, Georgia, in i868. T/je Jac-
querie was a projected narrative poem which Lanier left
in a fragmentary state at his death.
Comes and hovers
Over lovers,
Over thee, Marie, and me,
Over me and thee.
Day the stately,
• Sunken lately
Into the violet sea, lo
Backward hovers
Over lovers.
Over thee, Marie, and me,
Over me and thee.
Night the holy,
Sailing slowly
Over the violet sea,
Stars uncovers
Over lovers,
Stars for thee, Marie, and me, 20
Stars for me and thee.
JOHN BANISTER TABB (1845-1909)
Tabb was born in Amelia County, Virginia, on 22 March, 1845. His education was obtained
through private study. In 1862 he became captain's clerk on the Confederate blockade-runner, R. E.
Lee, and two years later he was taken prisoner by a Union vessel. He was sent to the same prison
(Point Lookout) as was Sidney Lanier, and there the two became firm friends. Tabb's deepest inter-
ests were poetry and music, and it was Lanier's flute-playing that drew them together. After his
release Tabb studied music in Baltimore, and later became a teacher at Racine College, Wisconsin.
Later still he underwent a course of study at St. Charles College, Ellicott City, Maryland, and at
St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, and in 1884 he was ordained a priest of the Roman Catholic Church.
He continued, however, his work as a teacher, returning to St. Charles College and holding a profes-
sorship of literature there until his death in 1909. From his early youth he had suffered from a weak-
ness of the eyes which was Incurable, and during the last three years of his life he was totally blind.
Tabb's production of poetry was small in its amount, and his poems, besides, are almost invari-
ably short, often quatrains. Moreover, the range of his interests was small. These are the familiar
signs of the minor poet, and the classification need not be disputed. But Tabb had the true poet's
searching eye for the unseen meanings lying beneath the variegated, ever-changing appearances of
the world, and the brevity of his poems is not caused by paucity of matter, but rather by the severe
compression of his utterance. It has been claimed, not without reason, that Tabb achieved beauties
beyond the reach of his friend Lanier, and certainly he w^as the finer workman of the two, and had the
deeper insight. He was not a great poet, but he was a true one, and he deserves to be read and remem-
bered. He privately printed a few poems in 1883. Later volumes were: Poems (1894), Lyrics (1897),
Child Verse (1899), Later Lyrics (1902), and Later Poems (19 10).
COMPENSATION ^
How many an acorn falls to die
For one that makes a tree!
How many a heart must pass me by
For one that cleaves to me!
How many a suppliant wave of sound
Must still unheeded roll,
For one low utterance that found
An echo in my soul!
TO AN OLD WASSAIL-CUP
Where Youth and Laughter lingered long
To quaflf delight, with wanton song
And warm caress,
Now Time and Silence strive amain
With lips unsatisfied, to drain
Life's emptiness!
1 The poems by Tabb here reprinted are used by and
with the permission of Messrs. Small, Maynard, and
Company, Inc. The first seven are reprinted from
Poems (1894). The remainder are reprinted from
Lyrics (1897).
AUTUMN SONG
My life is but a leaf upon the tree —
A growth upon the stem that feedeth all.
A touch of frost — and suddenly I fall,
To follow where my sister-blossoms be.
The selfsame sun, the shadow, and the rain,
That brought the budding verdure to the
bough,
Shall strip the fading foliage as now,
And leave the limb in nakedness again.
My life is but a leaf upon the tree; 9
The winds of birth and death upon it blow;
But whence it came and whither it shall go,
Is mystery of mysteries to me.
ANGELS OF PAIN
Ah, should they come revisiting the spot
Whence by our prayers we drove them
utterly.
Shame were it for their saddened eyes to see
How soon their visitations are forgot.
^7S
276
JOHN BANISTER TABB
BABY
Baby in lier slumber smiling,
Doth a captive take:
\\ hispers Love, "From dreams beguiling
May she never wake!"
\\ hen the lids, like mist retreating,
Flee the azure deep.
Wakes a newborn Joy, repeating,
"May she never sleep!"
A BUNCH OF ROSES
The rosy mouth and rosy toe
Of little baby brother.
Until about a month ago
Had never met each other;
But nowadays the neighbors sweet,
In every sort of weather,
Half way with rosy fingers meet,
To kiss and play together.
SHADOWS
Ye shrink not wholly from us when the
morn
Arises red with slaughter, and the slain
Sweet visages of tender dreams remain
To haunt us through the wakened hours
forlorn,
Nor when the noontide cometh, and the
thorn
Of light is centered in the quivering brain,
And Memory her pilgrimage of pain
Renews, with fainting footsteps, overworn.
Nay, then, what time the satellite of day
Pursues his path victorious, and the
West, 10
Her clouds beleaguered vanishing away,
A desert seems of solitude oppressed,
Around us still your hovering pinions stay.
The pledges of returning night and rest.
AT LAST
How full of phantoms are the days
That shorten as they go!
Along the once frequented ways,
Alas, are none I know!
Lone relic of reality,
I too a phantom fain would be.
THE PILGRIM
When, but a child, I wandered hence.
Another child — sweet Innocence,
My sister — went with me:
But I have lost her, and am fain
To seek her in the home again
Where we were wont to be.
AN INTERVIEW
I SAT with chill December
Beside the evening fire.
"And what do you remember,"
I ventured to inquire,
"Of seasons long forsaken?"
He answered in amaze,
"My age you have mistaken:
I've lived but thirty days,**
ANTICIPATION
The master scans the woven score
Of subtle harmonies, before
A note is stirred;
And Nature now is pondering
The tidal symphony of Spring,
As yet unheard.
DEUS ABSCONDITUS
My God has hid Himself from me
Behind whatever else I see;
Myself — the nearest mystery — •
As far beyond my grasp as He.
And yet, in darkest night, I know.
While lives a doubt-discerning glow,
That larger lights above it throw
These shadows in the vale below.
FANCY
A BOAT unmoored, wherein a dreamer lies.
The slumberous waves low-lisping of a
land
Where Love, forever with unclouded eyes.
Goes, wed with wandering Music, hand
in hand.
THE VOYAGER
Columbus-like, I sailed into the night.
The sunset gold to find:
Alas! 'twas but the phantom of the light!
Life's Indies lay behind!
MY SECRET
ADRIFT
The calm horizon circles only me,
The center of its measureless embrace —
A bubble on the bosom of the sea,
Itself a bubble in the bound of space.
277
MY SECRET
'Tis not what I am fain to hide,
That doth in deepest darkness dwell,
But what my tongue hath often tried,
Alas, in vain, to tell.
GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE (1844-1925)
Cable was born in New Orleans on 12 October, 1844. His mother was a woman of New Eng-
land ancestry, a fact not without significance in view of some of Cable's characteristics and of his dom-
inant interests in later life. His father died when he was fourteen, whereupon his period of schooling
ceased, as he had at once to earn what he could in order to help with the support of the family.
Reading, however, was not impossible, and the youth, studious by inclination, read widely in both
English and French literature, while his days were spent, until the Civil War began, in marking boxes
at the New Orleans custom house. During the War he became a Confederate soldier. Upon his
return to civil life in 1865 he found employment with the New Orleans Picayune, but discovered after
a short time that newspaper reporting was not his vocation. He then, after an attempt to become a
surveyor and a period of illness, entered the office of a firm of cotton factors, and remained an account-
ant there until 1879. Meanwhile he had continued to read, and had steeped himself in the history
and traditions of his city and in the distinctive manners, social customs, habits of thought, language,
and even architecture of the Creoles of Louisiana. And in 1872 Edward King, then traveling through
the South in search of material for papers which he was contributing to Scribner's Monthly, had made
Cable's acquaintance, had perceived his possibilities, and had secured from him the promise of a con-
tribution to the Monthly. In the autumn of 1873 Cable's first story, 'Sieur George, had appeared in
Scribner's Monthly, to be followed at intervals by the other tales which were republished in 1879 in
the volume entitled Creole Days. The tales made no pronounced impression upon the public until
they were collected in this book. Then, however, they immediately aroused widespread and deep
interest, and Cable suddenly found himself a nationally known figure. It was soon recognized,
indeed, that, whatever else he might do. Cable had in Creole Days achieved so distinctive and remark-
able a performance that his fame in America was secure. For in these tales of the vanishing French
civilization of Louisiana he had opened up to readers a new world, full of romantic charm, highly pic-
turesque, and, though exotic, at the same time real and living and a portion of the American scene.
It was as if Americans had suddenly discovered that the background of their civilization was more
rich and varied and, in a word, interesting than they had realized. And in this respect Cable's
achievement was similar in character to Bret Harte's in the volume entitled 7^he Luck of Roaring
Cnmp^wkh the important difference, however, that Cable was the master of a finer style, had a more
delicate eye, and was by far the sincerer artist of the two.
So eager was the reception of Creole Days that Cable at once gave his whole time to literary work.
He published The Grandissimes in 1880, a novel in which he amplified his picture of Creole life, but
also showed, despite the very real interest of the book, that his powers were most congenially exer-
cised in the short tale. In Madame Delphine (1881), however, he achieved another unquestioned
masterpiece, the tale being as charming and as perfect in style and tone and form as any of those in
Creole Days. But with this slender volume Cable's greatest work, that which is responsible for his
secure fame, was done. In 1884 he removed to Northampton, Massachusetts, where he continued
to live for the rest of his life, and the changed environment, coupled probably with self-consciousness
induced by his fame, made it impossible for him again to capture the style and the charm and interest
of his earlier work. He wrote many articles, about the Creoles, about the condition of the South, and
about the negro question, and he interested himself largely in social work in Northampton, attempting
to broaden and enrich the lives of wage-earners. This was useful and praiseworthy work, but it took
him far from the atmosphere as well as the scene of his first books, and only one of the many volumes
of fiction which he published after 1SS4.— Lovers of Louisiana (1918)— shows any genuine return of his
earlier powers. He died on 31 January, 1925.
The titles and dates of Cable's volumes, other than those which already have been mentioned,
follow: The Creoles of Louisiana (1884), The Silent South (1885), Doctor Sevier (1885), Bonaventure,
A Prose Pastoral of Louisiana (1888), The Negro Question (1890), John March, Southerner (1894),
Strong Hearts (1899), The Cavalier (1901), Bylozv Hill (1902), Kincaid's Battery (1908), Posson Jone
and Pere Raphael (1909), The Amateur Garden (1914), Gideons Band (1914), and The Flower of the
Chapdelaines (1918).
278
BELLES DEMOLSELLES PLANTATION
279
BELLES DEMOISELLES
PLANTATION 1
The original grantee was Count ,
assume the name to be De Charleu; the old
Creoles never forgive a public mention. He
was the French kmg's commissary. One
day, called to France to explain the lucky
accident of the commissariat having burned
down with his account-books inside, he left
his wife, a Choctaw Comptesse, behind.
Arrived at court, his excuses were ac-
cepted, and that tract granted him where
afterwards stood Belles Demoiselles Planta-
tion. A man cannot remember every thing!
In a fit of forgetfulness he married a French
gentlewoman, rich and beautiful, and
"brought her out." However, "All's well
that ends well"; a famine had been In the
colony, and the Choctaw Comptesse had
starved, leaving nought but a half-caste
orphan family lurking on the edge of the
settlement, bearing our French gentle-
woman's own new name, and being men-
tioned in Monsieur's will.
And the new Comptesse — she tarried but
a twelve-month, left Monsieur a lovely son,
and departed, led out of this vain world by
the swamp-fever.
From this son sprang the proud Creole
family of De Charleu. It rose straight up,
up, up, generation after generation, tall,
branchless, slender, palm-like; and finally,
in the time of which I am to tell, flowered
with all the rare beauty of a century-plant,
in Artemise, Innocente, Felicite, the twins
Marie and Martha, Leontine and little
Septlma; the seven beautiful daughters for
whom their home had been fitly named
Belles Demoiselles.
The Count's grant had once been a long
Polnte, round which the Mississippi used to
whirl, and seethe, and foam, that it was
horrid to behold. Big whirlpools would
open and wheel about in the savage eddies
under the low bank, and close up again, and
others open, and spin, and disappear. Great
circles of muddy surface would boll up from
hundreds of feet below, and gloss over, and
seem to float away, — sink, come back again
under water, and with only a soft hiss surge
up again, and again drift oflf, and vanish.
• Reprinted with the permission of Messrs. Charles
Scribner's Sons from Old Creole Days (r879).
Every few minutes the loamy bank would tip
down a great load of earth upon its besieger,
and fall back a foot, — sometimes a yard, —
and the writhing river would press after,
until at last the Polnte was quite swallowed
up, and the great river glided by in a majestic
curve, and asked no more; the bank stood
fast, the "caving" became a forgotten
misfortune, and the diminished grant was a
long, sweeping, willowy bend, rustling with
miles of sugar-cane.
Coming up the Mississippi in the sailing
craft of those early days, about the time
one first could descry the white spires of the
old St. Louis Cathedral, you would be
pretty sure to spy, just over to your right
under the levee, Belles Demoiselles Mansion,
with its broad veranda and red painted
cypress roof, peering over the embankment,
like a bird in the nest, half hid by the avenue
of willows which one of the departed De
Charleus, — he that married a Marot, — had
planted on the levee's crown.
The house stood unusually near the river,
facing eastward, and standing four-square,
with an Immense veranda about its sides,
and a flight of steps in front spreading
broadly downward, as we open arms to a
child. From the veranda nine miles of river
were seen; and in their compass, near at
hand, the shady garden full of rare and
beautiful flowers; farther away broad fields
of cane and rice, and the distant quarters of
the slaves, and on the horizon everywhere a
dark belt of cypress forest.
The master was old Colonel De Charleu, —
Jean Albert Henri Joseph De Charleu-
Marot, and "Colonel" by the grace of the
first American governor. Monsieur, — he
would not speak to any one who called him
"Colonel," — was a hoary-headed patriarch.
His step was firm, his form erect, his intellect
strong and clear, his countenance classic,
serene, dignified, commanding, his manners
courtly, his voice musical, — fascinating.
He had had his vices, — all his life; but
had borne them, as his race do, with a
serenity of conscience and a cleanness of
mouth that left no outward blemish on the
surface of the gentleman. He had gambled
in Royal Street, drunk hard in Orleans
Street, run his adversary through in the
dueling-ground at Slaughter-house Point,
and danced and quareled at the St. Philippe-
28o
GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE
street-tluatcr quadroon halls. Even now,
with all his courtesy and hounty, and a
hospitality which seemed to be entertaining;
anpeis, he was bitter-proud and penurious,
and deep down in his hard-finished heart
loved nothing but himself, his name, and
his motherless children. But these! — their
ravishing beauty was all but excuse enough
for the unbounded idolatry of their father.
Against these seven goddesses he never
rebelled. Had they even required him to
defraud old De Carlos —
I can hardly say.
Old De Carlos was his extremely distant
relative on the Choctaw side. With this
single exception, the narrow thread-like
line of descent from the Indian w^ife, dimin-
ished to a mere strand by injudicious
alliances, and deaths in the gutters of old
New Orleans, was extinct. The name, by
Spanish contact, had become De Carlos;
but this one surviving bearer of it was known
to all, and known only, as Injin Charlie.
One thing I never knew a Creole to do.
He will not utterly go back on the ties of
blood, no matter what sort of knots those
ties may be. For one reason, he is never
ashamed of his or his father's sins; and for
another, — he will tell you — he is "all
heart"!
So the different heirs of the De Charleu
estate had always strictly regarded the
rights and interests of the De Carloses,
especially their ownership of a block of
dilapidated buildings in a part of the city,
which had once been very poor property,
but was beginning to be valuable. This
block had much more than maintained the
last De Carlos through a long and lazy
lifetime, and, as his household consisted only
of himself, and an aged and crippled negress,
the inference was irresistible that he "had
money." Old Charlie, though by alias an
"Injin," was plainly a dark white man,
about as old as Colonel De Charleu, sunk in
the bliss of deep ignorance, shrewd, deaf, and,
by repute at least, unmerciful.
The Colonel and he always conversed in
English. This rare accomplishment, which
the former had learned from his Scotch wife,
- — the latter from up-river traders, — they
found an admirable medium of communica-
tion, answering, better than French could, a
similar puroose to that of the stick which we
fasten to the hit of one horse and breast-
gear of another, whereby each keeps his
distance. Once in a while, too, by way of
jest, English found its way among the
ladies of Belles Demoiselles, always signify-
ing that their sire was about to have business
with old Charlie.
Now a long-standing wish to buy out
Charlie troubled the Colonel. He had no
desire to oust him unfairly; he was proud
of being always fair; yet he did long to
engross the whole estate under one title.
Out of his luxurious idleness he had con-
ceived this desire, and thought little of so
slight an obstacle as being already some-
what in debt to old Charlie for money bor-
rowed, and for which Belles Demoiselles
was, of course, good, ten times over. Lots,
buildings, rents, all, might as well be his, he
thought, to give, keep, or destroy. "Had
he but the old man's heritage. Ah! he might
bring that into existence which his belles
demoiselles had been begging for, *since
many years'; a home, — and such a home, —
in the gay city. Here he should tear down
this row of cottages, and make his garden
wall; there that long rope-walk should give
place to vine-covered arbors; the bakery
yonder should make way for a costly con-
servatory; that wine warehouse should
come down, and the mansion go up. It
should be the finest in the State. Men
should never pass it, but they should say —
'the palace of the De Charleus; a family of
grand descent, a people of elegance and
bounty, a line as old as France, a fine old
man, and seven daughters as beautiful as
happy; whoever dare attempt to marry
there must leave his own name behind him!*
"The house should be of stones fitly set,
brought down in ships from the land of 'les
Yankees,' and it should have an airy belve-
dere, with a gilded image tiptoeing and
shining on its peak, and from it you should
see, far across the gleaming folds of the river,
the red roof of Belles Demoiselles, the coun-
try-seat. At the big stone gate there should
be a porter's lodge, and it should be a
privilege even to see the ground."
Truly they were a family fine enough, and
fancy-free enough to have fine wishes, yet
happy enough where they were, to have had
no wish but to live there always.
To those, who, by whatever fortune,
BELLES DEMOLSELLES PLANTATION
281
wandered into the garden of Belles Demoi-
selles some summer afternoon as the sky
was reddening towards evenmg, it was lovely
to see the family gathered out upon the
tiled pavement at the foot of the broad front
steps, gayly chatting and jesting, with that
ripple of laughter that comes so pleasingly
from a bevy of girls. The father would be
found seated in their midst, the center of
attention and compliment, witness, arbiter,
umpire, critic, by his beautiful children's
unanimous appomtment, but the single
vassal, too, of seven absolute sovereigns.
Now they would draw their chairs near
together in eager discussion of some new
step in the dance, or the adjustment of some
rich adornment. Now they would start
about him with excited comments to see the
eldest fix a bunch of violets in his button-
hole. Now the twins would move down a
walk after some unusual flower, and be
greeted on their return with the high
pitched notes of delighted feminine surprise.
As evening came on they would draw
more quietly about their paternal center.
Often their chairs were forsaken, and they
grouped themselves on the lower steps, one
above another, and surrendered themselves
to the tender influences of the approaching
night. At such an hour the passer on the
river, already attracted by the dark figures
of the broad-roofed mansion, and its woody
garden standing against the glowing sunset,
would hear the voices of the hidden group
rise from the spot in the soft harmonies of an
evening song; swelling clearer and clearer as
the thrill of music warmed them into feeling,
and presently joined by the deeper tones of
the father's voice; then, as the daylight
passed quite away, all would be still, and he
would know that the beautiful home had
gathered its nestlings under its wings.
And yet, for mere vagary, it pleased them
not to be pleased.
"Arti!" called one sister to another in
the broad hall, one morning, — mock amaze-
ment in her distended eyes, — "something is
goin' to took place!"
** Comm-e-n-t?'* — long-drawn perplexity.
"Papa is goin' to town!"
The news passed up stairs.
"Inno!" — one to another meeting in a
doorway, — "something is goin' to took
place!"
'' Quest-ce-que c'esif" — vain attempt at
gruff^ness.
"Papa is goin' to town!"
The unusual tidings were true. It was
afternoon of the same day that the Colonel
tossed his horse's bridle to his groom, and
stepped up to old Charlie, who was sitting on
his bench under a China-tree, his head, as
was his fashion, bound in a Madras handker-
chief. The "old man" was plainly under the
effect of spirits and smiled a deferential
salutation without trusting himself to his
feet.
^'Eh, well Charlie!" — the Colonel raised
his voice to suit his kinsman's deafness, —
" how is those times with my friend Charlie ^ "
"Eh.''" said Charlie, distractedly.
"Is that goin' well with my friend
Charlie.?"
"In de house, — call her," — making a
pretense of rising.
'' Non, non! I don't want," — the speaker
paused to breathe — "'ow is collection?"
"Oh!" said Charlie, "every day he make
me more poorer!"
"What do you hask for it?" asked the
planter indifferently, designating the house
by a wave of his whip.
"Ask for w'at?" said Injin Charlie.
"De house! What you ask for it?"
"I don't believe," said Charlie.
"What you would take for it!" cried the
planter.
"Wait for w'at?'*
"What you would take for the whole
block?"
"I don't want to sell him!"
"I'll give you ten thousand dollah for it."
"Ten t'ousand dollah for dis house? Oh,
no, dat is no price. He is blame good old
house, — dat old house." (Old Charlie and
the Colonel never swore in presence of each
other.) "Forty years dat old house didn't
had to be paint! I easy can get fifty
t'ousand dollah for dat old house."
"Fifty thousand picayunes; yes," said the
Colonel.
"She's a good house. Can make plenty
money," pursued the deaf man.
"That's what make you so rich, eh,
Charlie?"
*' Non, I don't make nothing. Too blame
clever, me, dat's de troub'. She's a good
house, — make money fast like a steamboat,
282
GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE
— make a bnrrel full in a week! Me, I lose
money all dc days. Too blame clever."
"Charlie!"
"Eh?"
"Tell me what you'll take."
"Make? I don't make nothing. Too
blame clever."
"What will you taker"
"Oh! I got enough already, — half drunk
now.
"Wliat will you take for the 'ouse?"
"You want to buy her?"
"I don't know," — (shrug), — "mayi^, — if
you sell it cheap."
"She's a bully old house."
There was a long silence. By and by old
Charlie commenced —
"Old Injin Charlie is a low-down dog."
"C'est vrai, ouil" retorted the Colonel in
an undertone.
"He's got Injin blood in him."
The Colonel nodded assent.
" But he's got some blame good blood, too,
am t it!^
The Colonel nodded impatiently.
" Bien/ Old Charlie's Injin blood says,
'sell de house, Charlie, you blame old
fool!' Alaisy old Charlie's good blood says,
'Charlie! if you sell dat old house, Charlie,
you low-down old dog, Charlie, what de
Compte De Charleu make for you grace-
gran'-muzzer, de dev' can eat you, Charlie, I
on t care.
"But you'll sell it anyhow, won't you,
old man?"
" No ! " And the no rumbled off in muttered
oaths like thunder out on the Gulf. The
incensed old Colonel wheeled and started
ofF.
"Curl!" (Colonel) said Charlie, standing
up unsteadily.
The planter turned with an inquiring
frown.
"I'll trade with you!" said Charlie.
The Colonel was tempted. "'Ow'll you
trade?" he asked.
"My house for yours!"
The old Colonel turned pale with anger.
He walked very quickly back, and came
close up to his kinsman.
"Charlie!" he said.
"Injm Charlie," — with a tipsy nod.
But by this time self-control was return-
ing. "Sell Belles Demoiselles to you?" he
said in a high key, and then laughed "Ho,
ho, ho!" and rode away.
A cloud, but not a dark one, overshadowed
the spirits of Belles Demoiselles' plantation.
The old master, whose beaming presence
had always made him a shining Saturn,
spinning and sparkling within the bright
circle of his daughters, fell into musing fits,
started out of frowning reveries, walked
often by himself, and heard business from his
overseer fretfully.
No wonder. The daughters knew his
closeness in trade, and attributed to it his
failure to negotiate for the Old Charlie
buildings, — so to call them. They began to
depreciate Belles Demoiselles. If a north
wind blew, it was too cold to ride. If a
shower had fallen, it was too muddy to
drive. In the morning the garden was wet.
In the evening the grasshopper was a burden.
Ennui was turned into capital; every head-
ache was interpreted a premonition of
ague; and when the native exuberance of a
flock of ladies without a want or a care
burst out in laughter in the father's face,
they spread their French eyes, rolled up
their little hands, and with rigid wrists and
mock vehemence vowed and vowed again
that they only laughed at their misery, and
should pine to death unless they could move
to the sweet city. "Oh! the theater! Oh!
Orleans Street! Oh! the masquerade! the
Place d'Armes! the ball!" and they would
call upon Heaven with French irreverence,
and fall into each other's arms, and whirl
down the hall singing a waltz, end with a
grand collision and fall, and, their eyes
streaming merriment, lay the blame on the
slippery floor, that would some day be the
death of the whole seven.
Three times more the fond father, thus
goaded, managed, by accident, — business
accident, — to see old Charlie and increase
his off'er; but in vain. He finally went to
him formally.
"Eh?" said the deaf and distant relative.
"For what you want him, eh? Why you
don't stay where you halways be 'appy?
Dis is a blame old rat-hole, — good for old
Injin Charlie, — da's all. Why you don't
stay where you be halways 'appy? Why
you don't buy somewheres else?"
"That's none of your business," snapped
BELLES DEMOLSELLES PLANTATION
283
the planter. Truth was, his reasons were
unsatisfactory even to himself.
A sullen silence followed. Then Charlie
spoke:
"Well, now, look here; I sell you old
Charlie's house."
*' Bien! and the whole block," said the
Colonel.
"Hold on," said Charlie. "I sell you de
'ouse and de block. Den I go and git drunk,
and go to sleep; de dev* comes along and
says, *Charlie! old Charlie, you blame low-
down old dog, wake up! What you doin'
here.? Where's de 'ouse what Monsieur le
Compte give your grace-gran-muzzer? Don't
you see dat fine gentyman, De Charleu,
done gone and tore him down and make
him over new, you blame old fool, Charlie,
you low-down old Injin dog!'"
"I'll give you forty thousand dollars,"
said the Colonel.
"For de 'ouse.?"
"For all."
The deaf man shook his head.
"Forty-five!" said the Colonel.
"What a lie? For what you tell me
*What a lie.?' I don't tell you no lie."
" Nouy non! I give yo\i forty-five!" shouted
the Colonel.
Charlie shook his head again.
"Fifty."
He shook it again.
The figures rose and rose to —
"Seventy-five!"
The answer was an invitation to go away
and let the owner alone, as he was, in certain
specified respects, the vilest of living crea-
tures, and no company for a fine gentyman.
The "fine gentyman" longed to blaspheme,
— but before old Charlie! — in the name of
pride, how could he.? He mounted and
started away.
"Tell you what I'll make wid you," said
Charlie.
The other, guessing aright, turned back
without dismounting, smiling.
"How much Belles Demoiselles hoes me
now?" asked the deaf one.
"One hundred and eighty thousand dol-
lars," said the Colonel, firmly.
"Yass," said Charlie. "I don't want
Belles Demoiselles."
The old Colonel's quiet laugh intimated it
made no difference either way.
"But me," continued Charlie, "me, —
I'm got le Compte De Charleu's blood in
me, any'ow, — a litt' bit, any'ow, ain't it?"
The Colonel nodded that it was.
*' Bienf If I go out of dis place and don't
go to Belles Demoiselles, de peoples will
say, — dey will say, 'Old Charlie he been all
doze time tell a blame lie! He ain't no kin
to his old grace-gran-muzzer, not a blame
bit! He don't got nary drop of De Charleu
blood to save his blame low-down old Injin
soul!' No, sare! What I want wid money,
den? No, sare! My place for yours!"
He turned to go into the house, just too
soon to see the Colonel make an ugly whisk
at him with his riding-whip. Then the
Colonel, too, moved oflF.
Two or three times over, as he ambled
homeward, laughter broke through his
annoyance, as he recalled old Charlie's
family pride and the presumption of his
oflFer. Yet each time he could but think
better of — not the offer to swap, but the
preposterous ancestral loyalty. It was so
much better than he could have expected
from his "low-down" relative, and not un-
like his own whim withal — the proposition
which went with it was forgiven.
This last defeat bore so harshly on the
master of Belles Demoiselles, that the
daughters, reading chagrin in his face,
began to repent. They loved their father as
daughters can, and when they saw their
pretended dejection harassing him seriously
they restrained their complaints, displayed
more than ordinary tenderness, and heroi-
cally and ostentatiously concluded there was
no place like Belles Demoiselles. But the
new mood touched him more than the old,
and only refined his discontent. Here was a
man, rich without the care of riches, free
from ar»y real trouble, happiness as native
to his house as perfume to his garden,
deliberately, as it were with premeditated
malice, taking joy by the shoulder and
bidding her be gone to town, whither he
might easily have followed, only that the
very same ancestral nonsense that kept
Injin Charlie from selling the old place for
twice its value prevented him from choosing
any other spot for a city home.
But by and by the charm of nature and
the merry hearts around him prevailed; the
fit of exalted sulks passed off, and after a
284
CEORCE WASHINGTON CABLE
wliile the year flared up at Cliristmas,
flickered, and went out.
New ^'ear came and passed; the beautiful
garden of Belles Demoiselles put on its
spring attire; the seven fair sisters moved
from rose to rose; the cloud of discontent had
warmed into invisible vapor in the rich
sunlight of family affection, and on the
common memory the only scar of last year's
wound was old Charlie's sheer impertinence
in crossing the caprice of the De Charleus.
The cup of gladness seemed to fill with the
filling of the river.
How high that river was! Its tremendous
current rolled and tumbled and spun along,
hustling the long funeral flotillas of drift, —
and how near shore it came! Men were out
day and night, watching the levee. On
windy nights even the old Colonel took part,
and grew light-hearted with occupation and
excitement, as every minute the river threw
a white arm over the levee's top, as though it
would vault over. But all held fast, and, as
the summer drifted in, the water sunk
down into its banks and looked quite in-
capable of harm.
On a summer afternoon of uncommon
mildness, old Colonel Jean Albert Henri
Joseph De Charleu-Marot, being in a mood
for reverie, slipped the custody of his feminine
rulers and sought the crown of the levee,
where it was his wont to promenade. Pres-
ently he sat upon a stone bench, — a favorite
seat. Before him lay his broad-spread
fields; near by, his lordly mansion; and
being still, — perhaps by female contact, —
somewhat sentimental, he fell to musing on
his past. It was hardly worthy to be proud
of. All its morning was reddened with mad
frolic, and far toward the meridian it was
marred with elegant rioting. Pride had
kept him well-nigh useless, and despised the
honors w^on by valor; gaming had dimmed
prosperity; death had taken his heavenly
wife; voluptuous ease had mortgaged his
lands; and yet his house still stood, his
sweet-smelling fields were still fruitful, his
name was fame enough; and yonder and
yonder, among the trees and flowers, like
angels walking in Eden, were the seven god-
desses of his only worship.
Just then a slight sound behind him
brought him to his feet. He cast his eyes
anxiously to the outer edge of the little
strip of bank between the levee's base and
the river, rhere was nothing visible. He
paused, with his ear toward the water, his
face full of frightened expectation. Hal
There came a single plashing sound, like some
great beast slipping into the river, and
little waves in a wide semi-circle came out
from under the bank and spread over the
water.
"My God!"
He plunged down the levee and bounded
through the low weeds to the edge of the
bank. It was sheer, and the water about
four feet below. He did not stand quite
on the edge, but fell upon his knees a
couple of yards away, wringing his hands,
moaning and weeping, and staring through
his watery eyes at a fine, long crevice just
discernible under the matted grass,' and
curving outward on either hand toward the
river.
''My God!" he sobbed aloud; "my God!"
and even while he called, his God answered:
the tough Bermuda grass stretched and
snapped, the crevice slowly became a gape,
and softly, gradually, with no sound but
the closing of the water at last, a ton or more
of earth settled into the boiling eddy and
disappeared.
At the same instant a pulse of the breeze
brought from the garden behind, the joyous,
thoughtless laughter of the fair mistresses of
Belles Demoiselles.
The old Colonel sprang up and clambered
over the levee. Then forcing himself to a
more composed movement he hastened into
the house and ordered his horse.
"Tell my children to make merry while I
am gone," he left word. "I shall be back
to-night," and the horse's hoofs clattered
down a by-road leading to the city.
"Charlie," said the planter, riding up to a
window, from which the old man's nightcap
was thrust out, "what you say, Charlie, —
my house for yours, eh, Charlie — what you
say.''
"'Ello!" said Charlie; "from where you
come from dis time of to-night.-*"
"I come from the Exchange in St. Louis
Street." (A small fraction of the truth.)
"What you want.''" said matter-of-fact
Charlie.
"I come to trade."
The low-down relative drew the worsted
RFXLES DEMOISELLES PLANTATION
285
off his ears. "Oh! yass," he said with an
uncertain air.
*'Well, old man Charhe, what you say:
my house for yours, — like you said, — eh,
Charlie?"
"I dunno," said Charlie; "it's nearly
mine now. Why you don't stay dare you-
se r:
*^ Because I dont zvanl!'' said the Colonel
savagely. "Is dat reason enough for you?
You better take me in de notion, old man, I
tell you, — yes!"
Charlie never winced; but how his answer
delighted the Colonel! Quoth Charlie:
"I don't care — I take him! — mais, pos-
session give right off,"
"Not the whole plantation, Charlie;
only" —
"I don't care," said Charlie; "we easy
can fix dat. Mai-Sy what for you don't
want to keep him? I don't want him. You
better keep him."
^" Don't you try to m.ake no fool of me, old
man," cried the planter.
"Oh, no!" said the other. "Oh, no! but
you make a fool of yourself, ain't it?"
The dumbfounded Colonel stared; Charlie
went on:
"Yass! Belles Demoiselles is more wort'
dan tree block like dis one. I pass by dare
since two weeks. Oh, pritty Belles Demoi-
selles! De cane was wave in de wind, de
garden smell like a bouquet, de white-cap
was jump up and down on de river; seven
belles demoiselles was ridin' on horses,
'Pritty, pritty, pritty!' says old Charlie.
Ah! Monsieur le pere^ 'ow 'appy, 'appy,
"Yass!" he continued — the Colonel still
staring — "le Compte De Charleu have two
familie. One was low-down Choctaw, one
was high up noblesse. He gave the low-down
Choctaw dis old rat-hole; he give Belles
Demoiselles to you gran-fozzer; and now
you don't be satisfait. What I'll do wid
Belles Demoiselles? She'll break me in two
years, yass. And what you'll do wid old
Charlie's house, eh? You'll tear her down
and make you'se'f a blame old fool. I
rather wouldn't trade!"
The planter caught a big breathful of
anger, but Charlie went straight on:
"I rather wouldn't, mais I will do it for
you; — ^just the same, like Monsieur le
Compte would say, *Charlie, you old fool,
I want to shange houses wid you.'"
So long as the Colonel suspected irony he
was angry, but as Charlie seemed, after all,
to be certainly in earnest, he began to feel
conscience-stricken. He was by no means a
tender man, but his lately-discovered mis-
fortune had unhinged him, and this strange,
undeserved, disinterested family fealty on the
part of Charlie touched his heart. And
should he still try to lead him into the pitfall
he had dug? He hesitated; — no, he would
show him the place by broad daylight, and
if he chose to overlook the "caving bank,"
it would be his own fault; — a trade's a trade.
"Come," said the planter, "come at my
house to-night; to-morrow we look at the
place before breakfast, and finish the trade."
"For what?" said Charlie.
"Oh, because I got to come in town in the
morning."
"I don't want," said Charlie. "How I'm
goin' to come dere?"
"I git you a horse at the liberty stable."
*'Well — anyhow — I don't care — I'll go."
And they w^ent.
When they had ridden a long time, and
were on the road darkened by hedges of
Cherokee rose, the Colonel called behind
him to the "low-down" scion:
" Keep the road, old man."
"Eh?"
" Keep the road."
"Oh, yes; all right; I keep my word; we
don't goin' to play no tricks, eh?"
But the Colonel seemed not to hear. His
ungenerous design was beginning to be hate-
ful to him. Not only old Charlie's unpro-
voked goodness was prevailing; the eulogy
on Belles Demoiselles had stirred the depths
of an intense love for his beautiful home.
True, if he held to it, the caving of the bank,
at its present fearful speed, would let the
house into the river within three months;
but were it not better to lose it so, than sell
his birthright? Again, — coming back to the
first thought, — to betray his own blood! It
was only Injin Charlie; but had not the De
Charleu blood just spoken out in him.?
Unconsciously he groaned.
After a time they struck a path approach-
ing the plantation in the rear, and a little
after, passing from behind a clump of live-
oaks, they came in sight of the villa. It
286
GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE
looked so like a geni, shining through its
dark grove, so hke a great glow-worm in the
dense foliage, so significant of luxury and
gayety, that the poor master, from an over-
flowing heart, groaned again.
"What?" asked Charlie.
[ he Colonel only drew his rein, and, dis-
mounting mechanically, contemplated the
sight before him. The high, arched doors
and windows were thrown wide to the sum-
mer air; from every opening the bright light
of numerous candelabra darted out upon the
sparkling foliage of magnolia and bay, and
here and there in the spacious verandas a
colored lantern swayed in the gentle breeze.
A sound of revel fell on the ear, the music of
harps; and across one window, brighter
than the rest, flitted, once or twice, the
shadows of dancers. But oh! the shadows
flitting across the heart of the fair mansion's
master!
"Old Charlie," said he, gazing fondly at
his house, "You and me is both old, eh.'"'
**Yaas," said the stolid Charlie.
"And we has both been bad enough in
our time, eh, Charlie?"
Charlie, surprised at the tender tone,
repeated "Yaas."
"And you and me is mighty close?"
"Blame close, yaas."
"But you never know me to cheat, old
man!
" No," — impassively.
"And do you think I would cheat you
now :
" I dunno," said Charlie. " I don't believe."
"Well, old man, old man," — his voice
began to quiver, — "I sha'n't cheat you now.
My God! — old man, I tell you — you better
not make the trade!"
"Because for what?" asked Charlie in
plain anger; but both looked quickly toward
the house! 1 he Colonel tossed his hands
wildly in the air, rushed forward a step or
two, and giving one fearful scream of agony
and fright, fell foward on his face in the path.
Old Charlie stood transfixed with horror.
Belles Demoiselles, the realm of maiden
beauty, the home of merriment, the house of
dancing, all in the tremor and glow of
pleasure, suddenly sunk, with one short,
wild wail of terror — sunk, sunk, down,
down, down, into the merciless, unfathom-
able flood of the Mississippi.
Twelve long months were midnight to the
mind of the childless father; when they were
only half gone, he took his bed; and every
day, and every night, old Charlie, the "low-
down," the "fool," watched him tenderly,
tended him lovingly, for the sake of his
name, his misfortunes, and his broken heart.
No woman's step crossed the floor of the
sick-chamber, whose western dormer-win-
dows overpeered the dingy architecture of
old Charlie's block; Charlie and a skilled
physician, the one all interest, the other all
gentleness, hope, and patience — these only
entered by the door; but by the window
came in a sweet-scented evergreen vine,
transplanted from the caving bank of
Belles Demoiselles. It caught the rays
of sunset in its flowery net and let them
softly in upon the sick man's bed; gathered
the glancing beams of- the moon at mid-
night, and often wakened the sleeper to
look, with his mindless eyes, upon their
pretty silver fragments strewn upon the
floor.
By and by there seemed — there was — a
twinkling dawn of returning reason. Slowly,
peacefully, with an increase unseen from day
to day, the light of reason came into the
eyes, and speech became coherent; but withal
there came a failing of the wrecked body,
and the doctor said that monsieur was both
better and worse.
One evening, as Charlie sat by the vine-
clad window with his fireless pipe in his hand,
the old Colonel's eyes fell full upon his own,
and rested there.
"Charl — ," he said with an effort, and his
delighted nurse hastened to the bedside
and bowed his best ear. There was an un-
successful eff^ort or two, and then he whis-
pered, smiling with sweet sadness, —
"We didn't trade."
The truth, in this case, was a secondary
matter to Charlie; the main point was to
give a pleasing answer. So he nodded his
head decidedly, as who should say — "Oh
yes, we did, it was a bona-fide swap!" but
when he saw the smile vanish, he tried the
other expedient and shook his head with
still more vigor, to signify that they had not
so much as approached a bargain; and the
smile returned.
Charlie wanted to see the vine recognized.
He stepped backward to the window with
BELLES DEMOLSELLES PLANTATION
287
a broad smile, shook the foliage, nodded and
looked smart.
"I know," said the Colonel, with beaming
eyes, *' — many weeks."
The next day —
"Chad—"
The best ear went down.
"Send for a priest."
The priest came, and was alone with him
a whole afternoon. When he left, the patient
was very haggard and exhausted, but
smiled and would not suffer the crucifix to be
removed from his breast.
One more morning came, j Just before
dawn Charlie, lying on a pallet in the room,
thought he was called, and came to the
bedside.
"Old man," whispered the failing invalid,
"is it caving yet.''"
Charlie nodded.
"It won't pay you out."
"Oh, dat makes not'ing," said Charlie.
Two big tears rolled down his brown face.
"Dat makes not'in."
The Colonel whispered once more:
*' Mes belles demoiselles! in paradise; — in
the garden — I shall be with them at sunrise";
and so he was.
LAFCADIO HEARN (1850-1904)
Hearn was born on one of the Ionian Islands — one which the modern Greeks call Levkas, or Lef-
cada (hence his name) — on 27 June, 1850. His father came of an English family which had been
settled for a century and a half in Ireland. He was a surgeon-major in the British army, attached
to a regiment which in the late 1840's was ordered to the Ionian Islands (then held by Great Britain)
for garrison duty. There he fell in love with a Greek girl, whom he succeeded in marrying despite
the violent opposition of her family. Lafcadio was the second of three sons born to them. In 1856
the surgeon-major returned to Ireland with his family; but in less than a year Hearn's mother fled
back to her native land, made desperately unhappy not only by her strange surroundings in Ireland
but also by her husband's treatment of her. The marriage was annulled, the surgeon-major at once
married again, Lafcadio was adopted by a great-aunt who took him to Wales, and he never afterwards
saw cither his younger brother (his elder brother had died at birth), or his father, or his mother. He
was an abnormally sensitive child — and man — instinctively a lover of the beautiful, sensuous, pas-
sionate, imaginative, the creature of strange moods, ready to endow those whom he loved with all the
attributes of perfection and equally bitter in his inevitable disillusionments and enmities. He was
a child who needed sympathy and understanding if ever any child did, while his great-aunt was a pious
Roman Catholic whose affairs were directed and whose money was spent by priests, so that from the
beginning there was a tacit opposition between the two which was bound sooner or later to end in a
break. And thus it did end when Hearn was sixteen or seventeen, though meanwhile his aunt made
possible some years of study in several Catholic schools. An accident during a game at the last school
which Hearn attended caused him (in his sixteenth year) to become totally blind in his left eye. He
was probably near-sighted from birth, and his eyes were unusually sensitive, if not weak. In the
course of time his right eye became somewhat enlarged because of the strain it had to bear, and his
near-sightedness rapidly increased, so that he had to use a very heavy magnifying glass, and even
then could see distinctly only by fairly burjang his face in an object.
It is not known precisely how or when the break came between Hearn and his great-aunt, but it
must have occurred not long after the accident to his eye. He is thought to have spent about two
years in London, alone, friendless, and suffering from the direst poverty, before he somehow found
the means of crossing over to New York in 1869. There his poverty and loneliness were as unrelieved
as in London, but he managed after a time to make his way to Cincinnati, where he found employment
as a typesetter and proof-reader, and later as a reporter for the Inquirer. The editors of this newspaper
by accident made the discovery that their shy, strange-looking young employee was a painstaking
artist in words, with a remarkable power for vivid and colorful descriptive writing which he delighted
to exercise upon subjects terrible or horrible in character. Thus his place in journalism was made
secure, even in spite of the difficulties he was bound to keep creating for himself. In time he drifted
from the Inquirer to other Cincinnati newspapers, and in 1877 he departed for New Orleans. One
reason for his departure was the universal condemnation which greeted his quixotic attempt to marry
a mulatto girl, Althea Foley, because he had formed a connection with her and thought marriage due
her. She had been, it would appear, the one person in Cincinnati who had given Hearn food and
warmth and sympathy when he had most needed them, and, in addition, he did not then, nor until
much later, understand the reasons behind American race-prejudice, but thought it a cruel wrong
which ought to be combated. However, in any event Hearn would not long have remained in one place.
He felt irresistibly the call of the remote and the strange, and he was born a wanderer. He loved the
warmth and color and melancholy beauty of New Orleans after his experience of the trying climate
and alien atmosphere of Cincinnati, and he there readily found journalistic employment which gave
him an excellent opportunity to develop and perfect his literary artistry, partly through careful and
discriminating translation from the French; but, nevertheless, as early as 1884, while he was on a
visit to Grande Isle in the Gulf of Mexico, he was writing: "One lives here. In New Orleans one only
exists." To Grande Isle he returned more than once, and it became the scene of his tale entitled Chita
(printed in the New Orleans Times-Democrat; several years later, 1889, published in book-form), which
was his earliest notable piece of original work. Partly because of the excellence of this tale he obtained
in 1887 a commission from Messrs. Harper and Brothers which took him to the West Indies, where
288
FUJI-NO-YAMA
289
he remained in all about two years, writing for Harper s Magazine the sketches which were later (1890)
gathered into a book entitled Two Years in the French West Indies.
In 1889, when Hearn was in New York, he was hoping to return to the West Indies and
to go on to explore the exotic possibilities of South America; but, instead, he agreed to a proposal
that he should make a journey to Japan, and he left in the spring of 1890. He intended to re-
main in Japan only a few months, but things so turned out that he lived there until his death on
26 September, 1904. Immediately upon his arrival he quarreled with the Harpers, considering that
the terms of his agreement with them were grossly unjust, and abandoned journalistic work. He
secured a post in a school, and within a few months definitely threw in his lot with Japan by marrying
a Japanese woman, Setsu Koizumi. During the remainder of his life he taught in several schools or
universities, save for two intervals when he devoted his time wholly to writing. In 1894 he published
Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (2 vols.), the first of the series of works in which he attempted to inter-
pret Japan and far Eastern thought to Western minds. There followed: Out of the East, Reveries
and Studies in New Japan (1895); Kokoro, Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life (1896); Gleanings
in Buddha-Fields, Studies of Hand and Soul in the Far East (1897); Exotics and Retrospectives (1898);
In Ghostly Japan (1899); Shadowings (1900); A Japanese Miscellany (1901); Japanese Fairy Tales
(4 vols., 1902, published in Tokyo); Kotto, Being Japanese Curios, with Sundry Cobwebs (1902); Kwai-
dan. Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1904); Japan, An Attempt at Interpretation (1904); and
The Romance of the Milky Way, and Other Studies and Stories (1905). In form these studies are clas-
sics of their kind, and classics without rivals in American literature. Some aspects of the substance of
Hearn's efforts in what he himself felt to be the ultimately impossible task of expounding the East
to the West are discussed in Mr. P. E. More's essay on Hearn reprinted in this volume. In recent
years the list of Hearn's works has been increased by the publication of several volumes containing
lectures — derived from a student's notes — which he delivered in Japan.
FUJI-NO-YAMA ^
Kite mireba,
Sahodo made nashi,
Fuji no Yama!
Seen on close approach, the mountain of Fuji
does not come up to expectation. — Japanese pro-
verbial philosophy.
The most beautiful sight in Japan, and
certainly one of the most beautiful in the
world, is the distant apparition of Fuji on
cloudless days, — more especially days of
spring and autumn, when the greater part
of the peak is covered with late or with
early snows. You can seldom distinguish
the snowless base, which remains the same
color as the sky: you perceive only the
white cone seeming to hang in heaven; and
the Japanese comparison of its shape to an
inverted half-open fan is made wonderfully
exact by the fine streaks that spread down-
ward from the notched top, like shadows of
fan-ribs. Even lighter than a fan the vision
appears, — rather the ghost or dream of a
1 This and the following two papers are copyrighted
by Messrs. Little, Brown, and Company, and they are
here reprinted with their permission. They are taken
from Exotics and Retrospectives (1898), and illustrate
the work of Hearn's maturity, for which the greater
part of what he wrote before going to Japan was only a
preparation.
fan; — yet the material reality a hundred
miles away is grandiose among the moun-
tains of the globe. Rising to a height of
nearly 12,500 feet, Fuji is visible from
thirteen provinces of the Empire. Never-
theless it is one of the easiest of lofty moun-
tains to climb; and for a thousand years it
has been scaled every summer by multitudes
of pilgrims. For it is not only a sacred
mountain, but the most sacred mountain of
Japan, — the holiest eminence of the land
that is called Divine, — the Supreme Altar of
the Sun; — and to ascend it at least once in
a life-time is the duty of all who reverence
the ancient gods. So from every district of
the Empire pilgrims annually wend their
way to Fuji; and in nearly all the provinces
there are pilgrim-societies — Fuji-Ko, — or-
ganized for the purpose of aiding those
desiring to visit the sacred peak. If this act
of faith cannot be performed by everybody
in person, it can at least be performed by
proxy. Any hamlet, however remote, can
occasionally send one representative to pray
before the shrine of the divinity of Fuji, and
to salute the rising sun from that sublime
eminence. Thus a single company of Fuji-
pilgrims may be composed of men from a
hundred different settlements.
By both of the national religions Fuji is
held in reverence. The Shinto deity of
290
LAFCADIO IIEARN
I'liji IS tlic iH'iiutiful jioddess Ko-iio-liaiia-
saku-ya-hime, — she vvlio hrouf^lit forth htr
children in fire without pain, and whose
name signifies " Radiant-bl{)omin<;-as-the-
flowers-of-the-trees," or, accofdinp; to some
commentators, "Caiisino-tiie-flowers-to-blos-
som-brightly." On the summit is her temple;
and in ancient books it is recorded that mor-
tal eyes have beheld her hoverinjj;, like a
luminous cloud, above the verge of the crater.
Her viewless servants watch and wait by
the precipices to hurl down whomsoever
presumes to approach her shrine with un-
purified heart. . . , Buddhism loves the
grand peak because its form is like the white
bud of the Sacred Flower, — and because the
eight cusps of its top, like the eight petals
of the Lotos, symbolize the Eight Intelli-
gences of Perception, Purpose, Speech, Con-
duct, Living, Effort, Mindfulness, and Con-
templation.
But the legends and traditions about Fuji,
the stories of its rising out of the earth in a
single night, — of the shower of pierced-
jewels once flung down from it, — of the first
temple built upon its summit eleven hundred
years ago, — of the Luminous Maiden that
lured to the crater an Emperor who was
never seen afterward, but is still worshiped
at a little shrine erected on the place of his
vanishing, — of the sand that daily rolled
down by pilgrim feet nightly reascends to
its former position, — have not all these
things been written in books? There is
really very little left for me to tell about
Fuji except my own experience of climbing
it.
I made the ascent by way of Gotemba, —
the least picturesque, but perhaps also the
least difficult of the six or seven routes open
to choice. Gotemba is a little village chiefly
consisting of pilgrim-inns. You reach it
from Tokyo in about three hours by the
Tokaido railway, which rises for miles as it
approaches the neighborhood of the mighty
volcano. Gotemba is considerably more
than two thousand feet above the sea, and
therefore comparatively cool in the hottest
season. The open country about it slopes
to Fuji; but the slope is so gradual that the
table-land seems almost level to the eye.
From Gotemba in perfectly clear weather
the mountain looks uncomfortably near, —
formidable by proximity, — though actually
miles away. During the rainy season it may
appear and disappear alternately many
times in one day, — like an enormous specter.
But on the gray August morning when I
entered Gotemba as a pilgrim, the landscape
was muffled in vapors; and Fuji was totally
invisible. I arrived too late to attempt the
ascent on the same day; but I made my
preparations at once for the day following,
and engaged a couple of gdriki ("strong-
pull men"), or experienced guides. I felt
quite secure on seeing their broad honest
faces and sturdy bearing. They supplied
me with a pilgrim-stafl^, heavy blue tabi
(that is to say, cleft-stockings, to be used
with sandals), a straw hat shaped like Fuji,
and the rest of a pilgrim's outfit; — telling
me to be ready to start with them at four
o'clock in the morning.
What is hereafter set down consists of
notes taken on the journey, but afterwards
amended and expanded, — for notes made
while climbing are necessarily hurried and
imperfect.
I
August 24th, 1897.
From strings stretched above the balcony
upon which my inn-room opens, hundreds of
towels are hung like flags, — blue towels and
white, having printed upon them in Chinese
characters the names of pilgrim-companies
and of the divinity of Fuji. These are gifts
to the house, and serve as advertise-
ments. . . . Raining from ii uniformly gray
sky. Fuji always invisible.
August 25th.
3:30 a. m. — No sleep; — tumult all night
of parties returning late from the mountain,
or arriving for the pilgrimage; — constant
clapping of hands to summon servants; —
banqueting and singing in the adjoining
chambers, with alarming bursts of laughter
every few minutes. . . . Breakfast of soup,
fish, and rice. G5riki arrive in professional
costume, and find me ready. Nevertheless
they insist that I shall undress again and
put on heavy underclothing; — warning me
that even when it is Doyo (the period of
greatest summer heat) at the foot of the
mountain, it is Daikan (the period of greatest
winter cold) at the top. Then they start in
advance, carrying provisions and bundles of
heavy clothing. ... A kuruma waits for
Fi:jI-NOYAMA
291
me, with three runners, — two to pull, and
one to push, as the work will be hard uphill.
By kuruma I can go to the height of five
thousand feet.
Morning black and slightly chill, with fine
rain; but I shall soon be above the rain-
clouds. . . . The lights of the town vanish
behind us; — the kuruma is rolling along a
country-road. Outside of the swinging
penumbra made by the paper-lantern of the
foremost runner, nothing is clearly visible;
but I can vaguely distinguish silhouettes of
trees and, from time to time, of houses, —
peasants' houses with steep roofs.
Gray wan light slowly suffuses the moist
air; — day is dawning through drizzle. . . .
Gradually the landscape defines with its
colors. The way lies through thin woods.
Occasionally we pass houses with high
thatched roofs that look like farmhouses;
but cultivated land is nowhere visible. . . .
Open country with scattered clumps of
trees, — larch and pine. Nothing in the
horizon but scraggy tree-tops above what
seems to be the rim of a vast down. No sign
whatever of Fuji. . . . For the first time I
notice that the road is black, — black sand
and cinders apparently, volcanic cinders:
the wheels of the kuruma and the feet of
the runners sink into it with a crunching
sound.
The rain has stopped, and the sky becomes
a clearer gray. . . . The trees decrease in
size and number as we advance.
What I have been taking for the horizon,
in front of us, suddenly breaks open, and
begins to roll smokily away to left and right.
In the great rift part of a dark-blue mass
appears, — a portion of Fuji. Almost at the
same moment the sun pierces the clouds
behind us; but the road now enters a copse
covering the base of a low ridge, and the
view is cut off. . . . Halt at a little house
among the trees, — a pilgrims' resting-place,
— and there find the goriki, who have ad-
vanced much more rapidly than my runners,
waiting for us. Buy eggs, which a goriki
rolls up in a narrow strip of straw matting; —
tying the matting tightly with straw cord
between the eggs, — so that the string of eggs
has somewhat the appearance of a string of
sausages. . . . Hire a horse.
Sky clears as we proceed; — white sunlight
floods everything. Road reascends; fand
we emerge again on the moorland. And,
right in front, Fuji appears, — naked to the
summit, — stupendous, — startling as if newly
risen from the earth. Nothing could be more
beautiful. A vast blue cone, — warm-blue,
almost violet through the vapors not yet
lifted by the sun, — Vv'ith two white streaklets
near the top which are great gullies full of
snow, though they look from here scarcely
an inch long. But the charm of the appa-
rition is much less the charm of color than
of symmetry, — a symmetry of beautiful
bending lines with a curve like the curve of a
cable stretched over a space too wide to
allow of pulling taut. (This comparison did
not at once suggest itself: The first impres-
sion given me by the grace of those lines was
an impression of femininity; — I found myself
thinking of some exquisite sloping of
shoulders towards the neck.) I can imagine
nothing more diflScult to draw at sight. But
the Japanese artist, through his marvelous
skill with the writing-brush, — the skill in-
herited from generations of calligraphists, —
easily faces the riddle: he outlines the
silhouette with two flowing strokes made in
the fraction of a second, and manages to hit
the exact truth of the curves, — much as a
professional archer might hit a mark, without
consciously taking aim, through long exact
habit of hand and eye.
II
I see the goriki hurrying forward far
away, — one of them carrying the eggs
round his neck! . . . Now there are no more
trees worthy of the name, — only scattered
stunted growths resembling shrubs. The
black road curves across a vast grassy down;
and here and there I see large black patches
in the green surface, — bare spaces of ashes
and scoriae; showing that this thin green skin
covers some enormous volcanic deposit of
recent date. ... As a matter of history, all
this district was buried two yards deep in
1707 by an eruption from the side of Fuji.
Even in far-off Tokyo the rain of ashes
292
LAFCADIO HEARN
covered roofs to a cKptii of sixteen centi-
meters. I here are no farms in this region,
because there is httle true soil; and there
is no water. But volcanic destruction is not
eternal destruction; eruptions at last prove
fertilizinp;; and the divine "Princess-vvho-
causes-the-flo\vers-to-blossom-bri{2;htly" will
make this waste to smile again in future
hundreds of years.
. . . The black openings in the green
surface become more numerous and larger.
A few dwarf-shrubs still mingle with the
coarse grass. . . . The vapors are lifting;
and Fuji is changing color. It is no longer a
glowing blue, but a dead somber blue.
Irregularities previously hidden by rising
ground appear in the lower part of the grand
curves. One of these to the left, — shaped
like a camel's hump, — represents the focus
of the last great eruption.
The land is not now green with black
patches, but black with green patches; and
the green patches dwindle visibly in the
direction of the peak. The shrubby growths
have disappeared. The wheels of the
kuruma, and the feet of the runners sink
deeper into the volcanic sand. . . . The
horse is now attached to the kuruma with
ropes, and I am able to advance more
rapidly. Still the mountain seems far away;
but we are really runnmg up its flank at a
height of more than five thousand feet.
Fuji has ceased to be blue of any shade.
It is black, — charcoal-black, — a frightful
extinct heap of visible ashes and cinders and
slaggy lava. . . . Most of the green has
disappeared. Likewise all of the illusion.
The tremendous naked black reality, —
always becoming more sharply, more grimly,
more atrociously defined, — is a stupefaction,
a nightmare. . . . Above — miles above —
the snow patches glare and gleam against
that blackness, — hideously. I think of a
gleam of white teeth I once saw in a skull, —
a woman's skull, — otherwise burnt to a
sooty crisp.
So one of the fairest, if not the fairest of
earthly visions, resolves itself into a spectacle
of horror and death. . . . But have not all
human ideals of beauty, like the beauty of
Fuji seen from afar, been created by forces
of death and pain.^ — are not all, in their
kind, but composites of death, beheld in
retrospective through the magical haze of
inherited memory.''
Ill
The green has utterly vanished; — all is
black. There is no road, — only the broad
waste of black sand sloping and narrowing
up to those dazzling, grinning patches of
snow. But there is a track, — a yellowish
track made by thousands and thousands of
cast-ofF sandals of straw (zvaraji), flung
aside by pilgrims. Straw sandals quickly
wear out upon this black grit; and every
pilgrim carries several pair for the journey.
Had I to make the ascent alone, I could find
the path by following that wake of broken
sandals, — a yellow streak zigzagging up out
of sight across the blackness.
6:40 a.m. — We reach Tarobo, first of the
ten stations on the ascent: height, 6cxdo feet.
The station is a large wooden house, of which
two rooms have been fitted up as a shop for
the sale of staves, hats, raincoats, sandals, —
everything pilgrims need. I find there a
peripatetic photographer offering for sale
photographs of the mountain which are really,
very good as well as very cheap. . . . Here
the goriki take their first meal; and I rest.
The kuruma can go no further; and I dis-
miss my three runners, but keep the horse, —
a docile and surefooted creature; for I can
venture to ride him up to Ni-go-goseki, or
Station No. 23^.
Start for No. 23^ up the slant of black
sand, keeping the horse at a walk. No. 2^^
is shut up for the season. . . . Slope now
becomes steep as a stairway, and further
riding would be dangerous. Alight and
make ready for the climb. Cold wind blow-
ing so strongly that I have to tie on my hat
tightly. One of the goriki unwinds from
about his waist a long stout cotton girdle,
and giving me one end to hold, passes the
other over his shoulder for the pull. Then
he proceeds over the sand at an angle, with
a steady short step, and I follow; the other
guide keeping closely behind me to provide
against any slip.
There is nothing very diflScult about this
climbing, except the weariness of walking
FUJI-NO-YAMA
29^
through sand and cinders: it is like walking
over duneK. . . . We mount by zigzags.
The sand moves with the wind; and I have
a shghtly nervous sense — the feehng only,
not the perception; for I keep my eyes on
the sand, — of height growing above depth.
. . . Have to watch my steps carefully, and
to use my staff constantly, as the slant is
now very steep. . . . We are in a white fog,
— passing through clouds! Even if I wished
to look back, 1 could see nothing through
this vapor; but I have not the least wish to
look back. The wind has suddenly ceased —
cut off, perhaps, by a ridge; and there is a
silence that I remember from West Indian
days: the Peace of High Places. It is
broken only by the crunching of the ashes
beneath our feet. I can distinctly hear my
heart beat. . . . The guide tells me that I
stoop too much, — orders me to walk up-
right, and always in stepping to put down the
heel first. I do this, and find it relieving.
But climbing through this tiresome mixture
of ashes and sand begins to be trying. I
am perspiring and panting. The guide bids
me keep my honorable mouth closed, and
breathe only through my honorable nose.
We are out of the fog again. . . . All at
once I perceive above us, at a little distance,
something like a square hole in the face of the
mountain, — a door! It is the door of the
third station, — a wooden hut half-buried
in black drift. . . . How delightful to squat
again, — even in a blue cloud of wood-smoke
and under smoke-blackened rafters! Time,
8:30 a.m. Height, 7,085 feet.
In spite of the wood-smoke the station is
comfortable enough inside; there are clean
mattings and even kneeling-cushions. No
windows, of course, nor any other opening
than the door; for the building is half-
buried in the flank of the mountain. We
lunch. . . . The station-keeper tells us that
recently a student walked from Gotemba
to the top of the mountain and back again —
in geta! Geta are heavy wooden sandals, or
clogs, held to the foot only by a thong passing
between the great and the second toe. The
feet of that student must have been made of
steel!
Having rested, I go out to look around.
Far below white clouds are rolling over the
landscape in huge fluffy wreaths. Above the
hut, and actually trickling down over it, the
sable cone soars to the sky. But the amazing
sight is the line of the monstrous slope to
the left, — a line that now shows no curve
whatever, but shoots down below the clouds,
and up to the gods only know where (for I
cannot see the end of it), straight as a
tightened bowstring. The right flank is
rocky and broken. But as for the left, — I
never dreamed it possible that a line so
absolutely straight and smooth, and extend-
ing for so enormous a distance at such an
amazing angle, could exist even in a volcano.
That stupendous pitch gives me a sense of
dizziness, and a totally unfamiliar feeling of
wonder. Such regularity appears unnatural,
frightful; seems even artificial, — but artificial
upon a superhuman and demoniac scale. I
imagine that to fall thence from above
would be to fall for leagues. Absolutely
nothing to take hold of. But the goriki
assure me that there is no danger on that
slope: it is all soft sand.
IV
Though drenched with perspiration by the
exertion of the first climb, I am already dry,
and cold. . . . Up again. . . . The ascent
is at first through ashes and sand as before;
but presently large stones begin to mingle
with the sand; and the way is always grow-
ing steeper. ... I constantly slip. There
is nothing firm, nothing resisting to stand
upon: loose stones and cinders roll down at
every step. ... If a big lava-block were to
detach itself from above! ... In spite of
my helpers and of the staff, I continually
slip, and am all in perspiration again.
Almost every stone that I tread upon turns
under me. How is it that no stone ever
turns under the feet of the goriki.? They
never slip, — never make a false step, — never
seem less at ease than they would be in
walking over a matted floor. Their small
brown broad feet always poise upon the
shingle at exactly the right angle. They are
heavier men than I; but they move lightly
as birds. . . . Now I have to stop for rest
every half-a-dozen steps. . . . The line of
broken straw sandals follows the zigzags we
take. ... At last — at last another door in
the face of the mountain. Enter the fourth
294
LAFCADIO IIEARN
station, and fling myself down upon the mats.
Time, io:io a.m. Height, only 7,937 feet; —
yet It seemed such a distance!
Off again. . . . Way worse and worse.
. . . Feel a new distress due to the rare-
faction of the air. Heart beating as in a
high fever. . . . Slope has become very
rough. It is no longer soft ashes and sand
mixed with stones, but stones only, — frag-
ments of lava, lumps of pumice, scoriae of
every sort, all angled as if freshly broken
with a hammer. All would likewise seem to
have been expressly shaped so as to turn
upside-down when trodden upon. Yet I
must confess that they never turn under
the feet of the goriki. . . . The cast-ofF
sandals strew the slope in ever-increasing
numbers. . . . But for the goriki I should
have had ever so many bad tumbles: they
cannot prevent me from slipping; but they
never allow me to fall. Evidently I am not
fitted to climb mountains. . . . Height,
8,659 feet — but the fifth station is shut up!
Must keep zigzagging on to the next. Wonder
how I shall ever be able to reach it! . . .
And there are people still alive who have
climbed Fuji three and four times, for
pleasure! . . . Dare not look back. See
nothing but the black stones always turning
under me, and the bronzed feet of those
marvelous goriki who never slip, never pant,
and never perspire. . . . Staff begins to
hurt my hand. . . . Goriki push and pull:
it is shameful of me, I know, to give them so
much trouble. . . . Ah! sixth station! —
may all the myriads of the gods bless my
goriki! Time, 2:07 p.m. Height, 9,317 feet.
Resting, I gaze through the doorway at
the abyss below. The land is now dimly
visible only through rents in a prodigious
wilderness of white clouds; and within these
rents everything looks almost black. . . .
The horizon has risen frightfully, — has
expanded monstrously. . . . My goriki warn
me that the summit is still rniles away. I
have been too slow. We must hasten
upward.
Certainly the zigzag is steeper than before.
. . . With the stones now mingle angular
rocks; and we sometimes have to flank queer
black bulks that look like basalt. ... On
the right rises, out of sight, a jagged black
hideous ridge, — an ancient lava-stream.
The line of the left slope still shootr. up,
straight as a bowstring. . . . Wonder if
the way will become any steeper; — doubt
whether it can possibly become any rougher.
Rocks dislodged by my feet roll down sound-
lessly;— I am afraid to look after them.
Iheir noiseless vanishing gives me a sensa-
tion like the sensation of falling in
dreams. . . .
There is a white gleam overhead- -the
lowermost verge of an immense stretch of
snow^ . . . Now we are skirting a snow-
filled gully, — the lowermost of those white
patches which, at first sight of the summit
this morning, seemed scarcely an inch long.
It will take an hour to pass it. ... A guide
runs forward, while I rest upon my staff,
and returns with a large ball of snow. What
curious snow! Not flaky, soft, white snow,
but a mass of transparent globules, —
exactly like glass beads. I eat some, and
find it deliciously refreshing. . . . The
seventh station is closed. How shall I get
to the eighth.? . . . Happily, breathing has
become less difficult. . . . The wind is upon
us again, and black dust wnth it. The goriki
keep close to me, and advance with caution.
... I have to stop for rest at every turn on
the path; — cannot talk for weariness. . . .
I do not feel; — I am much too tired to
feel. . . . How I managed it, I do not
know; — but I have actually got to the
eighth station! Not for a thousand millions
of dollars will I go one step further to-day.
Time, 4:40 p.m. Height, 10,693 feet.
It is much too cold here for rest \vithout
winter clothing; and now^ I learn the worth
of the heavy robes provided by the guides.
The robes are blue, with big white Chinese
characters on the back, and are padded
thickly as bedquilts; but they feel light;
for the air is really like the frosty breath of
February. ... A meal is preparing; — I
notice that charcoal at this elevation acts in
a refractory manner, and that a fire can be
maintained only by constant attention.
. . . Cold and fatigue sharpen appetite:
we consume a surprising quantity of Zo-
sui, — rice boiled with eggs and a little meat.
FUJI-NO-YAMA
295
By reason of my fatigue and of the hour, it
has been decided to remain here for the
night.
Tired as I am, I cannot but limp to the
doorway to contemplate the amazing pros-
pect. From within a few feet of the thresh-
old, the ghastly slope of rocks and cinders
drops down into a prodigious disk of clouds
miles beneath us, — clouds of countless
forms, but mostly wreathings and fluffy
pilings; — and the whole huddling mass,
reaching almost to the horizon, is blinding
white under the sun. (By the Japanese,
this tremendous cloud-expanse is well named
Wata-no-Umiy *'the Sea of Cotton.") The
horizon itself — enormously risen, phantas-
mally expanded — seems halfway up above
the world: a wide luminous belt ringing the
hollow vision. Hollow, I call it, because
extreme distances below the sky-line are
sky-colored and vague, — so that the im-
pression you receive is not of being on a
point under a vault, but of being upon a
point rising into a stupendous blue sphere,
of which this huge horizon would represent
the equatorial zone. To turn away from
such a spectacle is not possible. I watch
and watch until the dropping sun changes
the colors, — turning the Sea of Cotton into a
Fleece of Gold. Half-round the horizon a
yellow glory grows and burns. Here and
there beneath it, through cloudrifts, colored
vaguenesses define: I now see golden water,
with long purple headlands reaching into it,
with ranges of violet peaks thronging be-
hind it; — these glimpses curiously resem-
bling portions of a tinted topographical
map. Yet most of the landscape is pure
delusion. Even my guides, with their long
experience and their eagle-sight, can scarcely
distinguish the real from the unreal; — for
the blue and purple and violet clouds moving
under the Golden Fleece, exactly mock the
outlmes and the tones of distant peaks and
capes: you can detect what is vapor only
by its slowly shifting shape. . . . Brighter
and brighter glows the gold. Shadows come
from the west, — shadows flung by cloud-pile
over cloud-pile; and these, like evening
shadows upon snow, are violaceous blue.
. . . Then orange-tones appear in the
horizon; then smoldering crimson. And
now the greater part of the Fleece of Gold
has changed to cotton again, — white cotton
mixed with pink. . . . Stars thrill out. The
cloud-waste uniformly whitens; — thickening
and packing to the horizon. The west
glooms. Night rises; and all things darken
except that wondrous unbroken world-round
of white, — the Sea of Cotton.
The station-keeper lights his lamps,
kindles a fire of twigs, prepares our beds.
Outside it is bitterly cold, and, with the fall
of night, becoming colder. Still I cannot
turn away from that astounding vision. . . .
Countless stars now flicker and^ shiver in
the blue-black sky. Nothing whatever of
the material world remains visible, except the
black slope of the peak before my feet. The
enormous cloud-disk below continues white;
but to all appearance it has become a liquidly
level white, without forms, — a white flood.
It is. no longer the Sea of Cotton. It is a
Sea of Milk, the Cosmic Sea of ancient
Indian legend, — and always self-luminous,
as with ghostly quickenings.
VI
Squatting by the wood fire, I listen to the
goriki and the station-keeper telling of
strange happenings on the mountain. One
incident discussed I remember reading
something about in a Tokyo paper: I now
hear it retold by the lips of a man who
figured in it as a hero. j
A Japanese meteorologist named Nonaka,
attempted last year the rash undertaking
of passing the winter on the summit of Fuji
for purposes of scientific study. It might
not be difficult to winter upon the peak in a
solid observatory furnished with a good
stove, and all necessary comforts; .but
Nonaka could affx)rd only a small wooden
hut, in which he would be obliged to spend
the cold season without fire! His young wife
insisted on sharing his labors and dangers.
The couple began their sojourn on the
summit towards the close of September. In
midwinter news was brought to Gotemba
that both were dying.
Relatives and friends tried to organize a
rescue-party. But the weather was fright-
ful; the peak was covered with snow and
ice; the chances of death were innumerable;
and the goriki would not risk their lives.
2()6
LAFCADIO IIKARN
hundreds of dollars could not tinipt tluin.
At Inst a desperate appeal was made to them
as representatives of Japanese courage and
hardihood: they were assured that to suffer
a man of science to perish, without making
even one plucky effort to save him, would
disgrace the country; — they were told that
the national honor was in their hands. This
appeal hrought forward two volunteers.
One was a man of great strength and darmg,
nicknamed by his fellow-guides, Oni-
guvia, "the Demon-Bear," the other was
the elder of my gdriki. Both believed that
they were going to certain destruction.
1 hey took leave of their friends and kindred,
and drank with their families the farewell
cup of water, — mtdzu-no-sakazuki, — in which
those about to be separated by death
pledge each other. Then, after having
thickly wrapped themselves in cotton-wool,
and made all possible preparation for ice
climbing, they started, — taking with them
a brave army-surgeon who had off^ered his
services, without fee, for the rescue. After
surmounting extraordinary difficulties, the
party reached the hut; but the inmates
refused to open! Nonaka protested that he
would rather die than face the shame of
failure in his undertaking; and his wife said
that she had resolved to die with her hus-
band. Partly by forcible, and partly by
gentle means, the pair were restored to a
better state of mind. The surgeon adminis-
tered medicines and cordials; the patients,
carefully wrapped up, were strapped to the
backs of the guides; and the descent was
begun. My gdriki, who carried the lady,
believes that the gods helped him on the
ice-slopes. More than once, all thought
themselves lost; but they reached the foot
of the mountain without one serious mishap.
After weeks of careful nursing, the rash
young couple were pronounced out of danger.
The wife suff"ered less, and recovered more
quickly, than the husband.
1 he gdriki have cautioned me not to
venture outside during the night without
calling them. They will not tell me why;
and their warning is peculiarly uncanny.
From previous experiences during Japanese
travel, I surmise that the danger implied is
supernatural; but I feel that it would be
useless to ask questions.
The door is closed and barred. I lie down
between the guides, who are asleep in a mo-
ment, as 1 can tell by their heavy breathing.
I cannot sleep immediately; — perhaps the
fatigues and the surprises of the day have
made me somewhat nervous. I look up at
the rafters of the black roof, — at packages of
sandals, bundles of wood, bundles of many
indistinguishable kinds there stowed away
or suspended, and making queer shadows in
the lamplight. ... It is terribly cold, even
under my three quilts; and the sound of the
wind outside is wonderfully like the sound of
great surf, — a constant succession of bursting
roars, each followed by a prolonged hiss.
The hut, half buried under tons of rock and
drift, does not move; but the sand does, and
trickles down between the rafters; and small
stones also move after each fierce gust, with
a rattling just like the clatter of shingle in the
pull of a retreating wave.
4 a.m. — Go out alone, despite last even-
ing's warning, but keep close to the door.
There is a great and icy blowing. The Sea
of Milk is unchanged: it lies far below this
wind. Over it the moon is dying. . . . The
guides, perceiving my absence, spring up
and join me. I am reproved for not having
awakened them. They will not let me stay
outside alone: so I turn in with them.
Dawn: a zone of pearl grows round the
world. The stars vanish; the sky brightens.
A wild sky, with dark wrack drifting at an
enormous height. The Sea of Milk has
turned again into Cotton, — and there are
wide rents in it. The desolation of the black
slope, — all the ugliness of slaggy rock and
angled stone, again defines. . . . Now the
cotton becomes disturbed; — it is breaking up.
A yellow glow runs along the east like the
glare of a wind-blown fire. . . . Alas! I
shall not be among the fortunate mortals
able to boast of viewing from Fuji the first
lifting of the sun! Heavy clouds have drifted
across the horizon at the point where he
should rise. . . . Now I know that he has
risen; because the upper edges of those
purple rags of cloud are burning like char-
coal. But I have been so disappointed!
More and more luminous the hollow world.
League-wide heapings of cottony cloud roll
apart. Fearfully far-away there is a light of
gold upon water: the sun here remains view-
FUJI-NO-YAMA
297
less, but the ocean sees him. It is not a
flicker, but a burnished glow; — at such a
distance ripplings are invisible. . . . Further
and further scattering, the clouds unveil a
vast gray and blue landscape; — hundreds
and hundreds of miles throng into vision
at once. On the right I distinguish Tokyo
bay, and Kamakura, and the holy island of
Enoshima (no bigger than the dot over this
letter "i"); — on the left the wilder Suruga
coast, and the blue-toothed promontory of
Idzu, and the place of the fishing-village
where I have been summering, — the merest
pin-point in that tinted dream of hill and
shore. Rivers appear but as sun-gleams
on spider-threads; — fishing-sails are white
dust clinging to the gray-blue glass of the
sea. And the picture alternately appears
and vanishes while the clouds drift and
shift across it, and shape themselves into
spectral islands and mountains and valleys
of all Elysian colors. . . .
VII
6:^0 a.m. — Start for the top. . . . Hardest
and roughest stage of the journey, through a
wilderness of lava-blocks. The path zig-
zags between ugly masses that project from
the slope like black teeth. The trail of cast-
away sandals is wider than ever. . . . Have
to rest every few minutes. . . . Reach
another long patch of the snow that looks
like glass-beads, and eat some. The next
station — a half-station — is closed; and the
ninth has ceased to exist. ... A sudden
fear comes to me, not of the ascent, but of
the prospective descent by a route which is
too steep even to permit of comfortably
sitting down. But the guides assure me that
there will be no difficulty, and that most of
the return-journey will be by another way, —
over the interminable level which I won-
dered at yesterday, — nearly all soft sand,
with very few stones. It is called the
hashiri ("glissade"); and we are to descend
at a run! . . .
All at once a family of field-mice scatter
out from under my feet in panic; and the
goriki behind me catches one, and gives it to
me. I hold the tiny shivering life for a
moment to examine it, and set it free again.
These little creatures have very long pale
noses. How do they live in this waterless
desolation, — and at such an altitude, —
especially in the season of snow? For we
are now at a height of more than eleven
thousand feet! The goriki say that the mice
find roots growing under the stones. . . .
Wilder and steeper; — for me, at least, the
climbing is sometimes on all fours. There
are barriers which we surmount with the
help of ladders. There are fearful places
with Buddhist names, such as the Sai-no-
Kazvara, or Dry Bed of the River of Souls, —
a black waste strewn wirh heaps of rock, like
those stone-piles which, in Buddhist pictures
of the underworld, the ghosts of children
build. . . .
Twelve thousand feet, and something, —
the top! Time, 8:20 a.m. . . . Stone huts;
Shinto shrine with torii; icy well, called the
Spring of Gold; stone tablet bearing a
Chinese poem and the design of a tiger;
rough walls of lava-blocks round these
things, — possibly for protection against the
wind. Then the huge dead crater, — prob-
ably between a quarter of a mile and half-a-
mile wide, but shallowed up to within three
or four hundred feet of the verge by volcanic
detritus, — a cavity horrible ev^en in the
tones of its yellow crumbling walls, streaked
and stained with every hue of scorching. I
perceive that the trail of straw sandals ends
in the crater. Some hideous overhanging
cusps of black lava — like the broken edges
of a monstrous cicatrix — project on two
sides several hundred feet above the open-
ing; but I certainly shall not take the
trouble to climb them. Yet these, — seen
through the haze of a hundred miles, —
through the soft illusion of blue spring-
weather, — appear as the opening snowy
petals of the bud of the Sacred Lotos! . . .
No spot in this world can be more horrible,
more atrociously dismal, than the cindered
tip of the Lotos as you stand upon it.
But the view — the view for a hundred
leagues, — and the light of the far faint
dreamy world, — and the fairy vapors of
morning, — and the marvelous wreathings of
cloud: all this, and only this, consoles me
for the labor and the pain. . . . Other
pilgrims, earlier climbers, — poised upon the
highest crag, with faces turned to the tre-
mendous East, — are clapping their hands
29^
LAFCADFO IIKARN
in Shinto prayer, saluting tlic mighty
Day. . . . 1 he immense poetry of the
moment enters into me with a thrill. I
know that tlie colossal vision before me has
already become a memory ineffaceable, — a
memory of which no luminous detail can
fade till the hour when thought itself must
fade, and the dust of these eyes be mingled
with the dust of the myriad million eyes
that also have looked, in ages forgotten
before my birth, from the summit supreme
of Fuji to the Rising of the Sun.
A QUESTION IN THE ZEN
TEXTS 1
I
My friend opened a thin yellow volume of
that marvelous text which proclaims at
sight the patience of the Buddhist engraver.
Movable Chinese types may be very useful;
but the best of which they are capable is
ugliness itself when compared with the
beauty of the old block-printing.
*T have a queer story for you," he said.
"A Japanese story .f"' ' , .
"No, — Chinese." , _ '
"What is the book.?"
"According to Japanese pronunciation of
the Chinese characters of the title, we call
it Mu-Mon-Kwan, which means 'The Gate-
less Barrier.' It is one of the books especially
studied by the Zen sect, or sect of Dhyana.
A peculiarity of some of the Dhyana texts, —
this being a good example, — is that they are
not explanatory. They only suggest. Ques-
tions are put; but the student must think
out the answers for himself. He must think
them out, but not write them. You know
that Dhyana represents human effort to
reach, through meditation, zones of thought
beyond the range of verbal expression; and
any thought once narrowed into utterance
loses all Dhyana quality. . . . Well, this
story is supposed to be true; but it is used
only for a Dhyana question. There are
three different Chinese versions of it; and
I can give you the substance of the three."
Which he did as follows: —
' Copyrighted by Messrs. Little, Brown, and Com-
pany.
II
— Th^ story of the girl Ts'ing^ zvhich is told
in the Lui-shzvo-li-hivan-ki, cited by the Ching-
tafig-luh, and cominented upon in the JVii-mu-
kzvan {called by the Japanese AI u-AIon-Kivan),
zvhich is a book of the Zen sect: —
There lived in Han-yang a man called
Chang-Kien, whose child-daughter, Ts'ing,
was of peerless beauty. He had also a
nephew called Wang-Chau, — a very hand-
some boy. The children played together,
and were fond of each other. Once Kien
jestingly said to his nephew: — "Some day
I will marry you to my little daughter."
Both children remembered these words; and
they believed themselves thus betrothed.
When Ts'ing grew up, a man of rank asked
for her in marriage; and her father decided
to comply with the demand. Ts'ing was
greatly troubled by this decision. As for
Chau, he was so much angered and grieved
that he resolved to leave home, and go to
another province. The next day he got a
boat ready for his journey, and after sunset,
without bidding farewell to any one, he pro-
ceeded up the river. But in the middle of
the night he was startled by a voice calling to
him, "Wait! — it is I!" — and he saw a girl
running along the bank towards the boat. It
was Ts'ing. Chau was unspeakably de-
lighted. She sprang into the boat; and the
lovers found their way safely to the province
of Chuh.
In the province of Chuh they lived happily
for six years; and they had two children.
But Ts'ing could not forget her parents, and
often longed to see them again. At last she
said to her husband: — "Because in former
time I could not bear to break the promise
made to you, I ran away with you and for-
sook my parents, — although knowing that
I owed them all possible duty and affection.
Would it not now be well to try to obtain
their forgiveness?" "Do not grieve your-
self about that," said Chau; — "we shall go
to see them." He ordered a boat to be pre-
pared; and a few days later he returned with
his wife to Han-yang.
According to custom in such cases, the
husband first went to the house of Kien,
leaving Ts'ing alone in the boat. Kien
welcomed his nephew with every sign of joy,
and said: —
A QUESTION IN THE ZEN TEXTS
299
**How much I have been longing to see
you! I was often afraid that something had
happened to you." '
Chau answered respectfully: —
*'I am distressed by the undeserved kind-
ness of your words. It is to beg your for-
giveness that I have come."
But Kien did not seem to understand. He
asked : —
"To what matter do you refer?"
"I feared," said Chau, "that you were
angry with me for having run away with
Ts'ing. I took her with me to the province
ofChuh."
"What Ts'ing was that?" asked Kien.
"Your daughter Ts'ing," answered Chau,
beginning to suspect his father-in-law of
some malevolent design.
"What are you talking about?" cried
Kien, with every appearance of astonish-
ment. "My daughter Ts'ing has been sick
in bed all these years, — ever since the time
when you went away."
"Your daughter Ts'ing," returned Chau,
becoming angry, "has not been sick. She
has been my wife for six years; and we have
two children; and we have both returned to
this place only to seek your pardon. There-
fore please do not mock us!"'
For a moment the two looked at each
other in silence. Then Kien arose, and
motioning to his nephew to follow, led the
way to an inner room where a sick girl was
lying. And Chau, to his utter amazement,
saw the face of Ts'ing, — beautiful, but
strangely thin and pale.
"She cannot speak," explained the old
man; "but she can understand." And
Kien said to her, laughingly: — "Chau tells
me that you ran away with him, and that
you gave him two children."
The sick girl looked at Chau, and smiled;
but remained silent.
"Now come with me to the river," said
the bewildered visitor to his father-in-law.
"For I can assure you, — in spite of what I
have seen in this house, — that your daughter
Ts'ing is at this moment in my boat."
They went to the river; and there, indeed,
was the young wife, waiting. And seeing her
father, she bowed down before him, and be-
sought his pardon.
Kien said to her: —
"If you really be my daughter, I have
nothing but love for you. Yet though you
seem to be my daughter, there is something
which I cannot understand. . . . Come with
us to the house."
So the three proceeded towards the house.
As they neared it, they saw that the sick
girl, — who had not before left her bed for
years, — was coming to meet them, smiling as
if much delighted. And the two Ts'ings
approached each other. But then — nobody
could ever tell how — they suddenly melted
into each other, and became one body, one
person, one Ts'ing, — even more beautiful
than before, and showing no sign of sickness
or of sorrow.
Kien said to Chau: —
"Ever since the day of your going, my
daughter was dumb, and most of the time
like a person who had taken too much wine.
Now I know that her spirit was absent."
Ts'ing herself said: —
" Really I never knew that I was at home.
I saw Chau going away in silent anger; and
the same night I dreamed that I ran after
his boat. . . . But now I cannot tell which
was really I, — the I that went away in the
boat, or the I that stayed at home."
Ill
"That is the whole of the story," my
friend observed. "Now there is a note about
it in the Mu-Mon-Kwan that may interest
you. This note says: — 'The fifth patriarch
of the Zen sect once asked a priest, — "/w
the case of the separation of the spirit of the girl
Ts'ing, which was the true Ts'ing?'^* It was
only because of this question that the story
was cited in the book. But the question is
not answered. The author only remarks: —
'If you can decide which was the real Ts'ing,
then you will have learned that to go out of
one envelope and into another is merely
like putting up at an inn. But if you have
not yet reached this degree of enlighten-
ment, take heed that you do not wander
aimlessly about the world. Otherwise, when
Earth, Water, Fire, and Wind shall suddenly
be dissipated, you will be like a crab with
seven hands and eight legs, thrown into
boiling water. And in that time do not say
that you were never told about the Thing.'
. . . Now the Thing — "
"I do not want to hear about the Thing,"
300
LAFCADIO IIEARN
I intcrriipttcl, — "nor about the crab with
seven haiuls and ei^lit legs. 1 want to hear
about the clothes."
"What clothes?"
"At the time of their meeting, the two
Ts'ings would have been differently dressed,
— very differently, perhaps; for one was a
maid, and the other a wife. Did the clothes
of tiie two also blend together? Suppose
that one had a silk robe and the other a robe
of cotton, would these have mixed into a
texture of silk, and cotton? Suppose that
one was wearing a blue girdle, and the other
a yellow girdle, would the result have been
a green girdle? ... Or did one Ts'ing
simply slip out of her costume, and leave it
on the ground, like the cast-ofF shell of a
cicada?"
"None of the texts say anything about the
clothes," my friend replied: "so 1 cannot
tell you. Hut the subject is quite irrelevant,
from the Buddhist point of view. The
doctrinal question is the question of what I
suppose you would call the personality of
1 s mg.
"And yet it is not answered," I said.
"It is best answered," my friend replied,
"by not being answered."
"H
ow so:
" Because there is no such thing as per-
sonality."
OF MOON-DESIRE^
I
He was two years old when — as ordained
in the law of perpetual recurrence — he asked
me for the Moon.
Unwisely I protested, —
"I he Moon I cannot give you because it is
too high up. I cannot reach it."
He answered: —
" By taking a very long bamboo, you
probably could reach it, and knock it
down."
I said, —
"There is no bamboo long enough."
He suggested: —
"By standing on the ridge of the roof of
the house, you probably could poke it with
the bamboo."
» Copyrighted by Messrs. Little, Brown, and Com-
pany.
— Whereat I found myself constrained to
make some approximately truthful state-
ments concerning the nature and position of
the Moon.
1 his set me thinking. I thought about the
strange fascination that brightness exerts
upon living creatures in general, — upon
insects and Hshes and birds and mam-
mals,— and tried to account for it by some
inherited memory of brightness as related
to food, to water, and to freedom. I thought
of the countless generations of children who
have asked for the Moon, and of the genera-
tions of parents who have laughed at the
asking. And then I entered into the follow-
ing meditation: —
Have we any right to laugh at the child's
wish for the Moon? No wish could be more
natural; and as for its incongruity, — do
not we, children of a larger growth, mostly
nourish wishes quite as innocent, — longings
that if realized could only work us woe, —
such as desire for the continuance after
death of that very sense-life, or individuality,
which once deluded us all into wanting to
play with the Moon, and often subsequently
deluded us in far less pleasant ways?
Now foolish as may seem, to merely
empirical reasoning, the wish of the child for
the Moon, I have an idea that the highest
wisdom commands us to wish for very much
more than the Moon, — even for more than
the Sun and the Morning-Star and all the
Host of Heaven.
II
I remember when a boy lying on my back
in the grass, gazing into the summer blue
above me, and wishing that I could melt
into it, — become a part of it. For these
fancies I believe that a religious tutor was
innocently responsible: he had tried to
explain to me, because of certain dreamy
questions, what he termed "the folly and the
wickedness of pantheism," — with the result
that I immediately became a pantheist, at
the tender age of fifteen. And my imaginings
presently led me not only to want the sky
for a playground, but also to become the
sky!
Now I think that in those days I was really
close to a great truth, — touching it, in fact,
without the faintest suspicion of its existence.
OF MOON-DESIRE
301
I mean the truth that the wish to become is
reasonable in direct ratio to its largeness, —
or, in other words, that the more you wish
to be, the wiser you are; while the wish to
have is apt to be foolish in proportion to its
largeness. Cosmic law permits us very few
of the countless thmgs that we wish to have,
but will help us to become all that we can
possibly wish to be. Finite, and in so much
feeble, is the wish to have: but infinite in
puissance is the wish to become; and every
mortal wish to become must eventually find
satisfaction. By wanting to be, the monad
makes itself the elephant, the eagle, or the
man. By wanting to be, the man should
become a god. Perhaps on this tiny globe,
lighted only by a tenth-rate yellov/ sun,
he will not have time to become a god; but
who dare assert that his wish cannot project
itself to mightier systems illuminated by
vaster suns, and there reshape and invest
him with the forms and powers of divinity .f*
Who dare even say that his wish may not
expand him beyond the Limits of Form, and
make him one with Omnipotence.'' And
Omnipotence, without asking, can have
much brighter and bigger playthings than
the Moon.
Probably everything is a mere question of
wishing, — providing that we wish, not to
have, but to be. Most of the sorrow of life
certainly exists because of the wrong kind
of wishing and because of the contemptible
pettiness of the wishes. Even to wish for the
absolute lordship and possession of the entire
earth were a pitifully small and vulgar wish.
We must learn to nourish very much bigger
wishes than that! My faith is that we must
wish to become the total universe with its
thousands of millions of worlds, — and more
than the universe, or a myriad universes, —
and more even than Space and Time.
Ill
Possibly the power for such wishing must
depend upon our comprehension of the
ghostliness of substance. Once men en-
dowed with spirit all forms and motions and
utterances of Nature: stone and metal,
herb and tree, cloud and wind, — the lights
of heaven, the murmuring of leaves and
waters, the echoes of the hills, the tumultu-
ous speech of the sea. Then becoming wiser
in their own conceit, they likewise became
of little faith; and they talked about "the
Inanimate" and "the Inert," — which are
non-existent, — and discoursed of Force as
distinct from Matter, and of Mind as distinct
from both. Yet we now discover that the
primitive fancies were, after all, closer to
probable truth. We cannot indeed think of
Nature to-day precisely as did our fore-
fathers; but we find ourselves obliged to
think of her in very much weirder ways; and
the later revelations of our science have
revitalized not a little of the primitive
thought, and infused it with a new and awful
beauty. And meantime those old savage
sympathies with savage Nature that spring
from the deepest sources of our being, — al-
ways growing with our growth, strengthening
with our strength, more and more unfolding
with the evolution of our higher sensibilifes,
— would seem destined to sublime at last into
forms of cosmical emotion expanding and
responding to infinitude.
Have you never thought about those im-
memorial feelings.^ . . . Have you never,
when looking at some great burning, found
yourself exulting without remorse in the
triumph and glory of fire? — never uncon-
sciously coveted the crumbling, splitting,
iron-wrenching, granite-cracking force of its
imponderable touch? — never delighted in
the furious and terrible splendor of its
phantasmagories, — the ravening and bicker-
ing of its dragons, — the monstrosity of its
archings, — the ghostly soaring and flapping
of its spires? Have you never, with a hill-
wind pealing in your ears, longed to ride that
wind like a ghost, — to scream round the
peaks with it, — to sweep the face of the
world with it? Or, watching the lifting, the
gathering, the muttering rush and thunder-
burst of breakers, have you felt no impulse
kindred to that giant motion, — no longing
to leap with that wild white tossing, and to
join in that mighty shout? . . . And all
such ancient emotional sympathies with
Nature's familiar forces — do they not pre-
lude, with their modern aesthetic develop-
ments, the future growth of rarer sympathies
with incomparably subtler forces, and of
longings to be limited only by our power to
know? Know ether — shivering from star to
star; — comprehend its sensitivities, its pene-
-^02
LAFCADTO TIKARN
trancics, its transmutations; — and sym-
pathies ctliercal will evolve. Know the
forces that spin the suns; — and already the
way has been reached of becommg one with
them.
And furthermore, is there no suggestion of
such evolvement in the steady widening
through all the centuries of the thoughts of
their world-priests and poets.'' — in the later
sense of Life-as-Unity absorbing or trans-
forming the ancient childish sense of life-
personal.'* — in the tone of the new rapture in
world-beauty, dominating the elder worship
of beauty-human.^ — in the larger modern
joy evoked by the blossoming of dawns, the
blossoming of stars, — by all quiverings of
color, all shudderings of light? And is not
the thing-in-itself, the detail, the appearance,
being ever less and less studied for its mere
power to charm, and ever more and more
studied as a single character m that Infinite
Riddle of which all phenomena are but
ideographs .f*
Nay! — surely the time must come when we
shall desire to be all that is, all that ever has
been known, — the past and the present and
the future in one, — all feeling, striving,
thinking, joying, sorrowing, — and every-
where the Part, — and everywhere the Whole.
And before us, with the waxing of the wish,
perpetually the Infinities shall widen.
And I — even I! — by virtue of that wish,
shall become all forms, all forces, all con-
ditions: Ether, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth, —
all motion visible or viewless, — all vibration
named of light, of color, of sonority, of
torrefaction, — all thrilhngs piercing sub-
stance,— all oscillations picturing in black-
ness, like tiic goblin-vision of the X-rays.
By virtue of that wish I shall become the
Source of all becoming and of all ceasing, —
the Power that shapes, the Power that
dissolves, — creating, with the shadows of
my sleep, the life that shall vanish with my
wakening. And even as phosphor-lampings
in currents of midnight sea, so shall shimmer
and pulse and pass, in mine Ocean of Death
and Birth, the burning of billions of suns,
the whirling of trillions of worlds. . , •
IV
— **Well," said the friend to whom I read
this reverie, "there is some Buddhism in
your fancies — though you seem to have
purposely avoided several important points
of doctrine. For instance, you must know
that Nirvana is never to be reached by
wishing, but by not wishing. What you call
the 'wish-to-become' can only help us, like
a lantern, along the darker portions of the
Way. As for wanting the Moon — I think
that you must have seen many old Japanese
pictures of apes clutching at the reflection
of the Moon in water. The subject is a
Buddhist parable: the water is the phantom-
flux of sensations and ideas; the Moon — not
its distorted image — is the sole Truth. And
your Western philosopher was really teach-
ing a Buddhist parable when he proclaimed
man but a higher kind of ape. For in this
world of illusion, man is truly still the ape,
trying to seize on water the shadow of the
Moon."
— "Ape indeed," I made answer, — "but
an ape of gods, — even that divine Ape of the
Ramayana who may clutch the Sun!"
MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN (1862- )
Mary Eleanor Wilkins was born in Randolph, Massachusetts, and her parents were of the strictest
Puritan descent. Her father was a builder in Randolph, and later a storekeeper in Brattleboro, Ver-
mont. She received her education in the Randolph schools and at Mount Holyoke Seminary, but the
period of her schooling was brief. Both of her parents died when she was still young. In 1883 she
returned from Brattleboro to Randolph, and lived there — acting for some years as secretary to O. W.
Holmes — until 1902, when she was married to Dr. Charles M. Freeman. Since 1902 she has lived in
Metuchen, New Jersey.
Thus the earlier portion of her life was passed in New England villages where she was sur-
rounded by the decaying but pervasive and still deeply felt influences of Puritanism. The villagers
with whom she mingled were mostly very poor, but were proud and jealous of their independence.
They were instinctively conservative, and the more so because the abler and more adventurous among
them either had been killed in the Civil War or had gone West in search of better land and larger
opportunities. Even in remote and isolated portions of New England, religion was no longer the posi-
tive and vital force which once it had been; but, nevertheless, Puritanism survived as an inherited
trait, making its severely repressive influence felt in habits of thought, in painful scruples of conscience,
in language, and in manners. Thus surviving, however, it was blind and motiveless, operating to distort
rather than to chasten character.
These villagers Miss Wilkins set herself to portray, with faithful realism, exactly as she knew
thejn. In many short tales and in several longer stories or novels she conveyed them as it were bod-
ily into literature, and in so doing she fell in — apparently almost by accident — both with the devel-
oping exploitation in American fiction of local peculiarities and with the trend towards realism encour-
aged and exemplified by the work of W. D. Howells. The excellent quality of her tales, with their
appropriately bare and economical style, was soon recognized, and Miss Wilkins found that she had
made a distinctive place for herself in American fiction. She did so chiefly through four volumes,
the first two of which are also the earliest books. she published: A Humble Romance and Other Stories
(1887), A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891), Jane Field, A Novel (1893), and Pembroke, A
Novel (1894). Since 1894 she has published many other books and has tried her hand at the portrayal
of people very different from those among whom she grew up, but she has never equaled her early
achievement. She has only succeeded in making it more and more plain that her place in literature
depends entirely upon her successful and extremely faithful delineation of the bleak, bare lives of
remote New England villagers of the iSyo's and i88o's.
LOUISA 1
"I don't see what kind of ideas you've
got in your head, for my part." Mrs. Britton
looked sharply at her daughter Louisa, but
she got no response.
Louisa sat in one of the kitchen chairs
close to the door. She had dropped into it
when she first entered. Her hands were all
brown and grimy with garden-mold; it
clung to the bottom of her old dress and her
coarse shoes.
Mrs. Britton, sitting opposite by the
window, waited, looking at her. Suddenly
1 Reprinted from A New England Nun and Other
Stories (1891) with the permission of Messrs. Harper
and Brothers.
Louisa's silence seemed to strike her mother's
will with an electric shock; she recoiled, with
an angry jerk of her head. "You don't
know nothin' about it. You'd like him well
enough after you was married to him,'*
said she, as if in answer to an argument.
Louisa's face looked fairly dull; her
obstinacy seemed to cast a film over it. Her
eyelids were cast down; she leaned her head
back against the wall.
*'Sit there like a stick if you want to!'*
cried her mother.
Louisa got up. As she stirred, a faint
earthy odor diffused itself through the room.
It was like a breath from a ploughed field.
Mrs. Britton's little sallow face contracted
more forcibly. "I s'pose now you're goin'
303
304
MAR^' i:. WILKINS FREEMAN
hack to 3()ur jiotatcr j>atcli," said slic.
"Plantin' jiotatcrs out there jest hke a man,
for all tlic nci[;hhors to sec. Pretty sight, I
call it."
"If they don't like it, they needn't look,"
returned Louisa. She spoke quite evenly.
Her young back was stiff with bending over
the potatoes, but she straightened it rigor-
ously. She pulled her old hat farther over
her e^'^es.
There was a shuffling sound outside the
door and a fumble at the latch. It opened,
and an old man came in, scraping his feet
heavily over the threshold. He carried an
old basket.
"What you got in that basket, father?"
asked Mrs. Britton.
The old man looked at her. His old face
had the round outlines and naive grin of a
child.
"Father, what you got in that basket?"
Louisa peered apprehensively into the
basket. "Where did you get those potatoes,
grandfather?" said she.
"Digged 'em." The old man's grin deep-
ened. He chuckled hoarsely.
"Well, ril give up if he ain't been an'
dug up all them potaters you've been
plantin'!" said Mrs. Britton.
"Yes, he has," said Louisa. "Oh, grand-'
father, didn't you know I'd jest planted
those potatoes?"
The old man fastened his bleared blue
eyes on her face, and still grinned.
"Didn't you know better, grandfather?"
she asked again.
But the old man only chuckled. He was
so old that he had come back into the
mystery of childhood. His motives were
hidden and inscrutable; his amalgamation
with the human race was so much weaker.
"Land sakes! don't waste no more time
talkin' to him," said Mrs. Britton. "You
can't make out whether he knows what he's
doin' or not. I've give it up. Father, you
jest set them pertaters down, an' you come
over here an' set down in the rockin'-chair;
you've done about 'nough work to-day."
The old man shook his head with slow
mutiny.
"Come right over here."
Louisa pulled at the basket of potatoes.
"Let me have 'em, grandfather," said she.
"I've got to have 'em."
1 he old man resisted. His grin disap-
peared, and he set his mouth. Mrs. Britton
got up, with a determined air, and went
over to him. She was a sickly, frail-looking
woman, but the voice came firm, with deep
bass tones, from her little lean throat.
"Now, father," said she, "you jest give
her that basket, an' you walk across the
room, and you set down in that rockin'-
chair."
The old man looked down into her little,
pale, wedge-shaped face. His grasp on the
basket weakened. Louisa pulled it away, and
pushed past out of the door, and the old man
followed his daughter sullenly across the
room to the rocking-chair.
The Brittons did not have a large potato
field; they had only an acre of land in all.
Louisa had planted two thirds of her pota-
toes; now she had to plant them all over
again. She had gone to the house for a
drink of water; her mother had detained her,
and in the meantime the old man had undone
her work. She began putting the cut
potatoes back in the ground. She was
careful and laborious about it. A strong
wind, full of moisture, was blowing from the
east. The smell of the sea was in it, although
this was some miles inland. Louisa's brown
calico skirt blew out in it like a sail. It beat
her in the face when she raised her head.
"I've got to get these in to-day somehow,"
she muttered. "It'll rain to-morrow."
She worked as fast as she could, and the
afternoon wore on. About five o'clock she
happened to glance at the road — the potato
field lay beside it — and she saw Jonathan
Nye driving past with his gray horse and
buggy. She turned her back to the road
quickly, and listened until the rattle of the
wheels died away. At six o'clock her mother
looked out of the kitchen window and called
her to supper.
"I'm comin' in a minute," Louisa shouted
back. Then she worked faster than ever.
At half-past six she went into the house, and
the potatoes were all in the ground.
"Why didn't you come when I called
you?" asked her mother.
"I had to get the potatoes in."
"I guess you wa'n't bound to get *em all
in to-night. It's kind of discouragin' when
you work, an' get supper all ready, to have it
Stan' an hour, I call it. An' you've worked
LOUISA
305
'bout long; enough for one clay out in this
damp wind, I should say."
Louisa washed her hands and face at the
kitchen sink, and smoothed her hair at the
little glass over it. She had wet her hair too,
and made it look darker: it was quite a light
brow^n. She brushed it in smooth straight
lines back from her temples. Her whole
face had a clear bright look from being
e.xposed to the moist wind. She noticed it
herself, and gave her head a little conscious
turn.
When she sat down to the table her mother
looked at her with admiration, which she
veiled with disapproval.
"Jest look at your face," said she; "red
as a beet. You'll be a pretty-lookin' sight
before the summer's out, at this rate.
Louisa thought to herself that the light
was not very strong, and the glass must have
flattered her. She could not look as well as
she had Imagined. She spread some butter
on her bread very sparsely. There was
nothing for supper but some bread and butter
and weak tea, though the old man had his
dish of Indian-meal porridge. He could not
eat much solid food. The porridge was
covered with milk and molasses. He bent
low over it, and ate large spoonfuls with
loud noises. His daughter had tied a towel
around his neck as she would have tied a
pinafore on a child. She had also spread a
towel over the table-cloth in front of him,
and she watched him sharply lest he should
spill his food.
"I wish I could have somethin' to eat that
I could relish the way he does that porridge
and molasses," said she. She had scarcely
tasted anything. She sipped her weak tea
laboriously.
Louisa looked across at her mother's
meager little figure in its neat old dress, at
her poor small head bending over the tea-
cup, showing the wide parting in the thin
hair.
"Why don't you toast your bread,
mother.?" said she. "I'll toast it for you."
"No, I don't want it. I'd jest as soon
have it this way as any. I don't want no
bread, nohow. I want somethin' to relish — a
herrin', or a little mite of cold meat, or some-
thin'. I s'pose I could eat as well as any-
body if I had as much as some folks have.
Mis' Mitchell was sayin' the other day that
she didn't believe but what they had
butcher's meat up to Mis' Nye's every day
in the week. She said Jonathan he went to
Wolfsborough and brought home great
pieces in a market-basket every week. I
guess they have everything."
Louisa was not eating much herself, but
now she took another slice of bread with a
resolute air. "I guess some folks would be
thankful to get this," said she.
"Yes, I s'pose we'd ought to be thankful
for enough to keep us alive, anybody takes
so much comfort livin'," returned her
mother, with a tragic bitterness that sat
oddly upon her, as she was so small and
feeble. Her face worked and strained under
the stress of emotion; her eyes were full of
tears; she sipped her tea fiercely.
"There's some sugar," said Louisa. "We
might have had a little cake."
The old man caught the word. "Cake?"
he mumbled, with pleased inquiry, looking
up, and extending his grasping old hand.
"I guess we ain't got no sugar to waste in
cake," returned Mrs. Britton. "Eat your
porridge, father, an' stop teasin'. There
ain't no cake."
After supper Louisa cleared away the
dishes; then she put on her shawl and
hat.
"Where you goin'.?" asked her mother.
"Down to the store."
"What for.?"
"The oil's out. There wasn't enough to
fill the lamps this mornin'. I ain't had a
chance to get it before."
It was nearly dark. The mist was so
heavy it was almost rain. Louisa went
swiftly down the road with the oil-can. It
was a half-mile to the store where the few
staples were kept that sufficed the simple
folk in this little settlement. She was gone a
half-hour. When she returned, she had
besides the oil-can a package under her arm.
She went into the kitchen and set them down.
The old man was asleep in the rocking-chair.
She heard voices in the adjoining room.
She frowned, and stood still, listening.
"Louisa!" called her mother. Her voice
was sweet, and higher pitched than usual.
She sounded the i in Louisa long.
"What say?"
"Come in here after you've taken your
things off."
3o6
M.\m' E. WILKIXS FREEMAN
Louisa knew that Jonathan Nye was in the
sit'inii-rooni. She flunp off her hat and
shawl. Her old dress was damp, and had
still some earth stains on it; her hair was
roughened by the wind, but she would not
look again in the glass; she went into the
sittmg-room just as she was.
"It's Mr. Nye, Louisa," said her mother,
with effusion.
"Good-evenin', Mr. Nye," said Louisa.
Jonathan Nye half arose and extended
his hand, but she did not notice it. She
sat down peremptorily in a chair at the
other side of the room. Jonathan had the
one rocking-chair; Mrs. Britton's frail little
body was poised anxiously on the hard
rounded top of the carpet-covered lounge.
She looked at Louisa's dress and hair, and
her eyes were stony with disapproval, but
her lips still smirked, and she kept her voice
sweet. She pointed to a glass dish on the
table.
"See what Mr. Nye has brought us over,
Louisa," said she.
Louisa looked indifferently at the dish.
"It's honey," said her mother; "some of
his own bees made it. Don't you want to
get a dish an' taste of it.? One of them little
glass sauce dishes."
"No, I guess not," replied Louisa. "I
never cared much about honey. Grand-
father 'II like it."
The smile vanished momentarily from
Mrs. Britton's lips, but she recovered her-
self. She arose and went across the room to
the china closet. Her set of china dishes
was on the top shelves, the lower were filled
with books and papers. "I've got somethin'
to show you, Mr. Nye," said she.
This was scarcely more than a hamlet,
but it was incorporated, and had its town
books. She brought forth a pile of them, and
laid them on the table beside Jonathan
Nye. "There," said she, "I thought mebbe
you'd like to look at these." She opened
one and pointed to the school report. This
mother could not display her daughter's
accomplishments to attract a suitor, for she
had none. Louisa did not own a piano or
organ; she could not paint; but she had
taught school acceptably for eight years —
ever since she was sixteen — and in every-
one of the town books was testimonial to
that effect, intermixed with glowing eulogy.
Jonathan Nye looked soberly through the
books; he was a slow reader. He was a few
years older than Louisa, tall and clumsy,
long-featured and long-necked. His face
was a deep red with embarrassment, and it
contrasted oddly with his stiff dignity of
demeanor.
Mrs. Britton drew a chair close to him
while he read. "You see, Louisa taught
that school for eight year," said she; "an'
she'd be teachin' it now if Mr. Mosely's
daughter hadn't grown up an' wanted
somethin' to do, an' he put her in. He was
committee, you know. I dun' know as I'd
ought to say so, an' I wouldn't want you to
repeat it, but they do say Ida Mosely don't
give very good satisfaction, an' I guess she
won't have no reports like these in the town
books unless her father writes 'em. See
this one."
Jonathan Nye pondered over the fulsome
testimony to Louisa's capability, general
worth, and amiability, while she sat in
sulky silence at the farther corner of the
room. Once in a while her mother, after a
furtive glance at Jonathan, engrossed in a
town book, would look at her and gesticulate
fiercely for her to come over, but she did not
stir. Her eyes w^ere dull and quiet, her mouth
closely shut; she looked homely. Louisa
was very pretty when pleased and animated,
at other times she had a look like a closed
flower. One could see no prettiness in her.
Jonathan Nye read all the school reports;
then he arose heavily. "They're real good,"
said he. He glanced at Louisa and tried to
smile; his blushes deepened.
"Now don't be in a hurry," said Mrs.
Britton.
"I guess I'd better be goin'; mother's
alone."
"She won't be afraid, it's jest on the edge
of the evenin'."
"I don't know as she will. But I guess
I'd better be goin'." He looked hesitatingly
at Louisa.
She arose and stood with an indifferent
air.
"You'd better set down again," said Mrs.
Britton.
* **No; I guess I'd better be goin'." Jona-
than turned towards Louisa. "Good-
evenin'," said he.
Uood-evenm .
LOUISA
307
Mrs. Britton followed him to the door.
She looked back and beckoned imperiously
to Louisa, but she stood still. "Now come
again, do," Mrs. Britton said to the depart-
ing caller. "Run in any time; we're real
lonesome evenm's. Father he sets an' sleeps
in his chair, an' Louisa an' me often wish
somebody'd drop in; folks round here ain't
none too neighborly. Come in any time
you happen to feel like it, an' we'll both of us
be glad to see you. Tell your mother I'll
send home that dish to-morrer, an' we shall
have a real feast off that beautiful honey."
When Mrs. Britton had fairly shut the
outer door upon Jonathan Nye, she came
back into the sitting-room as if her anger
had a propelling power like steam upon her
body.
"Now, Louisa Britton," said she, "you'd
ought to be ashamed of yourself — ashamed
of yourself! You've treated him like a —
hog!"
"I couldn't help it."
"Couldn't help it! I guess you could
treat anybody decent if you tried. I never
saw such actions! I guess you needn't be
afraid of him. I guess he ain't so set on you
that he means to ketch you up an' run off.
There's other girls in town full as good as
you an' better-lookin'. Why didn't you go
an' put on your other dress .^ Comin' into
the room with that old thing on, an' your
hair all in a frowse! I guess he won't want
to come again."
"I hope he won't," said Louisa, under
her breath. She was trembling all over.
"What say.?"
"Nothin'."
"I shouldn't think you'd want to say any-
thing, treatin' him that way, when he came
over and brought all that beautiful honey!
He was all dressed up, too. He had on a
real nice coat — cloth jest as fine as it could
be, an' it was kinder damp when he come in.
Then he dressed all up to come over here this
rainy night an' bring this honey." Mrs.
Britton snatched the dish of honey and
scudded into the kitchen with it. "Sayin'
you didn't like honey after he took all that
pains to bring it over!" said she. "I'd said
I liked it if I'd lied up hill and down." She
set the dish in the pantry. "What in
creation smells so kinder strong an' smoky
in here.?" said she, sharply.
"I guess it's the herrin'. I got two or
three down to the store."
"I'd like to know what you got h«rrin*
for.?"
"I thought maybe you'd relish 'em."
"I don't want no herrin's, now we've got
this honey. But I don't know that you've
got money to throw away." She shook the
old man by the stove into partial wakefulness
and steered him into his little bedroom off
the kitchen. She herself slept in one off the
sitting-room; Louisa's room was up-stairs.
Louisa lighted her candle and went to bed,
her mother's scolding voice pursuing her
like a wrathful spirit. She cried when she
was in bed in the dark, but she soon went to
sleep. She was too healthily tired with her
out-door work not to. All her young bones
ached with the strain of manual labor as
they had ached many a time this last year
since she had lost her school.
The Brittons had been and were in sore
straits. All they had in the world was this
little house with the acre of land. Louisa's
meager school money had bought their
food and clothing since her father died.
Now it was almost starvation for them.
Louisa was struggling to wrest a little
sustenance from their stony acre of land,
toiling like a European peasant woman,
sacrificing her New England dignity. Lately
she had herself split up a cord of wood which
she had bought of a neighbor, paying for it in
installments with work for his wife.
"Think of a school-teacher goin' into Mis*
Mitchell's house to help clean!" said her
mother.
She, although she had been of poor, hard-
working people all her life, with the humblest
surroundings, was a born aristocrat, with
that fiercest and most bigoted aristocracy
which sometimes arises from independent
poverty. She had the feeling of a queen for
a princess of the blood about her school-
teacher daughter; her working in a neighbor's
kitchen was as galhng and terrible to her.
The projected marriage with Jonathan Nye
was like a royal alliance for the good of the
state. Jonathan Nye was the only eligible
young man in the place; he was the largest
land-owner; he had the best house. There
were only himself and his mother; after her
death the property would all be his. Mrs.
Nye was an older woman than Mrs. Britton,
3o8
MAR\- K. WILKINS FRKKMAN
who forpjot licr own frailty in calculating
their chances of life.
"Mis' Nye is considerable over seventy,"
she said often to herself; "an' then Jonathan
will have it all."
She saw herself installed in that larj;e
wh.ite house as reigning dowager. All the
obstacle was Louisa's obstinacy, which her
mother could not understand. She could
see no fault in Jona-than Nye. So far as
absolute approNal went, she herself was in
love with him. There was no more sense,
to her mind, in Louisa's refusing hmi than
there would have been in a princess refusing
the fairy prince and spoiling the story.
"I'd like to know what you've got against
him," she said often to Louisa.
"I ain't got anything against him."
"Why don't you treat him different, then,
I want to know.''"
"I don't like him." Louisa said "like"
shamefacedly, for she meant love, and dared
not »ay it.
^^Like! Well, I don't know nothin' about
such likin's as some pretend to, an' I don't
want to. If I see anybody is good an'
worthy, I like 'em, an' that's all there is
about it."
"I don't — believe that's the way you felt
about — father," said Louisa, softly, her
young face flushed red.
"Yes, it was. I had some common-sense
about it."
And Mrs. Britton believed it. Many
hard middle-aged years lay between her and
her own love-time, and nothing is so changed
by distance as the realities of youth. She
believed herself to have been actuated by
the same calm reason in marrying young
John Britton, who had had fair prospects,
which she thought should actuate her
daughter in marrying Jonathan Nye.
Louisa got no sympathy from her, but she
persisted in her refusal. She worked harder
and harder. She did not spare herself in
doors or out. As the summer wore on her
face grew as sunburnt as a boy's, her hands
were hard and brown. When she put on her
white dress to go to meeting on a Sunday
there was a white ring around her neck where
the sun had not touched it. Above it her
face and neck showed browner. Her sleeves
were rather short, and there were also white
rings above her brown wrists.
"\'ou look as if you were turnin' Injun by
inches," said her mother.
Louisa, when she sat in the meeting-house,
tried slyly to pull her sleeves down to the
brown on herwrists;shegavea little twitch to
the ruffle around her neck. Then she glanced
across, and Jonathan Nye was looking at her.
She thrust her hands, in their short-wristed,
loose cotton gloves, as far out of the sleeves
as she could; her brown wrists showed con-
spicuously on her white lap. She had never
heard of the princess who destroyed her
beauty that she might not be forced to wed
the man whom she did not love, but she had
something of the same feeling, although she
did not have it for the sake of any tangible
lover. Louisa had never seen anybody
whom she would have preferred to Jonathan
Nye. There was no other marriageable
young man in the place. She had only her
dreams, which she had in common with
other girls.
That Sunday evening before she went to
meeting her mother took some old wide
lace out of her bureau drawer. "There,"
said she, "I'm goin' to sew this in your neck
an' sleeves before you put your dress on.
It'll cover up a little; it's wider than the
ruffle."
"I don't want it in," said Louisa.
"I'd like to know why not.^* You look
like a fright. I was ashamed of you this
mornin'."
Louisa thrust her arms Into the white
dress sleeves peremptorily. Her mother did
not speak to her all the way to meeting.
After meeting, Jonathan Nye walked home
w^Ith them, and Louisa kept on the other
side of her mother. He went into the
house and stayed an hour. Mrs. Britton
entertained him, while Louisa sat silent.
When he had gone, she looked at her daugh-
ter as if she could have used bodily force,
but she said nothing. She shot the bolt of
the kitchen door noisily. Louisa lighted her
candle. The old man's loud breathing
sounded from his room; he had been put to
bed for safety before they went to meeting;
through the open windows sounded the loud
murmur of the summer night, as if that, too,
slept heavily.
"Good-night, mother," said Louisa, as she
went up-stairs; but her mother did not
answer.
LOUISA
309
The next day was very warm. This was
an exceptionally hot summer. Louisa went
out early; her mother would not ask her
where she was going. She did not come home
until noon. Her face was burnmg; her wet
dress clung to her arms and shoulders.
"Where have you been?" asked her
mother.
"Oh, I've been out in the field."
"What field?"
"Mr. Mitchell's."
"What have you been doin' out there?"
"Rakin' hay."
"Rakin' hay with the men?"
"There wasn't anybody but Mr. Mitchell
and Johnny. Don't, mother!"
Mrs. Britton had turned white. She sank
into a chair. "I can't stan' it nohow," she
moaned. "All the daughter I've got."
"Don't, mother! I ain't done any harm.
What harm is it? Why can't I rake hay as
well as a man? Lots of women do such
things, if nobody round here does. He's
goin' to pay me right off, and we need the
money. Don't, mother!" Louisa got a
tumbler of water. "Here, mother, drink
this."
Mrs. Britton pushed it away. Louisa
stood looking anxiously at her. Lately her
mother had grown thinner than ever; she
looked scarcely bigger than a child. Pres-
ently she got up and went to the stove.
"Don't try to do anything, mother; let me
finish getting dinner," pleaded Louisa. She
tried to take the pan of biscuits out of her
mother's hands, but she jerked it away.
The old man was sitting on the door-step,
huddled up loosely in the sun, like an old
dog.
"Come, father," Mrs. Britton called, in a
dry voice, "dinner's ready — what there is
of it!"
The old man shuffled in, smiling.
There was nothing for dinner but the hot
biscuits and tea. The fare was daily
becoming more meager. All Louisa's little
hoard of school money was gone, and her
earnings were very uncertain and slender.
Their chief dependence for food through the
summer was their garden, but that had
failed them in some respects.
One day the old man had come in radiant,
with his shaking hands full of potato blos-
soms; his old eyes twinkled over them like
a mischievous child's. Reproaches were
useless; the little potato crop was sadly
damaged. Lately, in spite of close watchmg,
he had picked the squash blossoms, piling
them in a yellow mass beside the kitchen
door. Still, it was nearly time for the pease
and beans and beets; they would keep them
from starvation while they lasted.
But when they came, and Louisa could
pick plenty of green food every morning,
there was still a difficulty: Mrs. Britton's
appetite and digestion were poor; she could
not live upon a green-vegetable diet; and
the old man missed his porridge, for the
meal was all gone.
One morning in August he cried at the
breakfast-table like a baby, because he
wanted his porridge, and Mrs. Britton
pushed away her own plate with a despairing
gesture.
"There ain't no use," said she. "I can't
eat no more garden-sauce nohow. I don't
blame poor father a mite. You ain't got no
feelin' at all."
"I don't know what I can do; I've worked
as hard as I can," said Louisa, miserably.
"I know what you can do, and so do
you.
"No, I don't, mother," returned Louisa,
with alacrity. "He ain't been here for two
weeks now, and I saw him with my own eyes
yesterday carryin' a dish into the Moselys',
and I knew 'twas honey. I think he's after
Ida."
"Carryin' honey into the Moselys'? I
don't believe it."
"He was; I saw him."
"Well, I don't care if he was. If you're a
mind to act decent now, you can bring him
round again. He was dead set on you, an' I
don't believe he's changed round to that
Mosely girl as quick as this."
"You don't want me to ask him to come
back here, do you?"
" I want you to act decent. You can go to
meetin' to-night, if you're a mind to — I
sha'n't go; I ain't got strength 'nough — an'
'twouldn't hurt you none to hang back a
little after meetin', and kind of edge round
his way. 'Twouldn't take more'n a look."
"Mother!"
"Well, I don't care. 'Twouldn't hurt you
none. It's the way more'n one girl does,
whether you believe it or not. Men don't do
lO
MAin- K. WILKINS FREEMAN
all the courtin' — not by a lonp shot. 'Twon't
hurt you none. ^Ou needn't look so scart."
Mrs. Hritton's own face was a burninp: red.
She looked angrily away from her daughter's
honest, indignant eyes.
"I wouldn't do such a thing as that for a
man I liked," said Louisa; "and I certainly
sha'n't for a man I don't like."
"Then me an' your grandfather'll starve,"
said her mother; "that's all there is about it.
We can't neither of us stan' it much longer."
"We could — "
"Could what.'"'
"Put a — little mortgage on the house."
Mrs. Britton faced her daughter. She
trembled in every inch of her weak frame.
" Put a mortgage on this house, an' by-an'-by
not have a roof to cover us! Are you crazy.f*
I tell you what 'tis, Louisa Britton, we may
starve, your grandfather an' me, an' you can
follow us to the graveyard over there, but
there's only one way I'll ever put a mortgage
on this house. If you have Jonathan Nye,
I'll ask him to take a little one to tide us
along an' get your weddin' things."
"Mother, I'll tell you w^hat I'm goin' to
do."
"What.?"
"I am goin' to ask Uncle Solomon."
"I guess when Solomon Mears does
anythin' for us you'll know it. He never
forgave your father about that wood lot,
an' he's hated the whole of us ever since.
When I went to his wife's funeral he never
answered when I spoke to him. I guess if
you go to him you'll take it out in goin'."
Louisa said nothing more. She began
clearing away the breakfast dishes and
setting the house to rights. Her mother
was actually so weak that she could scarcely
stand, and she recognized it. She had
settled into the rocking-chair, and leaned
her head back. Her face looked pale and
sharp against the dark calico cover.
When the house was in order, Louisa
stole up-stairs to her own chamber. She
put on her clean old blue muslin and her
hat, then she went slyly down and out the
front way.
It was seven miles to her uncle Solomon
Mears's, and she had made up her mind to
walk them. She walked quite swiftly until
the house windows were out of sight, then
she slackened her pace a little. It was one of
the fiercest dog-days. A damp heat settled
heavily down upon the earth; the sun scalded.
At the foot of the hill Louisa passed a house
where one of her girl acquaintances lived.
She was going in the gate with a pan of
early apples. "Hullo, Louisa," she called.
"Hullo, Vinnie."
"Where you goin'?'*
"Oh, I'm goin' a little way."
"Ain't it awful hot.'' Say, Louisa, do you
know Ida Mosely's cuttin' you out.-*"
"She's welcome,'*
The other girl, who was larger and stouter
than Louisa, with a sallow, unhealthy face,
looked at her curiously. "I don't see why
you wouldn't have him," said she. "I
should have thought you'd jumped at the
chance."
"Should you if you didn't like him, I'd
like to know.'"'
"I'd like him if he had such a nice house
and as much money as Jonathan Nye,"
returned the other girl.
She offered Louisa some apples, and she
went along the road eating them. She her-
self had scarcely tasted food that day.
It was about nine o'clock; she liad risen
early. She calculated how many hours it
would take her to walk the seven miles. She
walked as fast as she could to hold out. The
heat seemed to increase as the sun stood
higher. She had walked about three miles
when she heard wheels behind her. Presently
a team stopped at her side.
"Good-mornin'," said an embarrassed
voice.
She looked around. It was Jonathan
Nye, with his gray horse and light wagon.
"Good-mornin'," said she.
(jom rarr
"A little ways."
"Won't you — ride.'"'
"No, thank you. I guess I'd rather
walk."
Jonathan Nye nodded, made an inarticu-
late noise in his throat, and drove on.
Louisa watched the wagon bowling lightly
along. The dust flew back. She took out her
handkerchief and wiped her dripping face.
It was about noon when she came in sight
of her uncle Solomon Mears's house in
Wolfsborough. It stood far back from the
road, behind a green expanse of untrodden
yard. The bhnds on the great square front
LOUISA
311
were all closed; it looked as if everybody
were away. Louisa went around to the side
door. It stood wide open. There was a thin
blue cloud of tobacco smoke issuing; from it.
Solomon Mears sat there in the large old
kitchen smoking his pipe. On the table
near him was an empty bowl; he had just
eaten his dinner of bread and milk. He
got his own dinner, for he had lived alone
since his wife died. He looked at Louisa.
Evidently he did not recognize her.
"How do you do, Uncle Solomon?" said
Louisa.
"Oh, it's John Britton's daughter! How
d'ye do.^"
He took his pipe out of his mouth long
enough to speak, then replaced it. His
eyes, sharp under their shaggy brows, were
fixed on Louisa; his broad bristling face had
a look of stolid rebuff like an ox; his stout
figure, in his soiled farmer dress, surged over
his chair. He sat full in the doorway.
Louisa standing before him, the perspiration
trickling over her burning face, set forth her
case with a certain dignity. This old man
was her mother's nearest relative. He had
property and to spare. Should she survive
him, it would be hers, unless willed away.
She, with her unsophisticated sense of
justice, had a feeling that he ought to help
her.
The old man listened. When she stopped
speaking he took the pipe out of his mouth
slowly, and stared gloomily past her at his
hay field, where the grass was now a green
stubble.
"I ain't got no money I can spare jest
now," said he. "I s'pose you know your
father cheated me out of consider'ble
oncer
"We don't care so much about money, if
you have got something you could spare to
— eat. We ain't got anything but garden-
stuff."
Solomon Mears still frowned past her at
the hay field. Presently he arose slowly and
went across the kitchen. Louisa sat down
on the door-step and waited. Her uncle
was gone quite a while. She, too, stared over
at the field, which seemed to undulate like
a lake in the hot light.
"Here's some things you can take, if you
want 'em," said her uncle, at her back.
She got up quickly. He pointed grimly to
the kitchen table. He was a deacon, an
orthodox believer; he recognized the claims
of the poor, but he gave alms as a soldier
might yield up his sword. Benevolence was
the result of warfare with his own con-
science.
On the table lay a ham, a bag of meal,
one of flour, and a basket of eggs.
"I'm afraid I can't carry 'em all," said
Louisa.
"Leave what you can't then." Solomon
caught up his hat and went out. He mut-
tered something about not spending any
more time as he went.
Louisa stood looking at the packages. It
was utterly impossible for her to carry them
all at once. She heard her uncle shout to
some oxen he was turning out of the barn.
She took up the bag of meal and the basket
of eggs and carried them out to the gate;
then she returned, got the flour and ham,
and went with them to a point beyond.
Then she returned for the meal and eggs,
and carried them past the others. In that
way she traversed the seven miles home.
The heat increased. She had eaten nothing
since morning but the apples that her friend
had given her. Her head was swimming, but
she kept on. Her resolution was as immov-
able under the power of the sun as a rock.
Once in a while she rested for a moment
under a tree, but she soon arose and went on.
It was like a pilgrimage, and the Mecca at
the end of the burning, desert-like road was
her own maiden independence.
It was after eight o'clock when she reached
home. Her mother stood in the doorway
watching for her, straining her eyes in the
dusk.
"For goodness sake, Louisa Britton!
where have you been?" she began; but
Louisa laid the meal and eggs down on the
step.
"I've got to go back a little ways," she
panted.
When she returned with the flour and
ham, she could hardly get into the house.
She laid them on the kitchen table, where
her mother had put the other parcels, and
sank into a chair.
"Is this the way you've brought all these
things home?" asked her mother.
Louisa nodded.
"All the way from Uncle Solomon's?'*
.112
MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN
"Yes."
Her mother went to lier and took her hat
off. "It's a mercy if you ain't got a sun-
stroke," said she, with a sharp tenderness.
"I've got somethin' to tell you. What do
you s'pose has happened.'* Mr. Mosely
has been here, an* he wants you to take the
school again when it opens next week. He
says Ida ain't very weli, but I guess that
ain't it. They think she's goin' to get some-
body. Mis' Mitchell says so. She's been in.
She says he's carryin' things over there the
whole time, but she don't b'lieve there's
anything settled yet. She says they feel so
sure of it they're goin* "to have Ida give the
school up. I told her I thought Ida would
make him a good wife, an' she was easier
suited than some girls. What do you s'pose
Mis' Mitchell says.^ She says old Mis' Nye
told her that there was one thing about it: if
Jonathan had you, he wa'n't goin' to have
me an' father hitched on to him; he'd look
out for that. I told Mis' Mitchell that I
guess there wa'n't none of us willin' to hitch,
you nor anybody else. I hope she'll tell Mis'
Nye. Now I'm a-goin' to turn you out a
tumbler of milk — Mis' Mitchell she brought
over a whole pitcherfiil; says she's got
more'n they can use — they ain't got no pig
now — an' then you go an' lay down on the
sittin'-room lounge, an' cool off; an' I'll
stir up some porridge for supper, an' boil
some eggs. Father '11 be tickled to death.
Go right in there. I'm dreadful afraid you'll
be sick. I never heard of anybody doin'
such a thing as you have."
Louisa drank the milk and crept into the
sitting-room. It was warm and close there,
so she opened the front door and sat down
on the step. The twilight was deep, but there
was a clear yellow glow in the west. One
great star had come out in the midst of it.
A dewy coolness was spreading over every-
thing. The air was full of bird calls and
children's voices. Now and then there was a
shout of laughter. Louisa leaned her head
against the door-post.
The house was quite near the road. Some
one passed — a man carrying a basket.
Louisa glanced at him, and recognized
Jonathan Nye by his gait. He kept on
down the road toward the Moselys', and
Louisa turned again from him to her sweet,
mysterious, girlish dreams.
CLYDE FITCH (1865-1909)
William Clyde Fitch was born at Elmira, New York, on 2 May, 1865. Eimira was not the home
of his parents, but merely a temporary abode. His mother, Alice M. Clark, was a native of Hagers-
town, Maryland, where she met William G. Fitch of Hartford, Connecticut, who was at the time an
officer of the Union army in the Civil War. In Hagerstown they were married during the war. They
had no settled home until 1869, when they removed to Schenectady, New York, where Clyde's boy-
hood and youth were passed. In 1879 he was sent to a boys' school in Holderness, New Hampshire,
where he was prepared for Amherst College. He was graduated from Amherst with the class of 1886.
Academic distinction was not for him (though later Amherst gave him an honorary degree), but in
college he clearly showed his qualities — attracting attention, not at first favorable, and getting into
debt, because of his clothes, showing an eye for decorative effect in his rooms, writing much for the
college periodical, reworking on extremely short notice a dramatic piece to be performed by members
of his fraternity, acting in college plays, and directing their performance. His father wanted him to
become an architect, but he found an irresistible appeal in literature and determined, upon his gradua-
tion, to make his own way as a writer. At first he had a sufficiently hard time of it, writing verse,
children's stories (a volume of these was published in 1891, The Knighting of the Twins)^ and other
slight pieces, while he earned his bread and butter as a private tutor — work which he detested. He
also wrote at this time a novel, A JVave of Life , which was printed in Lippincott's Magazine in 1891,
but which was never republished.
Before this year, however, in the fall of 1889, an opportunity had come to him to try his hand at
what was to be his life's work, the writing of stage plays. Richard Mansfield wanted a play aboi't
Beau Brummell and, at the suggestion of a common friend, asked Fitch to write it for him. The young
author soon found Mansfield "unbearable," and wrote to a friend: "To suit a star actor, who wants
all the good situations for himself, and is jealous of any other good lines, and who would rather cut
all out save his own, is a difficult piece of work, and one needs strength, stubbornnesSy and great diplom-
acy, and, besides, a yielding power when it becomes necessary." (Clyde Fitch arid His Letters, by M.
J. Moses and V. Gerson.) Whatever qualities were needed, however, Fitch seemed to have, and the
play was a success. From the time of its first performance (17 May, 1890) he was a play-writer and
nothing else. Beau Brumviell gave him an exceptional start, but, eveii so, his way was for some years
not easy, and his income remained small and uncertain. The success of Beau Brummell was itself a
source of grave embarrassment, because it brought forth a widely published charge that Fitch was in
no sense the play's author, but had merely acted as Mansfield's secretary in writing it. The charge,
though plausible, was false, and fortunately it did no permanent harm. Originating, however, as it
did with a dramatic critic, it was the forerunner of many difficulties which the pla>^vright was to have
with other members of that tribe, for he had to contend against adverse press-criticism practically
until the end of his life. He wrote a number of plays which were failures or only moderately successful,
and it was only about 1898 that he became firmly established in his profession. By this time, however,
he still occasionally lacked ready money, not because his income was really insufficient, but because
his expenditures were lavish. As a youth he was rather a dandy, and as a man his tastes were luxuri-
ous. During his annual summers in Europe he habitually bought himself poor, carrying back with
him much old furniture, tapestries, paintings, and smaller objects of art. In 1900 he built himself a
small but perfecrly appointed house in New York, and later he built a country home at Greenwich,
Connecticut, and aftenvards bought another at Katonah, New York. After about 1902 or 1903 the
state of his health began to cause his friends some uneasiness, and physicians warned him that the
combination of continuous overwork and grave digestive disorders was one that might soon put a term
to his life. Warnings, however, were of small avail, and Fitch died, at Chalons-sur-Marne, on 4
September, 1909.
He had written sixty-two plays, of which thirty-six were original, twenty-one were adaptations
of French or German plays, and five were dramatizations of novels (including The House of Mirth, by
Edith Wharton). The most important of these are: Beau Brummell (1890), Frederic Lemaitre (1890),
Pamelas Prodigy (1891), The Social Swim (1893), His Grace de Grammont (1894), Mistress Betty (1895),
The Moth and the Flame (1898), Nathan Hale (1899), Barbara Frietchie (1899), The Cozvboy and the Lady
313
314 CLYDE FITCH
('*^99)> Saplio (from Alphonsc Daudct's novel of the same title, 1900), The Climbers (1901), Captain
Jinks of thf Horse Marines (1901), Lovers' Lane (1901), The Last of the Dandies (1901), The IVay of the
World (1901), The Girl and the Judge (1901), The Stubbornness of Geraldine, (1902) The Girl with the
Green Eyes (1902), Her Ckvn IVay (1903), Major Andre (1903), Glad of It (1903), The Coronet of the
Duchess (1904), The JVoman in the Case (1905), Her Great Match (1905), The Girl JVho Has Everything
(1906), The Straight Road (1907), The Truth (1907), The Bachelor (1909), J Happy Marriage (1909),
and The City (1909).
Fitch's success as a practical playwright remains probably unparalleled in America. Neverthe-
less, as was said, he was subjected throughout his career to attacks from the press. He was accused
of hasty, slipshod workmanship, of false taste, of willingness to sacrifice truth for theatrical effect, and
of a lack of ideas. Much of this criticism was, as Fitch protested, itself hasty and careless, but it
was not wholly mistaken. He was a nervously energetic worker, impressionistic in his methods, full
of boyish verve and naivete, eager, restless, and inevitably superficial. He had ideals, was not with-
out conscience in his work, and not without ideas. His ideas and ideals both were perhaps not the
worse for being elementary; but, on the other hand, it is true that he had his way to make in the world,
that he wanted the generous, immediate rewards which he obtained, and that he was too ready to
adapt himself to the conditions of practical success, shifting the responsibility by declaring, with a sigh,
that "there will never be good American dramatists till there are good American producers!" He
wrote illuminatingly in reply to adverse criticism of two of his plays: "What I am trying to do is to
reflect life of all kinds as I see it. To write, first, plays that will interest and mean something; and,
after that, amuse. I would rather entertain everybody than one body. And always and in any case
with a result to the good. I am trying especially to reflect our own life of the present, and to get into
the heart of the pictures made by the past. To do this I do not consider any detail too small, so long
as it is not boring. Nor any method wrong which I feel to be true." Further light on his ideals is
cast by an incident of 1904. W. D. Howells had been pleased by Fitch's Glad of It, recognizing in its
very looseness of structure a fidelity to his sense of "the way things happen," and he printed an appre-
ciative review of the play in Harper's Weekly. Fitch's letter of thanks should probably be taken at
something less than its face value, both because of his eager reactions and because of his gratitude
at the support of a really eminent man of letters; nevertheless, it sheds light on his aims. He wrote:
"I don't think I was ever more pleased, or so thoroughly encouraged to do more, and get close to the
'Real Thing,' than I have been by your 'article.' . . . You see I really represent the Hozvells's Age!
by which I mean when you were in the first glory and fight of your success, I was a boy beginning to
'take notice,' — never in a scholastic sense either, entirely from instinct and the impulse of my nature —
or I might leave out the 'my.' I grew up on you! And so when I began to bump along the thirties
I began to grow hungry to please you, not in your way, but in my own. I have an individual trait,
that one sees in children, I cannot be guided. I must learn to walk in my work alone. Tumble after
tumble doesn't discourage me. I want to 'get there' through my own experience, from my own point
of view, even at the risk of being bow-minded. It's a sort of mental stubbornness or conceit, and it is
hampered — perhaps? — by my determination to take my work, but not myself, seriously. All of which
means — a long way around."
Perhaps the way was too long, other factors which increased its length not being mentioned in
this letter. But, still, the fact remains that many of Fitch's plays have, within limits, a genuine doc-
umentary interest and value. And the best of them have a felicity and a liveliness which need not
acting for their appreciation, so that Fitch fairly earned a place among American men of letters. It
is safe to say that no American play written before 1890, or thereabouts, preserves now more than
an antiquarian interest, and of playwrights who have written sijice that year Fitch has been not only
the most prolific and the most successful, but also the most conspicuous for sustained power of dramatic
conception and of adroit execution. Moreover, says a recent critic (T. H. Dickinson, Playwrights of
the New American Theater), "under a skill in the handling of pure artifice second to none in the history
of our stage, Clyde Fitch possessed a real knowledge of the fundamentals of character. His treatment
of feminine character was not alone the legerdemain of 'the man who knows women.'" It is true,
the same critic continues, that "this mastery of character never eventuated into a play worthy of
the insight displayed in its details," but this "must not blind us to his real contributions to our stage,
the flesh and blood and nerves of the gentlemen and gentlewomen next door." These living gentle-
men and gentlewomen are to be found chiefly, not in the historical plays or in the farces which Fitch
produced in considerable numbers, but in those of his plays in which he attempted seriously "to reflect
our own life of the present." The Girl with the Green Eyes is one of these, and it fairly exhibits Fitch's
skill, mastery of character, and limitations. It is efl^ective on the stage, and is eminently readable,
but its theme of jealousy is one of almost unlimited possibilities, while Fitch's treatment of it can only
be called superficial.
THE GIRL WITH THE GREEN EYES
315
>IIer Bridesmaids.
THE GH^L WITH THE GREEN
EYESi
A PLAY IN FOUR ACTS
THE PERSONS MORE OR LESS CON-
CERNED IN THE PLAY
**Jinny" Austin.
Mr. Tillman \ jr r.
»«■ -r filer rarents.
Mrs. IillmanJ
Geoffrey Tillman. Her Brother.
Susie. Her Cousin.
Miss Ruth Chester
Miss Grace Dane
Miss Belle Westing
Miss Gertrude Wood^
Maggie. Maid at the Tillmans*,
Housemaid. Jt the Tillmans*.
Butler. Jt the Tillmans\
Footman. At the Tillmans\
John Austin.
Mrs. Cullingham.
Peter Cullingham. Her Son.
Mrs. Lopp.
Carrie. Her Daughter.
A French Couple.
A German Couple.
A Guide.
A Driver.
A Group of Tourists.
ACT I
J charming room in the Tillmans* house. "^ The
walls are white woodwork^ framing in old
tapestries of deep foliage design^ with here
and there a flaming flamingo; white furni-
ture with oldj green brocade cushions. The
room is in the purest Louis XVI. The
noon sunlight streams through a window
on the Left. On the opposite side is a door
to the hall. At hack double doors open into
a corridor which leads to the ballroom. At
Left Center are double doors to the front hall.
A greaty luxurious sofa is at the lefty with
1 Copyrighted by Messrs. Little, Brown, and Com-
pany and reprinted with their permission. Fitch
thought of writing this play at least as early as 1894,
and from that time considered the theme at frequent
intervals and kept making tentative plans for the
project. It was first performed on Christmas night,
1902, with Clara Bloodgood (who later committed sui-
cide while on tour with another of Fitch's plays) taking
the part of "Jinny" Austin. When the play was pub-
lished it was dedicated to Miss Bloodgood.
« In New York.
chairs sociably near it, and on the other side
of the room a table has chairs grouped about
it. On floral small table are books and
objets d'art, a?id everywhere there is a pro-
fusion of white roses and maidenhair fern.
In the stage directions Left and Right mean
Left and Right of actor y as he faces audience.
Three smart-looking Servants are peering
through the crack of the folding doory their
backs to the audience. The prettyy slender
Maid is on a chair. The elderly Butler
dignifiedly stands on the floor. The plump,
overfed little Housemaid is kneeling so as
to see beneath the head of the Butler.
Housemaid. [Gasping.]^ Oh, ain't it a
beautiful sight!
Butler. [Pompously.] Not to me who 'ave
seen a Lord married in Hengland.
Maggie. Oh, you make me sick, Mr.
Potts, always talking of your English Aristo-
cracy! I'm sure there never was no prettier
wedding than this. Nor as pretty a bride as
Miss Jinny.
Butler. [Correcting her.] Mrs. Haustin!
Housemaid. She looks for all the world
like one of them frosted angels on a Christ-
mas card. My, I wish I could 'a' seen her
go up the aisle with the organ going for all it
was worth!
Maggie. It was a beautiful sight!
Butler. A good many 'appens to be
'aving the sense to be going now.
Housemaid. Could you hear Miss Jinny
say "I do," and make them other remarks?
Maggie. Yes, plain, though her voice was
trembly like. But Mr. Austin he almost
shouted!
[Laughing nervously in excitement.
Butler. 'E's glad to get 'er!
Maggie. And her him!
Housemaid. Yes, that's what I likes
about it. Did any one cry.**
Maggie. Mrs. Tillman. Lots of people
are going now.
Housemaid. What elegant clothes! Oh,
gosh!
Butler. [Superciliously.] Mrs. Culling-
ham don't seem in no 'urry; she's a common
lot!
» The square brackets are in all cases the author's.
3i6
ClA'DK I- ITCH
MAdCJiR. 1 don't care, she's rich and
Miss Jinny likes her; she just throws money
around to any poor person or church or
hospital that wants it, or dnnt! So she can't
be so very common neither, Mr. Potts!
HousF.MAiD. Say, I catch on to some-
thing! \'oung Mr. Tillman's sweet on that
there tall bridesmaid.
Maggie. [Sharply.] Who.?
liuTLHR. Miss Chester. I've seen there
was something goin' hon between them
whenever she's dined or lunched 'ere.
Maggie, [^ingry.] 'Tain't true!
Butler. I'll bet my month's wages.
Maggie. I don't believe you!
Butler. Why, what's it to youy please?
Maggie. [Saving herself.] Nothing —
Housemaid. Well, I guess it's truth
enough. That's the second time I've seen
him squeeze her hand when no one wasn't
lookin'.
Maggie. Here, change places with me!
[Getting down jrom her chair.] If you was a
gentleman, Mr. Potts, you'd have given me
your place! [Witheringly.
Butler. If I was a gentleman, miss, I
wouldn't be here; Vd be on the other side
of the door. [He moves the chairs away.
Maggie. [To Housemaid.] Honest, you
saw something between them.''
Housemaid. Who.''
Maggie. Him and her? Mr. Geoffrey
and Miss Chester —
Housemaid. Cheese it! they*re coming
this way!
[She and the Maid and the Butler vanish
through the door Right.
[Geoffrey and Ruth enter through the
double doors quickly at back. Geoffrey
is a young good-looking man, but with a
weak face. He is of course very smartly
dressed. Ruth is a very serenely beauti-
ful girl, "-ather noble in type, but uncon-
scious and unpretending in manner.
They close the doors quickly behind them.
Geoffrey. We'll not be interrupted here,
and I must have a few^ words with you before
you go.
[He follows her to the sofa where she sits, and
leans over it, with his arm about her
shoulder.
Ruth. Oh, Geof, — Geof, why weren't we
married like this.''
Geoffrey. It couldn't be helped, darling!
Ruth. It isn't tlic big wedding I miss,
oil, no, it's only it seemed sweeter in a church.
\\ hy did we have to steal off to Brooklyn,
to that poor, strange little preacher in his
stuffy back parlor, and behave as if we were
doing something of which we were ashamed.''
CiiiOFFREY. You love me, I love you, —
isn't that the chief thing, dearest.''
Ruth. But how much longer must we
keep it secret?
Geoffrey. Till I can straighten my
affairs out. I can't explain it all to you;
there are terrible debts, — one more than
all the others, — a debt I made when I was
in college.
Ruth. If I could only help you! I have a
little money.
Geoffrey. No, I love you too much;
besides, this debt isn't money, and I hope
to get rid of it somehow before long.
Ruth. Forgive me for worrying you. It
is only that every one is so happy at this
wedding except me, — dear Jinny brimming
over with joy, as I would be, — and it's made
me feel — a little —
Geoffrey. [Comes around the sofa a7id sits
beside he*-.] I know, dear, and it's made me
feel what a brute I am! Oh, if you knew
how I hate m3^self for all I've done, and for
the pain and trouble I cause you now!
[Maggie, her sharp features set tense,
appears in the doorway on the left behind
the curtains and listens.
Ruth. Never mind, we won't think of
that any more.
Geoffrey. I can never throw it off, not
for a minute! I'm a worthless fellow and
how can you love me —
I Ruth. [Interrupting him.] I do! You are
worth everything to me, and you will be
worth much to the world yet!
Geoffrey. I love you, Ruth — that's the
one claim I can make to deserve you. But
it's helped me to give up all the beastly
pleasures I used to indulge in!
Ruth. [Softly.] Geof!
Geoffrey. Which I used to think the
only things w^orth living for, and which
now, thanks to you, I loathe, — every one
of them.
Ruth. I'm so glad! I've been some
help, then.
Geoffrey. If I'd only got you earlier,
I'd have been a different man, Ruth!
THE GIRL WITH TIIK GRKEN EYES
317
Ruth. [Smilini^ and taking his nervous
hand in hers.] Then I mightn't have fallen
in love with you if you were a different man!
Geoffri£y. Dear girl! Anyway, this is
the good news that I want to tell you — I
hope now to have things settled in a couple
of weeks.
Ruth. [In glad relief.] Geoffrey!
Geoffrey. But — I mayn't be successful;
it might be, Ruth — it might be, we would
have to wait — for years —
Ruth. [Quietly.] I don't think I could
bear that! It's not easy for me to lie and
deceive as I've had to the last few months;
I don't think I could keep it up.
[Peter Cullingham enters suddenly^ from
the ballroom, a -pale young man, but, un-
like Geoffrey, hard and virile.
Peter. Oh, here you are! I say, are you
two spoony.? Just the way / feel! [Laugh-
ing.] I caught and hugged old Mrs. Parmby
just now! I think it's sort of in the air at
weddings, don't you.''
Geoffrey. [Rising.] I'm surprised to see
you've left the refreshment table, Peter.
Peter. They sent me to find Miss Ches-
ter— they're going to cut the bridesmaid's
cake, and if you two really are spoony. Miss
Chester, you'd better not miss it — you might
get the ring!
[They laugh as Peter takes out a bottle from
which he takes a round, black tablet which
he puts in his mouth.
Ruth. [Also rising.] I'd better go.
[Peter is making frantic efforts to swallozu
the tablet.
Geoffrey. [Noticing him.] What's the
matter with you?
Peter. O dear! I've eaten so many ices
and fancy cakes, I've got awful indigestion,
and I'm trying to swallow a charcoal tablet.
Ruth. Come with me and get a glass of
water.
Peter. No, it's very bad to drink water
with your meals; but I'll get a piece of
bridesmaid's cake — that'll push it down!
[Peter and Ruth go out through the double
doors.
[The moment they are out of the room,
Maggie comes from behind the curtain
and goes straight up to Geoffrey. He
looks astonished and frightened.
Geoffrey. What do you want.^* Have
you been listening.''
Maggie. So that's it, is it? You want to
marry her when you can get rid of me.
Geoffrey. [IVith relief.] What do you
mean ?
Maggie. Oh, I may not have heard every-
thing, but I heard and saw enough to catch
on that you're in love with Miss Chester.
Geoffrey. Well?
Maggie. Well, you won't marry her —
I'll never set you free.
Geoffrey. Sh!
[Looking about and closing the doors.
Maggie. Oh, they're all in the dining
room.
Geoffrey. [Angry.] What do you want,
anyway?
Maggie. [She pleads a little.] When I
came here to your house and got a position,
it was because I loved you, if you had treated
me bad, and I hoped by seeing you again,
and being near you, you might come back
to me and everything be made straight!
Geoffrey. Never! Never! It's impossi-
ble.
Maggie. [Angry again.] Oh, is it! Well,
the dirty little money you give me now only
holds my tongue quiet so long's you behave
yourself and don't run after any other girls!
But the minute you try to throw me down,
I'll come out with the whole story.
Geoffrey. I was drunk when I married
you!
Maggie. More shame to you!
Geoffrey. You're right. But I was only
twenty — and you — led me on —
Maggie. [Interrupting him.] Me! led
you on! me, as decent and nice a girl as thete
was in New Haven if I do do housework,
and that's my wedding ring and you put it
there, and mother's got the certificate locked
up good and safe in her box with my dead
baby sister's hair and the silver plate off
my father's coffin!
Geoffrey. We mustn't talk here any
more !
Maggie. You look out! If I wasn't so
fond of your sister Miss Jinny, and if the
old people weren't so good to me, I'd just
show you right up here — nozu!
Geoffrey. I'll buy you off if I can't
divorce you!
Maggie. You! Poof!
[Girls' voices are heard from the ballroom.
Geoffrey. Look out — some one's coming!
3iS
CLYDE FITCH
Maggik. [Cioiii^.] You haven't got a red
cent; my check's always one o( your father's!
[She goes out Right.
Gkoffrey. Good God! what am I going
to do — shoot myself, if I don't get out of
this soon — I must get some air!
[He goes out Left.
[Jinny opens the double doors, looks ?'«, a7id
then enters. She is an adorable little
human being, pretty, high-strung, letn-
peramental, full of certain feminine
fascination that defies analysis, which is
partly due to the few faults she possesses.
She is, of course, dressed in the con-
ventional wedding-dress, a tulle veil
thrown over her face.
Jinny. Not a soul! Come on!
[She is followed in by the four Brides-
maids— nice girls every one of them — and
also, very slyly, by Susie, a very modern
spoiled child, who sits unobserved out of
the way at the back.
Now, my dears, I wish to say good-by all
by ourselves so I can make you a little
speech! [All laugh gently.] In the first place
I want to tell you that there's nothing like
marriage! And you must every one of you
try it! Really, I was never so happy in my
life!
Grace. Must we stand, or may we sit
down ?
Jinny. Oh, stand; it won't be long and
you'll only crush your lovely frocks. In fact,
I advise you not to lose any time sitting down
again until you've got the happy day fixed!
Ruth. You know. Jinny darling, that
there is no one so glad for your happiness as
your four bridesmaids are — isn't that so,
girls .'*
All. Yes!
[And they all together embrace Jinny, saying
"Dear old Jinny," "Darling Jinny,"
"We'll miss you dreadfully," etc., ad lib.,
till they get tearful.
Jinny. Good gracious, girls, we mustn't
cry. I'll get red eyes, and Jack '11 think what
an awful difference just the marriage service
makes in a woman.
[The doors at the back open, and Austin
appears in the doorway.
[Austin is a typical New Yorker in ap-
pearance, thirty-two years old, good-
looking, manly, self-poised, and some-
what phlegmatic in temperament.
Austin. Hello! May a mere man come
in to this delectable tea party.?
Jinny. No, Jack! But wait — by the door
till I call you!
Austin. [Amused.] Thank you!
[He goes out, closing the door.
Gertrude. We'll miss you so awfully.
Jinny.
Jinny. Just what I say! Get a man to
keep you company, and then you won't
miss any one.
Belle. Yes, but attractive men with lots
of money don't come into the Grand Central
Station by every train!
Jinny. [Putting her arm about her.] You
want too much, my dear Belle! And you
aren't watching the Grand Central Station
either half so much as you are the steamer
docks for a suitable person. Now don't be
angry; you know you want a good big title,
and you've got the money to pay, but, my
dear Belle, it's those ideas of yours that have
kept you single till — twenty-six! — now that
you must confess was nice of me, to take off
three years!
Belle. [Laughing.] Jinny, you're horrid!
Jinny. No, I'm not! You know I'm
really fond of you, or you wouldn't be my
bridesmaid to-day; it's only that I want
your wedding to be as happy as mine — that's
all, and here's a little gift for you to remem-
ber your disagreeable but loving friend by!
[Giving her a small jewelry box.
Belle. Thank you, Jinny! Thank you!
[A little moved.
Grace. Mercy! I hope you're not going
to take each one of us!
Jinny. I am, and come here, you re next!
Grace. I'll swear I don't want to get
married at all!
Jinny. Don't be silly, you icicle! Of
course you don't; you freeze all the men
away, so that you've no idea how nice and
comfy they can be! My advice to you,
Grace darling, — and I love you, or I wouldn't
bother, — is to thaw! [Laughs.] I used to
be awfully jealous of you —
Grace. [Interrupting.] Oh!
Jinny. Yes, I was! You're lots prettier
than I am.
Grace. Jinny!
Jinny. You are! But I got over It be-
cause I soon saw you were so cold, there was
i)o danger of any conflagration near you!
THE GIRL WITH THE GREEN EYES
319
Oh, I've watched your eyes often to see if
any man had Hghted the fires in them yet.
And now I'm determined they shall be
lighted. You're too coldl Thaw, dear, —
not to everybody., — that would be like slushy
weather, but don't keep yourself so con-
tinually so far below zero that you won't
have time to strike — well — say eighty-five in
the shade, when the right bit of masculine
sunshine does come along! Here — with my
best love!
[Giving her a small jewelry box.
[Grace kisses Jinny.
Gertrude. I am the next victim, I believe!
Jinny. All I've got to say to you. Miss, is,
that if you don't decide pretty soon on one
of the half dozen men you are flirting with
disgracefully at present, they'll every one
find you out and you'll have to go in for
widowers.
Gertrude. [Mockingly.] Horrors!
Jinny. Oh, I don't know! I suppose a
widower is sort of broken in and would be
more likely to put up with your caprices!
For the sake of your charm and wit and
true heart underneath it all, you dear old
girl you!
[Giving her a small jewel box.
Gertrude. Thank you. Jinny. I'm only
afraid I will do the wrong thing with you
away! You know you're always my ballast!
Jinny. Nonsense! Female ballast is no
good; masculine ballast is the only kind
that's safe if you want to make life's journey
in a love balloon. [She turns to Ruth
Chester.] Ruth — the trouble with you is,
you're too sad lately, and show such a lack of
interest. I should think you might be in
love, only I haven't been able to find the
man. Anyway, if you aren't in love, you
must pretend an interest in things. Of
course, men's affairs are awfully dull, but
they don't like you to talk about them, so
it's really very easy. All you have to do is
listen, stare them straight in the eyes, think
of whatever you like, and look pleased! It
does flatter them, and they think they are
interesting, and you charming! Wear this,
and think of me! [Giving her a box\ and be
happy! I want you to be happy — and I can
see you aren't!
Ruth. [Kissing her.] Thank you, dear!
Jinny. There, that's all! — except — when
I come home from abroad in October, if every
one of you aren't engaged to be married, I'll
wash my hands of you — [They all laugh.
[Susie, sliding off her chair at back, comes
forward.
Susie. Now, it's my turn! Y.ou can't
chuck me!
Jinny. [Trying not to laugh.] Susie! where
did you come from and what do you mean.?
Susie. Oh, you give me a pain! — I went
up the aisle with you to-day, too — what's
the matter with telling me how to get
married!
Jinny. I'll tell you this, your language is
dreadful; where do you get all the boy's
slang.? You don't talk like a lady.
Susie. I'm not a lady. I'm a little girl!
Jinny. You talk much more like a common
boy. <
Susie. Well, I'd rather he a hoy!
Jinny. Susie, I shall tell Aunt Laura her
daughter needs looking after.
Susie. Oh, very well, cousin Jinny. If
you're going to make trouble, why, forget it!
[Turns and goes out haughtily. Right.
Jinny. [Going to the double doors, calls.]
Now you can come in. Jack. [Austin enters.
Austin. And now I've only time to say
good-by. All your guests have gone except
the Cullinghams, who are upstairs with your
mother, looking at the presents.
Gertrude. Come! All hands around him!
[The five Girls join hands, with Austin in
the center.
Belle. We don't care if every one else
has gone or not, we^re here yet!
Austin. So I see! But I am ordered by
my father-in-law — ahem! [all laugh] — to go
to my room, or he thinks there will be danger
of our losing our train.
All the Bridesmaids. [Ad lib.] Where are
you going? Where are you going? We
won't let you out till you tell us.
Austin. I daren't — I'm afraid of my wife!
Jinny. Bravo, Jack!
Grace. Very well, then, we'll let you out,
on one condition, that you kiss us all in turn.
[The Girls laugh.
Jinny. No! No! [Breaking azuay.] He
shan't do any such thing!
[They all laugh and break up the ring.
Gertrude. Dear me, isn't she jealous!
Belle. Yes, it is evidently time we all
went! Good-by, Jinny! [Kissing her.] A
happy journey to Washington!
320
CLYDE FITCU
Jinny. No, it isn't!
[(^,nirral good-hys. Jinny begins ivith
Ruth at one end^ «;/^ Austin at the other;
he says good-hy and shakes hands with
each' girl.
Ci'inRUDn. [Kissing Jinny.] Good-by, and
a pleasant trip to Niagara Falls!
Jinny. Not a bit!
Grace. [Kissing Jinny.] Good-by, I be-
lieve it's Boston or Chicago!
Jinny. Neither!
Ruth. Good-by, dea-r, and all the happi-
ness in the world.
[Kisses her.
Jinny. Thank you.
[She tiir?is and goes with the other three girls
to the double doors at back, where they are
heard talking.
Ruth. Mr. Austin.?
Austin. Yes.^ [Joining her.
Ruth [Embarrassed.] You like your new
brother, dont you?
Austin. Geoff? most certainly I do, and
Jinny adores him.
Ruth. I know, then, you'll be a good friend
to him if he needs one.
Austin. Surely I will.
Ruth. I think he does need one.
Austin. Really —
[The Girls are passing out through the
doors.
Belle. Come alonj:, Ruth.
[They pass out and Jinny stands in the
doorway talking to them till they are out
of hearing.
Ruth. Sh! please don't tell any one, not
even Jinny, what Tve said! I may be be-
traying something Tve no right to do, and
don't tell him Tve spoken to you.
Austin. All right!
[Jinny turns around in the doorway.
Ruth. Thank you — and good-by.
[Shaking his hand again.
[Jinny notices that they shake hands twice.
A queer little look comes into her face.
Austin. Good-by.
Ruth. Have they gone? — Oh! [Hurrying
past Jinny.] Good-by, dear.
[She goes out through the double doors.
Jinny. [In a curious little voice.] Good-
by . . .
[She comes slowly down the room tozvard
Austin, and smiles at hiyn quizzically.] What
were you two saying?
Austin. Good-by!
Jinny. I^ut you'd said it once to her
already! Why did you have to say good-by
twice to Ruth? Once was enough for all the
other girls!
Austin. [Banteringly.] The first time / said
good-hy to hery and the second time she said
good-by to me!
Jinny. Do you know what I believe —
Ruth Chester's ifi love with you!
Austin. Oh, darling!
[Laughs.
Jinny. Yes, that explains the whole
thing. No wonder she was triste to-day.
Austin. [Laughing.] Jinny, sweetheart,
don't get such an absurd notion into your
head.
Jinny. [Looks straight at him a moment,
then speaks tenderly.] No — no — I know it's
not your fault. There was no other woman
in this house for you to-day but w
because he's yours!
THE GIRL WITH THK GREEN EYES
32s
Jinny. [Presses his hand and looks up at
him lovingly and gratefully.] Thank you.
Wait here just a minute; I know he won't
come back to say good-by. He's gone up to
his room, I'm sure — I'll just surprise him
with a hug and my hands over his eyes like
we used to do years ago.
[She starts to go out Right, and meets Mr.
and Mrs. Tillman, who enter.
Tillman. The carriage is here!
Jinny. I won't be a second —
[She goes out Right.
Mrs. Tillman. Where has she gone.-*
Austin. Up to her brother.
Mrs. Tillman. Her father's been locked
up in his study for three hours — he says think-
ing, but to me his eyes look very suspicious!
[Taking her husband's arm affectionately.
Tillman. [Clears his throat.] Nonsense!
Mrs. Tillman. Well, how many cigars did
you smoke?
Tillman. Eight.
Mrs. Tillman. The amount of emotion
that a man can soak out of himself with
tobacco is wonderful! He uses it just like a
sponge!
Tillman. Jack, the first thing I asked
about you when I heard that — er — that
things were getting this way was, does he
smoke .'' A man who smokes has always that
outlet. If things go wrong — go out and
smoke a cigar, and when the cigar's finished.,
ten to one everything's got right, somehow!
If you lose your temper, don't speak! — a
cigar, and when it's finished, then speak!
You'll find the temper all gone up in the
smoke! A woman's happiness is safest with
a man who smokes. [He clears his throaty
which is filling.] God bless you. Jack, it is a
wrench; our only girl, you know. She's
been a great joy — ahem!
[He quickly gets out a cigar.
Mrs. Tillman. [Stopping him from smok-
ing.] No, no, dear, they're going now!
Tillman. Well, the best I can say is, I
wish you as happy a married life as her
mother and I have had.
Mrs. Tillman. Thirty-five dear years!
But now, George, let me say a word — you
always have monopolized our new son —
he'll be much fonder of you than me!
Tillman. Old lady! — Jealous! —
Mrs. Tillman. Turn about is fair play —
you're jealous still of Jinny and me. [She
pauses a moment.] I think we'd better tell
him!
Tillman. All right. The only rifts in our
lute, Jack, have been little threads or
jealousy that have snapped sometimes!
Mrs. 1 illman. Nothing ever serious — of
course, hut it's a fault that Jinny shares with
us, and the only fault we've ever been able to
find.
Tillman. We called her for years the girl
with the green eyes. She goes it pretty strong
sometimes!
Austin. Oh, that's all right — I shall like
it!
Mrs. Tillman. You'll always bear with
her, won't you, if she should ever get jealous
of you ,''
Austin. Of me? I'll never give her the
chance.
Mrs. Tillman. It isn't a question of
chance; you just can't help it sometimes, can
you, George.''
Tillman. No, you can't.
Mrs. Tillman. And so —
Austin. Don't worry! Your daughter's
safe with me. I'm not the jealous sort my-
self and I love Jinny so completely, so
calmly, and yet with my heart, and soul,
and mind, and body, she'll never have a
chance even to try to be jealous of me!
Tillman. Sh!
[Jinny enters Right.
Jinny. I found poor Maggie up in my
room crying! She says she can't bear to
have me go away. I think she's sorry now
she wouldn't come with me as maid — and
I said good-by to cook and she sniffed!
[Austin looks at his watch.
Austin. Oh! we ought to go!
Mrs. Tillman. Good-by, darling!
[Kissing Jinny and embracing her a long
time, while Austin arid Tillman shake
hands warmly and say good-by.
Jinny. [Going to her father.] Good-by,
father. Dear old father!
[IVith happy emotion.
[Austin meanwhile is shaking hands with
Mrs. Tillman.
Jinny. [Returns to her mother.] Darling —
oh, how good you've always been to me! Oh,
mummy darling, I shall miss you! You'll
send me a letter to-morrow, won't you, or a
telegram.'' Send a telegram — you've got
the address!
526
CLYDE FITCH
Mrs. Tillman, [ffitli tears in her eyes.]
Yes, it's written down!
Jinny. You can tell father, Init no one
else!
\ lings and kisses her mother.
Tillman. Come, Susan! Tiiey'U lose
their train!
[Jinny again embraces her father.
All. Good-by! (Jood-by!
[Jinny, starting to go with Austin, suddenly
leaves him and runs back again to her
mother and throzvs herself in her arms.
They embrace^ in tears.
Jinny. Good-by, mother!
Mrs. Tillman. Good-by, my darling!
Tillman. Come, come! they'll lose their
train!
[Jinny runs to Austin, ayid zvith his arms
about her, they hurry to the door Left.
They go through the doors at back to
window in the corridor. Jinny stops at
the door and she and Austin face each
other a moment.
Jinny. [Looking up at him.] Oh, Jack!
[She throws her arms about his neck and
buries her face on his shoulder.
Austin. Jinny, Jinny dear, you're not
sorry .'' ,
Jinny. [Slowly raises her head and looks at
him, smiling through her tears, and speaks in a
voice full of tears and little sobs.] Sorry.'' Oh,
no! Oh, no! It hurts me to leave them, but
I never was so happy in my life!
[He kisses her and they hurry out, with his
arm about her.
Mrs. Tillman. [In the corridor, lifts the
window.] I hear the door —
Tillman. There they are!
[Susie rushes across the stage with a bowl of
rice in her arms and goes out Left.
[Mr. and Mrs. Tillman wave and say
"Good-by!" "Good-by!" "Good-by!"
They close the window in silence. The
sound is heard as the window frame
reaches the bottom. They turn and come
slowly forward, Tillman wiping his eyes
and Mrs. Tillman biting her lips to keep
the tears back. They come into the front
room and stop, and for a second they look
around the empty room. Tillman puts
his hand in his pocket and takes out his
cigar case. Mrs. Tillman, turning, sees
him; she goes to him swiftly and touches
his arm, looking up at him through her
tears. He turns to her and slowly takes her
in his arms and holds her there close and
kisses her tenderly on the cheek.
[Susie enters Left, with e?npty bowl, sobbing
aloud, as
THE CURTAIN FALLS
ACT II
{Two months later)
The Vatican, Rome; the Tribune of the Apollo
Belvedere; a semicircular room with dark
red walls; in the center is the large statue of
Apollo. There are doorways at Right and
Left. There is a bench on the right side of
the room. A single Lady Tourist enters
Right, takes a hasty glance, yawns, and look-
ing down at her Baedeker, goes out Left. A
Papal Guard is seen passing outside in the
court. A Frenchman and his Wife {with
Baedekers) are seen approaching; they are
heard talking volubly. They enter Left.
Both. Ah ! —
[They stand a moment in silent admiration.
He. [Reading from Baedeker.] Apollo Bel-
vedere. [He looks up.] C'est superb!
She. [Beaming with admiration.] Magni-
fique! Voila un homme!
He. Quelle grace!
She. Quelle force!
[Both talk at once in great admiration and in-
tense excitement for a few moments. Then
he suddenly drops into his ordinary tone
and manner.
He. Allons, allons nous!
She. [In the same tone.] Oui, j*ai faim!
[They go out Right.
[Jinny and Austin enter Left, he looking
over his shoulder. They stand a moment
just inside the doorway.
Jinny. What are you looking back so
much for, Jackie?
Austin. I thought I saw some one I
know.
Jinny. Who.''
Austin. I didn't know who; it just
seemed to be a familiar back.
Jinny. [Playfully.] Oh, come! I think
the present works of art and your loving wife
are quite enough for you to look at without
hunting around for familiar backs!
Austin. And Baedeker! [Reading from
Baedeker about the Apollo.] Apollo Belvedere,
THE GIRL WITH THE GREEN EYES
327
found at the end of the fifteenth century,
probably in a Roman villa —
Jinny. Of course, Apollo!
Austin. Great, isn't it?
Jinny. Stunning! [She turns and looks at
hiniy smiling quizzically.] Still — but I sup-
pose I'm prejudiced!
Austin. [Obtuse.] Still what.?
Jinny. You dear old stupid! You know,
Jack, you're deeply 2inA fundamentally clever
and brilliant, but you're not quite — bright —
not quick!
[Laughing.
Austin. Don't you think having one in
the family quick as chain lightning is enough?
What have I missed this time, Jinny? You
don't mean you've found a family likeness
in the statue over there? I don't want to be
unappreciative, but it doesn't suggest your
father to me in the least, — nor even Geoffrey.
Jinny. Stupid!! Of course it doesn't sug-
gest anybody to me — I was only thinking I
sympathized with Mrs. Perkins of Boston, —
don't you know the old story about her?
Austin. No, what was it?
Jinny. [After a quick look around to see that
they are alone.] Well — Mrs. Perkins from
Boston was personally conducted here once
and shown this very statue, and she looked
at it for a few moments, and then turned
around and said, "Yes, it's all right, but give
me Perkins!'^
Austin. Jinny!
; [Laughing.
Jinny. Are you shocked? Come, I'm
tired; let's sit down here and read my
letters — there's one from Geof.
[They sit on the bench at Rights and Jinny
takes out a letter from Geoffrey.
Austin. I'll read ahead in Baedeker and
you tell me if there's any news. [He opens the
Baedeker and readsy and she opens and reads
the letter.] Where is Geof's letter from?
Jinny. New York, of course; where else
would it be?
Austin. I had an idea he was going away.
Jinny. Geof! Where?
Austin. West, a good way somewhere.
Jinny. But why would he go West?
Austin. Oh, he had some business, I be-
lieve; I remember thinking it was a good
idea when he told me. It was the day we
were married — I was waiting for you to come
downstairs.
Jinny. I think it's very funny Geof never
said anything about it to me.
Austin. My dear, what time had you?
You were getting married! !
Jinny. I zuas! Thank heaven! I'm so
happy y Jack!
[Snuggling up to him on the bench.
Austin. [Steals a little, quick hug with his
arm about her waist.] Bless you, darling, I
don't think there was ever a man as happy
as I am!
[They start apart quickly as a German
Couple enter Right, with a Young
Daughter, who is munching a cake, and
hanging, a tired and unwilling victim, to
her mother s hand.
W^OMAN. Ach! schon! sehr schon! !
Man. Grosses, nicht?
Woman. Yah!
[They stand admiring.
Austin. By the way, when you answer
your brother's letter, I wish you'd say I
seemed surprised he was still in New York.
Jinny. [Reading.] Um — um —
Man. [Wiping his warm brow.] Wunder-
haum!
Woman. Yah!!
[They go out Left, talking.
Jinny. [Looking up from her letter.] Oh!
what do you think?
Austin. That you're the sweetest woman
in the world.
Jinny. No, darling, I mean who do you
think Geoffrey says is over here and in Italy?
Austin. I haven't the most remote idea!
So far as Vve been able to observe there has
been absolutely no one in Italy but you and
me.
Jinny. If you keep on talking like that,
I shall kiss you!
Austin. What! before the tall, white
gentleman? [Motioning to Apollo.] I am
dumb.
Jinny. [Very lovingly.] Silly! Well! —
Mrs. Cullingham and Peter are over here
and have brought Ruth Chester!
Austin. [Speaking without thinking.]
Then it was her back.
Jinny. [With the smallest sharpening of the
look in her eye.] When ?
Austin. That I saw just now.
Jinny. [With the tiniest suggestion of a
strain in her voice.] You said you didn't
know whom it reminded you of.
u^
CLYDF FITCH
Austin, ^'es, I know, I didn't (|uite.
Jinny. But if you thoujiht it was Ruth
Chester, why not have said so.''
Austin. No reason, dear, I simply didn't
think.
Jinny. Well — [Sententiously.] — next time
—think/
Austin. What else does GeofFrey say.''
Jinny. Oh, nothing. The heat for two
days was frightful — already they miss me
more than he can say — r, ,
» T,,, , [interrupted.
Austin. I 11 bet. ^ ^
Jinny. Father smoked nineteen cigars a
day the first week I was gone.
Austin. / haven't had to smoke any!
Jinny. Mercy! don't boast! — and he
thinks they will all soon go to Long Island
for the summer.
Austin. Doesn't he say a word nor a hint
at his going West.''
Jinny. No, he says he may go to Newport
for August, and that's all.
[Putting azvay letter^ and getting out others,
Austin. Going to read all those?
Jinny. If you don't mind, while I rest.
Do you mind.^
Austin. Of course not, but I think while
you're reading I'll just take a little turn and
see if I can't come across the Cullinghams.
[Rising.
Jinny. [After the merest second's pause,
and lookijig seriously at him.] Why don't
you.''
Austin. I'll bring them here if I find
them —
[He goes out Right.
[Jinny looks up zvhere he went off and gazes,
motionless, for a few moments. Then she
throws of the mood and opens a letter.
[Two tired Americans enter Right, a girl and
her mother, Mrs. Lopp and Carrie.
Mrs. Lopp. What's this, Carrie?
Carrie. [Looking in her Baedeker.] I
don't know; I've sort of lost my place,
somehow!
Mrs. Lopp. Well, we must be in Room
No. 3 or 4 — ain't we?
Carrie. [Reads out.] The big statue at
the end of Room No. 3 is Diana the Huntress.
Mrs. Lopp. This must be it, then, —
Diana! Strong-looking woman, ain't she?
Carrie. Yes, very nice. You know she
was the goddess who wouldn't let the men
see her bathe.
Mrs. Lopp. Mercy, Carrie! and did all
the other goddesses? I don't think much of
their habits. I suppose this is the same
person those Italians sell on the streets at
home, and call the Bather.
[Jinny is secretly very much amused, finally
she speaks.
Jinny. Excuse me, but you are in one of
the cabinets — and this is the Apollo Belve-
dere.
Mrs. Lopp. Oh, thank you very much. I
guess we've got mixed up with the rooms, —
seems as if there's so many.
Carrie. [Triumphantly.] There! I thought
it was a man all the time!
Mrs. Lopp. Well, what with so many of
the statues only being piecemeal, as it were,
and so many of the men having kinder
women's hair I declare it seems as if I don't
know the ladies from the gentlemen half the
time.
Carrie. Did the rest of us go through
here?
Jinny. I beg your pardon?
Carrie. Thirty-four people with a gassy
guide? We got so tired hearing him talk
that we jes' sneaked off by ourselves, and
now we're a little scared about getting home;
we belong to the Cook's Gentlemen and
Ladies.
Jinny. Oh, no, the others haven't passed
through here; probably they have gone to
see the pictures; you'd better go back and
keep asking the attendants the way to the
pictures till you get there.
Mrs. Lopp. [fVith rather subdued voice.]
Thank you! W^e've come to do Europe and
the Holy Land in five weeks for ^400 — but
I don't know, seems as if I'm getting awful
tired — after jes' sevin days.
Carrie. [Affectionately.] Now, mommer,
don't give up; it's because you haven't got
over being seasick yet; that's all!
Jinny. [Helplessly.] Oh, yes, you'll find
It much less tiring in a few days, I'm sure.
Mrs. Lopp. Still Rome does seem a
powerful way from home! How'U we ask
for the pictures?
Carrie. Why, mommer! ''Tableaux!"
"Tableaux!" I should think you'd 'a*
learned that from our church entertain-
ments! Good-by; thank you ever so much.
Mrs. Lopp. You haven't lost your party^
too, have you?
THE GIRL WITH THE GREEN EYES
329
lopc not
He
Jinny. [Smiling.] I
promised to come back! !
Mrs. Lopp. Oh! pleased to have met
you — Good-by !
[ They start off Left.
Jinny. No, not that way — back the way
you came.
Mrs. Lopp. Oh, thank you!
[She drops her black silk bag; out of it drop
cr acker Sy an account book, a thimbUy a
thread- and- nee die case^ a bottle of pepsin
tablets, etc. They all stoop to pick the
collection up. Jinny helping.
Jinny. [Handing.] I'm sure you'll want
these!
Mrs. Lopp. Yes, indeed; don't you find
them coupon meals very dissatisfactory?
Carrie. Thank you ever so much again.
Come on, mommer!
[Mrs. Lopp and Carrie go out Left.
[Jinny looks at her watch and goes back to
her letter.
[Mrs. Cullingham enters Left
Mrs. Cullingham. [Screams.] Jinny!
Jinny. [Jumps up.] Mrs. Cullingham!
[They embrace.] Did Jack find you?
Mrs. Cullingham. No, we haven't seen
him! Ruth and Peter are dawdling along,
each on their own; I like to shoot through a
gallery. There's no use spending so much
time; when it's over you've mixed every-
thing all up just the same!
Jinny. [Laughing.] Well, I've this minute
read a letter from Geoffrey saying you were
over here. And Jack, who thought he got a
glimpse of you a little while ago, went
straight off to try and find you.
Mrs. Cullingham. What fun it is to see
you — and how happy you look!
Jinny. I couldn't look as happy as I feel!
Mrs. Cullingham. [Glancing at the statue.]
Who's your friend? Nice gent, isn't he?
[Laughing.
Jinny. Mr. Apollo! Would you like to
meet him?
Mrs. Cullingham. [Hesitates.] Er — no — I
don't think! You must draw the line some-
where! He wouldn't do a thing to Corbett,
would he?
Jinny. Who was Corbett?
Mrs. Cullingham. He was a prize
fighter, and is — but that's another story —
Do you mean to say you've never heard of
him?
Jinny. Oh, the name sounds familiar.
Hut this, you know, is Apollo.
Mrs. Cullingham. No, I don't know;
was he a champion?
Jinny. No, he was a Greek god!
Mrs. Cullingham. Oh, was he? Well,
I wouldn't have cared about being in the
tailoring business in those days, would you?
Let's sit down. [They sit on bench Right.]
Of course you know we wouldn't accept a
thing like that in Peoria, where I come from,
as a gift! No, indeed! If the King of Italy
sent it over to our Mayor, he'd return it
C.O.D.
Jinny. Sounds like Boston and the Mac-
monnies Bacchante!
Mrs. Cullingham. Oh, my dear, worse
than that! It reminds me of a man at home
who kept an underclothing store in our
principal street and had a plaster cast of
this gent's brother, I should think, in his
window to show a suit of Jaegers on, — you
know, a "combination"! And our Town
Committee of Thirteen for the moral im-
provement of Peoria made the man take it
out of his window and hang the suit up
empty!
Jinny. Poor man!
Mrs. Cullingham. You ought to see our
Park! — you know we've got a perfectly
beautiful park, — and all the me7i statues
wear Prince Alberts, and stand like this —
[She poses with lifted arm at right angle to
body.] — as if they were saying, "This way
out" or "To the monkey cage and zoo."
Jinny. [Laughing.] But the women
statues?
Mrs. Cullingham. My dear! They only
have heads and hands; all the rest's just
clumps of drapery — we only have "Ameri-
cans" and "Libertys," anyway. They apply
the Chinese emigration lavv to all Venuses
and sich ladies!
[They both laugh.
Jinny. Where did you say Peter and
Ruth were?
Mrs. Cullingham. Well, I left Peter —
who isn't at all well; I hoped this trip would
help his indigestion, but it seems to have
made it worse! — I left him — er — in a room
with a lot of broken-up Venuses — I thought
it was all right; he was eating candy,
and there wasn't a whole woman among
'em!
3.^o
CUDE FITCH
Jinny. [Slight strain in her voice.] How did
you happen to brinjj over Ruth Chester?
Mrs. Cullincjham. Well, you know I
always liked her. She never snubbed nic in
her life — I don't think any one you've intro-
duced me to has been quite so nice to Peter
and me as Mrs. Chester and her daughter.
Jinny. O they are real people!
Mrs. Cullinc.ham. Ruth is terribly de-
pressed over something. She's thin as a rail
and the family are worried. She says there's
nothing worrying her, and the doctors can't
find anything the matter with her, — so Mrs.
Chester asked me if I wouldn't take her
abroad. They thought the voyage and
change might do her good, and I seem to have
a more cheery influence over her than most
people. So here we are! [As Peter enters
Lefty eating.] Here's Peter! How do you
think the darling looks .f*
Peter. How do you do, Mrs. Austin.''
Jinny. How do you do, Peter.'' [They
shake hands.] I'm sorry to hear you are
seedy, but you eat too many sweet things.
Peter. I'm not eating candy; it's soda
mmts! [Shozving a small bottle.] I am bad
to-day, mother.
Mrs. Cullingham. If you don't get
better, we'll go to Carlsbad.
Jinny. How do you like Rome, Peter.^
Peter. Oh, I don't know — too much
Boston and not enough Chicago to make it a
real lively town.
Jinny. [Laughing.] I think I'll go look
for Jack and tell him you've turned up.
Mrs. Cullingham. Perhaps he's found
Ruth.
Jinny. [JVith a change in her voice.] Yes,
perhaps.
[She goes out Right.
Peter. [Going to the doorzvay Right, calls
after her.] Ruth's in a room on your left,
with rows of men's heads on shelves.
Emperors and things, — but gee, such a job
lot!
[Comes back and looks up at the statue.
Mrs. Cullingham. Isn't it beautiful,
Peter?
Peter. No, it's too big!
Mrs. Cullingham. Still this one isn't
broken!
Peter. That's a comfort! Yes, it has
been mended, too! [Examining.] Oh, yes,
it's only another of these second-hand
statues. Say, you missed one whole one,
the best I've seen yet! A Venus ofl^ in a fine
little room, all mosaics and painted walls, —
that's where I've been.
Mrs. Cullingham. Why, Peter Culling-
ham! Alone? What kind of a Venus?
Peter. Oh, beautiful! I forgot to take
my medicine!
Mrs. Cullingham. Was she — er — dressed,
darling?
Peter. We — you know — she had been,
but she'd sort of pushed it a good way off!
Mrs. Cullingham. [IVith a sigh.] You
know we ought to admire these things, Peter
darling; that's partly what we've come to
Europe for!
Peter. O pshaw! here comes a gang of
tourists. Come on, let's skip!
Mrs. Cullingham. But Ruth and Mrs.
Austin?
Peter. We didn't agree to wait, and we
can all meet at our hotel.
[A crowd of Tourists, led by a Guide,
presses and crowds in the doorway. They
drag their tired feet in a listless shuffle
across the room and stand in a somewhat
sheepish and stupid bunch at the statue.
One or two of the younger women nudge
each other and giggle. The Guide stands
a little in advance of them. The Guide
describes the statue, and while he is doing
so Peter and Mrs. Cullingham go
out Right. Most of the Tourists turn
and watch them go instead of looking at
the statue.
Guide. This is the Apollo Belvedere,
discovered at the end of the fifteenth century,
some say in a Roman villa or farm-house
near the Grotter Terratter. Very fine
specimen both as marble and man. This
statyer is calculated to make Sandow et
cetery look like thirty cents. Height seven
feet, weight —
A Man Tourist. How much?
A Girl Tourist. Was he married?
[Titters from the group.
Guide. Give it up! Should judge he was.
The god once held a bow in his left hand and
probably a laurel wreath in his right.
Another Woman Tourist. A what?
Guide. A laurel wreath. You want to
take a good look at this, as it is a very fine
piece. Now come along, please — make haste;
we must finish up this place before feeding!
THE GIRL WITH THE GREEN EYES
331
[Ih leads the zvay out Righty and the
Tourists follozoy shuffling along, without
speaking, Mrs. Lopp and Carrie lag-
ging in the rear.
[Austin enters Left, j allowed by Ruth.
Austin. This is where I left her with
Apollo! [Calls.] Jinny! She seems to have
gone!
[He looks behind the statue and out door.
Right.
Ruth. Probably the Cullinghams, who
were headed in this direction, found her, and
they've all gone back for us; you see I
walked all around the court first without
going into the rooms, so I missed them, but
found you.
Austin. What shall we do? Sit down
here and wait for them to come back, or shall
I go in search.?
Ruth. Oh, no, you might miss them, and
then we'd all be lost! If you left Jinny here,
she's sure to come back to meet you.
[She sits on the bench and Austin stands
behind her.
Austin. I'm sorry to learn you've been
ill. ., . ^
Ruth. Oh! it's nothing.
Austin. Ah, I'm afraid it's a good deal.
Will you forgive me if I say I think I know
what it is!
',.■ • - [She looks up startled.
[After a moment.
You haven't forgotten the day of Jinny's
and my wedding, when you told me Geoffrey
Tillman needed a friend.''
Ruth. I hoped you'd forgotten; I
oughtn't to have told you; I oughtn't to
have!
Austin. Why not.'' I had a talk with
Geoffrey, then, and he told me everything.
Ruth. He did! You are sure.''
Austin. Sure. [He sits beside her.
Ruth. That he and I —
Austin. Love each other. .^.
Ruth. Oh, but that isn't all.
Austin. I know the rest!
Ruth. He told you — about — about —
Austin. The marriage? — Yes?
Ruth. Oh, I'm so glad, so glad! Now I
can speak of it to some one, and some one
who can advise me, and will help us.
Austin. I have already advised him, but
he doesn't seem to be taking my advice; it
has worried me.
Ruth. When I left he was awfully de-
pressed. He said he saw no prospect of
being able to publish our marriage for years,
maybe!
Austin. What marriage?
[In astonishment.
Ruth. Our marriage, in Brooklyn! [She
notices his expression and is alarmed.] You
said he had told you!
Austin. [Recovering himself, and speaking
at first with hesitation.] Yes, but not the
details, not — wait, I'm a little confused.
[Rising and walking a moment.] Let's get it
all quite clear now, that's the only way I can
help you — both; I ought, of course, to have
gone through it all with him, but there really
wasn't time.
Ruth. I can't go on like this much
longer. It's killing me to deceive mother;
I must tell her soon!
Austin. [Quickly, stops walking.] No.
You mustn't, not yet, if I'm going to help
you; you'll obey me, won't you?
Ruth. Yes, if you only will help us!
Austin. You said you and Geoffrey
Tillman were married where?
Ruth. In Brooklyn.
Austin. When?
Ruth. A month before your wedding.
Austin. [7*0 himself.] It's impossible!
[Walking up and down.
Ruth. [Smiling sadly.] Oh, no! I remem-
ber the date only too well.
Austin. I didi^'t mean that.
Ruth. I lied to my mother that day for
the first time — at any rate, since I was a
child — and I've been lying to her ever since.
Austin. [Probing her.] But — but why
were you married so secretly?
Ruth. We couldn't afford to marry and
set up for ourselves. He expected then to
be sent off at once to the Philippines, and —
well he didn't want to leave me behind,
free; I'm afraid he's rather jealous — you
must have found out by now that Jinny is.
They all are! And / didn't want him to go
so far off without my belonging to him
either; I'm that jealous, too! [Smiling.] So —
that's why!
Austin. And this long period of secrecy
since then — do you understand that?
Ruth. Hasn't he explained to you his
debts? You know before he loved me he
was very fast, but since —
13-
CLYDE FITCH
Austin. ^ cs, I know how he gave mi>
every one of his old habits with a great deal
of courage,
Ruth. Nobody knows what it cost him!
How can you help us? (let him soniethini:;
to do to pay off his debts? Or can't you
make him feel even if we do have to go on
living at our different homes for a while, it
is better to publish the fact that we are
married? —
Austin. I shall go back at once to
America if I can persuade Jinny!
Ruth. And I, too?
Austin. No. You must stay abroad till I
send word for you to come home. If I am
going to help you, you will help me by doing
exactly as I say, won't you ?
Ruth. Yes.
Austin. It's very important that you
should absolutely obey me!
Ruth. / will. [A pause.
[Jinny, unnoticed by either of them, appears
in the doorway at Right. Austin is
walkiyig up and dozvn. Ruth is leaning
her elbow on the back of the bench and
burying her face in her hands.
Austin. It's awful! My God, it's awful!
Jinny. [In a strainedy assumed, 7io7ichalant
tone.] What is?
Ruth. Jinny! [Rising.
Austin. I didn't hear you. Jinny!
Jinny. No, you both seemed so absorbed.
Ruth. [Going to Jinny.] I'm so glad to see
you. .
\Kisses her, but JiNNY only gives her her
cheek and that rather ufiwillingly; she is
lookifig all the time at her husband.
Jinny. Thank you, I've just left the
Cullinghams. They sent word to you they
were going and w^ould wait for you outside.
Ruth. Oh, then, I mustn't keep them
waiting. We'll all meet at dinner to-night,
won't we? Good-by — good-by.
[With a grateful look at AusTiN, she goes
out Right.
Jinny. [Watches her go; then turns to
Austin.] That wasn't true, what I told
her — I haven't seen the Cullinghams, and
I don't know where they are, and what's
more, I don't care!
Austin. What do you mean?
Jinny. [Beginning by degrees to lose con-
trol of herself.] What did she mean hy follow-
ifig you to Rome?
Austin. Jinny!
Jinny. Oh, don't try to deny it; that'll
only make me suspect you!
Austin. My dear girl, you don't know
what you're saying!
Jinny. She's ill, they say at home! Yes,
and they don't know what's the matter with
her, do they? No! I3ut I can tell them!
She's in love with another woman's husband!
Austin, [leaking her hand.] Hush! I
won't allow you to say such things!
Jinny. [With a disagreeable little laugh.]
Oh, won't you? You'd better be careful, —
my eyes are opened!
Austin. Yes, and much too wide.
Jinny. A half-blind person would have
known there was something between you
two. When I came into this room just now,
it was in the air — it was in both your faces!
[She sits on the bench.
Austin. You've worked yourself up to
such a pitch you're not responsible for what
you're saying!
Jinny. / not responsible! What was it
you were saying was so "awful" when I came
in here? "My God, so awful!"
[He doesn't answer,
[Almost hysterical, she rises.
She had told you she loved you! She'd con-
fessed she'd followed you over here!
Austin. Absolutely false, both your
suppositions!
Jinny. Oh, of course you'd protect her;
you're a gentleman! But if I thought you
knew she was coming over —
Austin. Jinny! Jinny! How ca7i you
have such a thought?
Jinny. Well, why didn't you tell me
when you thought you saw her a little while
ago?
Austin. Oh —
Jinny. Oh, it's very easy to say "Oh!"
[Imitating him.] but why didn't you?
Austin. I told you I didn't think who it
was; I only thought somethmg familiar
flashed across my eyes. Jinny darling, this
is sheer madness on your part, letting your-
self go like this. It has no reason, it has no
excuse! Ask your own heart, and your own
mind, if in speaking to me as you have, you
haven't done me at least an injustice and
my love for you a little wrong.
Jinny. Well, I'm sure she's in love with
you, anyway.
THE GIRL WITH THE GREEN EYES
333
Austin. No, she isn't! And it's d
is-
graceful of you to say so! I know she isn't — ■
Jinny. How do you know she isn't.''
Austin. There's no question of it. I'm
sure of it! You mustn't think, dear, that
because you love me, everybody does — you
idealize me!
[Smiling apologetically.
Jinny. Oh, you're so modest you don't
see! but I do — on the steamer, in the hotels,
everywhere we go, always, all the women
admire you awfully! I see it!
Austin. [Laughing.] What utter non-
sense! [Taking her into his arms.] You've
got something in your eyes!
Jinny. Only tears!
Austin. No, something else, — something
green.
Jinny. [Laughs through her tears.] Some-
body's told you my old nickname!
Austin. What.''
Jinny. [Laughs and is a little embarrassed.]
The girl with the green eyes.
Austin. Ahem! —
Jinny. Well, I don't care if it is appropri-
ate, I can't help it.
[Slipping from his arms.
Austin. You must — or it will threaten
our happiness if you let yourself be carried
away by jealousy for no earthly reason out-
side of your dear, little imagination, like you
have this time —
[Interrupted.
Jinny. You honestly don't think she cares
for you.''
Austin. Not a bit!
Jinny. But what was it you were so
serious about — what is between you.''
Austin. She is in a little trouble, and I
happen to know about it.
Jinny. How.''
Austin. [After a second's hesitation.] That
you mustn't ask me; it was not from her I
knew of it.
Jinny. Truly.'*
Austin. Truly.
Jinny. I don't care, she hadn't any busi-
ness to go to you! I should think she'd have
gone to a zuoman instead of a man for sym-
pathy. She's got Mrs. Cullingham!
Austin. She can't go to her, poor girl.
Mrs. Cullingham knows nothing about it.
Jinny. Now don't you get too sympa-
thetic— that's very dangerous!
Austin. Look out, your imagination is
peeping througii the keyhole.
[A moment's pause.
Jinny. [In a sympathetic tone, the jealousy
gone.] What is her trouble, Jack.''
Austin. That, dear, I can't tell you now;
some day, perhaps, if you want me to, but
not now. Only I give you my word of honor,
it has nothing to do with you and me — does
not touch our life! And I want you to tell
me you believe me, and trust me, and won't
let yourself be jealous again!
Jinny. I do believe you, and I do trust
you, and I will try not to be jealous again!
Austin. That's right.
Jinny. You know that book of De
Maupassant's [They move away together \ I
was reading in the rain the other day, —
about the young girl who killed herself with
charcoal fumes when her lover deserted her.?
Austin. [Half laughing.] This is apropos of
what, please.'' I have absolutely no sym-
pathy with such people.
Jinny. In America that girl would have
simply turned on the gas.
Austin. You're getting morbid, Jinny!
Jinny. No, I'm not! but if ever —
Austin. [Interrupting — laughing it off.] I
shall install electric light as soon as we get
home!
[They both laugh.
Jinny. I'm sorry I was so disagreeable to
Ruth, but I'll try to make up for it in every
way I can.
[She sits on the bench and he leans over the
back toward her.
Austin. There's one other thing, Jinny,
I'd like to speak of now. Would you mind
giving up the Lakes and going home this
week.f*
Jinny. Going home — at once.?
Austin. Yes — Wall Street is very un-
certain. I'm worried, — I don't mind telling
you, — and I want to see Geoffrey about his
business.
Jinny. [Half in earnest.] Jack! You're not
running away from her, are you.^*
Austin. Jinny! After all we've said!
Jinny. No! I wasn't in earnest! I'm
ready to go. I've seen the Lakes, and
whether you are in Italy or in New York,
so long as we are together, it's our honey-
moon just the same.
Austin. And may it last all our lives!
3.U
CL^^'DE FITCH
Jinny. Still, I ddii't mind (nvninp; up that
leavinji Ruth Chcsttr hcliiiul here is rather
pleasanter! [Sh^ rises quickly with a sudden
thought.] She is not Roing; back, too?
Austin. Oh, no, not for a long time.
They are over here indefinitely.
Jinny. I've been too horrid and nasty for
words this morning. Jack — I'm so sorry.
Austin. It's over and forgotten now.
Jinny. You do forgive me.''
Austin. Of course, dear; only I want to
say this one thing to you: to suspect un-
justly a true love is to insult that love!
Jinny. I didn't really suspect you.
Austin. Of course I know you didn't;
this is only by way of a grandfatherly warn-
ing! It is possible to insult a true love too
often — and love can die —
Jinny. Sh! don't, please, say any more.
You have forgiven me, haven't you.^'
Austin. Yes!
Jinny. Then kiss me!
Austin. [Smiling.] Here! My dear, some
one will see us!
Jinny. No, only Apollo; see, there's no
one else about — it's luncheon hour!
Austin. But — [Taking her hand.
Jinny. [Pulling him.] Come along, then,
behind the statue. No one will see us there!
[They are behind the statue a moment and
then come around the other s\de.
Jinny. There! no one saw us, and I'm so
happy^ are you.^
Austin. "5o happy!'*
[Jinny takes his arm and they go to the Left
entrance. She stops and looks up at him.
Jinny. Are my eyes green now.^
Austin. Now they're blue!
Jinny. Hurrah! and I'm going, from now
on, to be so goody you won't know me.
[And hugging his arm tight they go out as —
THE CURTAIN FALLS
ACT III
{Three weeks later)
The Austins' library;^ a zvarm^ attractive room^
with dark woodwork y and the walls hung in
crimson brocade; Dutch marqueterie furni-
ture; blue and white china on the mantel and
tops of the bookshelves; carbon photographs
of pictures by Reynolds y Romneyy and
» The house is in New York.
Gainsborough on the zvall. There is a
double window at the back. A door at
Right leads to the hall, and another on the
Left side of the room leads to Jinny's own
room. Mrs. Tillman sits at a pianola
Right, playing " Tell me. Pretty Maiden" ;
she stops once in a while, showing that she is
unaccustomed to the instrument. Jinny
enters from Lefty singing as her mother
plays.
Jinny. Darling mother!
[She puts her arms about her and kisses her.
[They come azvay from the pianola together,
to a big armchair.
Mrs. Tillman. I really must get one
of those sewing-machine pianos for your
father. I believe even he could play it, and
it would be lots of amusement for us.
Jinny. Jack adores it; I gave it to him
for an anniversary present.
Mrs. Tillman. What anniversary?
[Sitting in the chair.
Jinny. Day before yesterday. The
eleventh Tuesday since our marriage. Have
you been in town all day-f* I am glad to see
you!
[She sits on the arm of the chair with her
arm about her mother.
Mrs. Tillman. Yes, and I told your
father to meet me here and we'd take the
six-thirty train from Long Island City.
Jinny. Jack and I are going to the theater
to-night.
Mrs. Tillman. I thought they were all
closed!
Jinny. Oh, no, there are several musical
comedies on, — Jack's favorite form of amuse-
ment,— and I've bought the tickets myself
for a sort of birthday party. j
Mrs. Tillman. Is It his birthday.'*
Jinny. No, that's only my excuse!
Mrs. Tillman. [Laughing.] Had we
dreamed you and Jack were coming home in
June, your father and I wouldn't have gone
into the country so early.
Jinny. We've been home two weeks and
it hasn't been hot yet.
Mrs. Tillman. And you're still ideally
happy, aren't you, darling.^
Jinny. Yes —
[She rises and goes to a table near the
center of the room and looks at the titles
of several books without realizing what
they are.
THE GIRL WITH TUp: grep:n eyes
335
Mrs. Tillman. Why, Jinny, — what does
that mean.''
Jinny. Oh, it's all my horrid disposition!
Mrs. Tillman. Been seeing green.'*
Jinny. Um! Um! Once in Rome, and on
the steamer, and again since we've been
back.
Mrs. Tillman. Nothing serious.-*
Jinny. [Hesitatingly, she turns and faces
her mother.] No — but the last time Jack was
harder to bring around than before, and he
looked at me for fully five minutes without
a particle of love in his eyes, and they were
almost — dead eyes!
Mrs. Tillman. What was it all about.?
Jinny. Ruth Chester, principally.
Mrs. Tillman. Why Ruth.''
Jinny. Well, the first real scene I made
was in Rome in the Vatican. I was jealous
of her; I can't explain it all to you — as a
matter of fact, it hasn't been all explained to
me! Something was troubling Ruth that
Jack knew, and he said he'd help her.
Mrs. Tillman. What.'*
Jinny. That's just it; Jack won't tell me.
And the day we sailed from Naples a tele-
gram came, and of course I opened it, and it
said, "Trust me, I will do everything you
say. Ruth."
Mrs. Tillman. Why haven't you told me
anything of all this before, dear.^*
Jinny. [Going back to her mother.] I was
ashamed to! Somehow, in the end I always
knew I was wrong and had hurt him — hurt
him terribly, mother, the man I love better
than everything else in the world! Yes, even
better than you and father and Geoffrey —
all together!
[In her mother s arms, crying a little.
Mrs. Tillman. Oh, this curse of jealousy!
I was in hopes he was so strong he would help
you to overcome it.
Jinny. He does try hard, I can see some-
times; but he hasn't a spark of it in him, and
he can't understand it, and I know I'm
unreasonable, and before I know it I am
saying things I don't know what, and some
day he won't forgive them! I'm sure some
day he won't! —
[Breaking down again.
[She rises and turns away.
Mrs. Tillman. [Rising and putting her
arms about her.] Come, dear! Now you're
getting yourself all unstrung, and that
won't do you any good; you've got to fight
this battle out, I'm afraid, by yourself,
trusting in the deep love of your husband to
teach him forbearance. Your father's and
my troubles were never very big because we
shared the curse, so we knew how to sympa-
thize with each other!
Jinny. What an awful thing it is!
Mrs. Tillman. Yes, my dear child.
Jealousy has no saving grace, and it only
destroys what is always most precious to
you. Jinny, don't let it destroy your best
happiness!
Jinny. Mother, if it should, I'd kill my-
self!
Mrs. Tillman. [Shocked, but quite dis-
believing her.] My dear!
[Maggie enters Right.
Maggie. Mr. Tillman is downstairs,
madam.
Mrs. Tillman. Tell him to come up.
Maggie. Yes, madam.
[She goes out Right.
Jinny. Don't tell father anything before
me.
Mrs. Tillman. I don't know that I shall
tell him at all; he would only advise more
cigars!
[Tillman enters Right.
[Mrs. Tillman sits on the sofa at Left.
Tillman. Are you here.-*
Jinny. [Going to meet him.] We are, father
dear, and your presence almost completes us.
[Kisses him.] I say almost, because Jack
hasn't come up to town yet, and Geoffrey's
heartless enough to stay on fishing at Cape
Cod!
Tillman. No, he isn't; he's back to-day.
[He sits in the armchair at Right.
Jinny. Oh, I do want to see him!
[Sitting near her father.
Tillman. He ought to have been in by
now — I met him this morning. He was to
lunch with Jack, and he's going to put up
for a few days at the University.
Jinny. He must dine with us every night.
Tillman. Jinny! — [Looking at her.] — You
look as if you've been crying!
[The two Women are embarrassed, and
Jinny doesnt reply.
Tillman. [Hurt.] Oh, if you prefer to
have secrets from your father, it's all right!
/ dont begrudge your mother her first place
in your affections!
336
CLYDE FITCH
Jinny. Not at :ill, father; with you and
mother tliere's no first place. She will tell
you all about it on the .way home! Please,
mother.
Mrs. Tillman. Very well, dear.
Tillman. A little "scrap" between you
and Jack.''
Jinny. Yes, but it*s all over!
Tillman. Um! — [Thinks a second^ then
taking out his cigar case^ he empties it of cigars
and hands them to Jinny.] Give your husband
thesey pleas ey when he comes in!
[Jinny and her Mother exchange a
smile.
Jinny. But, father, Jack's got boxes full^
Tillman. Never mind; give him those,
Jrom mey with my compliments!
Jinny. [Laughing.] Very well!
Tillman. How are you and Maggie
getting on?
Jinny. Splendidly.
Mrs. Tillman. Such a nice girl!
Jinny. And wasn't it odd Jack was
bitterly opposed to my taking her.^
Mrs. Tillman. My dear, if we hadn't
lent her to you for these few weeks, you
wouldn't have got anybody decent for so
short a time.
Tillman. Why didn't Jack want her to
come
Jinny. I don't know, he just didn't want
her; and then last week he talked with her
in the library for three-quarters of an hour
by my watch.
Mrs. Tillman. Why?
Jinny. Oh, it seems she has troubles, too!
All single young women with troubles, of no
matter what class, seem to make a bee line
for my husband, even if they have to cross
the ocean!
Tillman. What do you mean?
Jinny. [Half laughing.] Oh, nothing, but
it was about that talk with Maggie that we
had our last quarrel.
[Maggie enters Right.
Maggie. Mrs. Cullingham.
[A second^ s dead silence^ the announcement
falling like a bombshell.
Jinny. [Astounded.] Who?
{She rises.
\ Tillman and Mrs. Tillman. Who?
Maggie. Mrs. Cullingham and her son,
madam.
Jinny. They're in Europe.
Mrs. Iillman. Are you sure you're not
mistaken, Maggie?
Maggif. Oh, yes'm. Even if you could
mistake Mrs. Cullingham, you couldn't
mistake Mr. Peter!
Jinny. Ask them to please come up,
Maggie.
Maggie. Yes'm.
{She goes out Right.
Tillman. Why, they only just sailed the
other day, didn't they?
Mrs. Tillman. Yes, and they were sup-
posed to be gone all summer at least, for
Ruth Chester's health! What in the world
can they have come back for?
Jinny. [With curious determination.] That
is what / intend to find out.
Tillman. [Rising.] We must be going,
Susan; we've lost our train as it is.
Mrs. Tillman. [Rising.] We can take the
seven-two.
[Maggie shows in Mrs. Cullingham and
Peter. Peter shakes hands with Mrs.
Tillman, then with Jinny, and then with
Mr. Tillman.
[Mrs. Cullingham kisses Mrs. Tillman
and shakes hands with Mr. Tillman.
Mrs. Cullingham. Jinny, you angel,
aren't you surprised!
{Kissing her.
Jinny. Well, rather!
Mrs. Cullingham. Well, you aren't a bit
more surprised than I am. [A clock strikes
six-thirty.] There goes the half hour, Peter;
you must take your powder.
Peter. I beg your pardon, mother; it's
the tablet now.
Mrs. Cullingham. Excuse me, dear, I'm
so dead tired.
[Sits on the sofa.
Jinny. [To Peter.] Will you have some
water?
Peter. No, thank you, I've learned now
to take them au naturely and without much,
if any, inconvenience!
[Takes his tablet with still a certain amount
of difficultyy and sits Right.
Mrs. Tillman. [To Mrs. Cullingham.]
Did you have a bad voyage?
Mrs. Cullingham. No, perfectly beauti-
ful.
Peter. [Reproachfullyy and with a final
swallow \ Oh, mother!
THE GIRL WITH THE GREEN EYES
337
Mrs. Cullingham. Except, of course, for
poor Peter; he gets worse every trip! He
can eat absolutely riothing — that is for long!
But it's the Custom House that's worn me
out; I was there from twelve till four.
Mrs. Tillman. But you wouldn't have
had time to buy anything!
Mrs. Cullingham. Of course not! But I
took plenty of new dresses for the entire
summer; most of them hadn't been worn,
and they were determined to make me pay
duty.
Jinny. We had to pay awfully for things!
I wanted to try and smuggle, but Jack
wouldn't let me!
Mr. Tillman. I'm afraid we must go!
[All rise.
Mrs. Cullingham. What do you think
the Inspector had the impudence to ask me
finally, — if I wanted to bring the dresses in as
theatrical properties!
\They laugh.
Mrs. Tillman. You must have some
gorgeous frocks!
Mrs. Cullingham. Oh, there are some
paillettes! But who do you suppose he took
me for — Sarah Bernhardt!
Tillman. [Looking at his zvatch.] I don't
wish to interrupt this vital political con-
versation, but, Susan, if you don't want to
miss the seven-two train, too — !
Mrs. Tillman. [Rising.] Oh, no, we
mustn't do that. Good-by. [To Mrs.
Cullingham, shaking hands.] It's nice to
see you again, anyway. Is Ruth better.?
Mrs. Cullingham. I'm sorry to say — I
don't think she is — good-by.
[To Mr. Tillman, who says good-by —
general good-bys.
Mrs. Tillman. [To Jinny.] You want me
to tell your father.''
Jinny. Yes, it's better; it does make him
jealous if he thinks I tell you things and keep
secrets from him.
Tillman. Good-by, Peter.
Mrs. Tillman. Good-by, Peter.
Peter. By-by.
[Mr. and Mrs. Tillman quickly go out
Right, Jinny going to the door with
them.
Jinny. [Coming hack from doorway.] Now
do tell me what it means. I thought you
were abroad indefinitely, or for the summer
at least.
Mrs. Cullingham. So did I! I'm just as
surprised to be here as you seem to be! [They
sit down near each other.] Didn't you really
know we were coming?
Jinny. No! How should I.?
Mrs. Cullingham. I don't know — I
thought —
[She hesitates^ embarrassed,
[After a pause.
Jinny. What did you think.?
Mrs. Cullingham. Nothing, except that
you must know we were coming home.
Jinny. Why — that / must.?
Mrs. Cullingham. You mustn't put me
into a corner like that!
Jinny. How do you mean "corner"?
How did you happen to come home like
this?
Mrs. Cullingham. Ruth suddenly got a
cable — she didn't tell me from whom — but
she said she must go home at once.
Jinny. But her mother's never been
better!
Mrs. Cullingham. [Carelessly.] The
cable wasn't from her mother.
Jinny. Oh, then, you know who it was
from? [No answer.] Oh, I see now why you
thought I ought to know about it; the
cable was from Jack, wasn't it?
Mrs. Cullingham. [Relieved.] Yes.
Jinny. Oh, it was!
Mrs. Cullingham. I looked at it when she
was out of the room; of course, it was sort of
by accident — [Tery much embarrassed.] — ■
that is, I just happened to see — O dear,
there! You know what I mean; it was
dreadful of me, but I couldn't help it.
Jinny. [In a strained voice.] Jack and
Ruth are very good friends and he looks
after some of her aflFairs. You know having
no man in the family complicates things.
Peter. Oh! I say!
[Standing up, suddenly.
Mrs. Cullingham. What is it, dear?
Peter. I believe I haven't got my before-
dinner tabs.
Mrs. Cullingham. Oh, look carefully!
Peter. [lie looks in his right-hand pocket,
takes out a bottle.] Soda mints! [From his
left-hand pocket a box.] Alkali powders!
[From third pocket a bottle.] Charcoal tablets!
[From fourth pocket another bottle.] Dr.
Man's Positive Cure! [From fifth pocket a
box.] Bicarbonate soda!
338
CLYDE FITCH
Mrs. Cullingham. There's your otlur
side pocket!
Petkr. That's my saccharine [Shnu-utf^
bottle] and my lithia tabs. [Shounng another
bottlt'.] We'll have to go, mother; I've left
them home!
Mrs. Cullingham. We must go, any-
way, my dear.
[Rising.
[Jinny also rises.
Peter. [Suddenly claps his hand behind
him and speaks joyfully.] No, we needn't
go after all; I forgot my hip pocket. Here
they are!
[Bringing them out.
Mrs. Cullingham. We must go all the
same! [To Jinny.] Sometimes I think he
takes too much medicine stuff!
Jinny. I should think so! Peter, you
ought to diet.
Peter. I can't! I've tried, and I lose my
appetite right away!
Mrs. Cullingham. Good-by, dear. How
long will you be in town.''
Jinny. I don't know — several weeks, I
imagine. Jack came home on some business,
you know, and I don't think it's settled yet.
Good-by.
[To Peter.
Peter. Good-by, You know you mustn't
drink water with your meals; that's the
great thing. So I drink only champagne.
[He goes out Right.
Mrs. Cullingham. [Waits and speaks to
Jinny zuith real feeling.] I'm awfully ashamed
of myself, and I hope I haven't made any
trouble or fuss with my meddling. Don't
let me!
Jinny. No, of course not.
[With a strained smile.
Mrs. Cullingham. I wish I could believe
you.
Jinny. Well, do.
[ Mrs. Cullingham. Good-by.
[She goes out Right.
Jinny. Good-by. Where's that telegram
that came for him a little while ago.^ [Going
to the desk at Right, and finding the telegram.]
Of course it's from her, saying that she's
arrived. That's the trouble with telegrams;
the address doesn't give the handwriting
away. She must have sent it from the
dock! Couldn't even wait till she was home!
[She walks to the window and stands there a
vwmenty then comes back, looking at her
watch.] Nearly seven already, and no sign of
him, and we must dress and dine — huh!
I think I might as well tear up my theater
tickets! [She paces up ajid down the room,
stopping now and then with each new thought
that comes to her.] I wonder if he went down
there to meet her — he must have known the
boat; if he cabled her to come back, she
must have cabled an answer and what boat
she'd take! But no other telegram has
come for Jack here to my knowledge — oh!
of course, what am I thinking of, she sent
that one to his office to-day; she was afraid he
might have left before this one could get
there, so she risked it here. Good Heavens!
why am I maudling on like this to myself
out loud.'' It's really nothing — Jack will
explain once more that he ca7i't explain, but
that Ruth has "troubles," and I'll believe
him again! But I won't! He promised me
she should stay over there! [Looks at her
watch again.] He's there, with her! Nothing
ever kept him half as late down town as this!
What a little fool I am!
[Geoffrey enters suddenly Right.
Jinny. [Cries out, joyfully.] Geoffrey!
[And rushing to him, embraces him.] You
brute, you, not to come straight back to
New York when you heard I was home!
You dear old darling, you!
Geoffrey. I couldn't, old girl; there were
reasons — I don't have to tell you I wanted
to.
Jinny. I don't know! Was there a pretty
girl up there, Geof.^ I'm sure I shouldn't
think her pretty if you were in love with her.
I believe I shall be awfully jealous of your
wife when you get one!
Geoffrey. Rubbish! Hasn't Jack come
back yet.**
Jinny. "Come back" from where.?
Geoffrey. Brooklyn.
f Jinny. Brooklyn! Why, he told me —
what did he go there for.?
Geoffrey. [Embarrassed.] I don't know
if you don't —
Jinny, You do!!
Geoffrey. No — really — I —
Jinny. Oh, it's something to be con-
cealed, then.?
Geoffrey. Hang it. Jinny! drop the
subject. I thought he said he was going to
Brooklyn; probably I was mistaken.
TIIK GIRL WITH THE GRP:EN EYES
339
Jinny. [Satirically.] One is so apt to think
just casually that every one's going to
Brooklyn! [Looks at her watch.] Of course it's
Brooklyn. [Goes and looks at the telegram;
turns.] So you're going back on mey too, are
you? You're going to protect Jack at my
expense!
[Austin enters Right.
Austin. [Absorbed.] Good evening, Jinny
dear.
Jinny. It's after seven!
A\]ST\^. [Pleasantly.] Isit.^* Have you been
waiting long, Geoffrey?
Geoffrey. No, I've only just now come
in.
Jinny. It's / who have done the waiting!
Austin. I'm sorry, but it couldn't be
helped.
Jinny. You didn't tell me you were going
to Brooklyn.
Austin. [After a quick, sharp look at
Geoffrey, who shakes his head once emphati-
cally.] It must have escaped my mind.
Jinny. That's very likely! Going to
Brooklyn's the sort of thing one talks about
and dreads for days.
Austin. Well, Jinny, that will bear post-
ponement, and my conversation with Geof-
frey won't; will you please leave us together
here for a while?
Jinny. And what about the theater?
Austin. What theater?
Jinny. Oh, you've forgotten entirely my
little birthday party! Thanks!
Austin. Oh, Jinny! I did! Forgive me!
I'm awfully sorry! I've got a lot on my
mind to-day.
{Tries to put his arms about her and kiss her.
She pushes herself away from him,
• refusing to let him kiss her.
Jinny. Yes — I know you have — [At door
Left.] — I'll leave you two to your confidences.
You can trust Geof; he just now refused to
betray you.
[Austin only looks at her fixedly , seriously.
She looks back at him with bravado.
Then she deliberately crosses the room,
gets the cable, and recrosses with it and
goes out Left.
Austin. Poor Jinny! [Turning to Geof-
frey.] and that, too, lies largely on your
already overcrowded shoulders.
Geoffrey. [Breaking down.] I know! I
know!
Austin. [Sitting in the corner of the sofa.]
Here, don't cry! You've got to be strong
now, and you've no use nor time for crymg.
I've had another long interview with the
Brooklyn minister.
Geoffrey. Yes? —
Austin. [Pr awing a chair near to him and
sitting.] Well, of course we both know that
he's doing wrong to keep silent, but he will.
He wishes I hadn't told him, because he
thinks he'd never have noticed your divorce
from Maggie when it was granted — nor
remembered your name if he had seen it in
the papers.
Geoffrey. That's what I told you!
Austin. You only argued that for fear I'd
insist on your going to this minister your-
self. But in the bottom of your heart you
know it was a risk we couldn't afford to run.
I've explained everything to him — how
such a fine, sweet girl would suffer if he did
expose you, and I gave Uim my word you
would be remarried to Ruth at once after
the divorce. Of course we both know it's
wrong, but we both hope the end justifies
the means that removes difficulty* number
two.
Geoffrey. You're sure about Maggie?
Austin. She's signed a paper; she realizes
you'll never live with her, and — it's pathetic
— she loves you — that girl, too — so much as
to give you your freedom — Good Lord!
what is it about you weak men that wins
women so? What is it in you that has made
two women love you to such a self-sacrificing
extent?
Geoffrey. [Half tragic, half comic laugh.]
I give it up!
Austin. [Bitterly.] So do I. Well, Maggie
is to have six hundred dollars a year.
Geoffrey. Where'll I get it?
Austin. We'll talk about that when the
time comes. [He rises.] Now the most im-
portant, the most painful, task of all must be
done and you must do it. Not I this time —
you!
Geoffrey. [Looking up, frightened.] What?
Austin. Ruth Chester landed this morn-
ing.
Geoffrey. [Starting up.] Impossible!
[Rising.
Austin. The moment Maggie signed my
paper I cabled Miss Chester to return. You
can't go out west and institute proceedings
340
CLYDE FITCH
for divorce wtthout lier knmving the zvhnle
truth jrom you first! You don't want lur
to find it out from the newspapers, do
you?
f- Geoffrey. And you want 7ne to tell her?
Austin. To-day. And to-morrow you
start west!
Geoffrey. [Facing Austin.] I zaont tell
her!
Austin, [Calmly.] You've got to!
Geoffrey. I'd rather shoot myself; do
you understand me — I'd rather shoot my-
self!
Austin. That's nothing! That would be
decidedly the easiest course out of it, and the
most coivardly.
Geoffrey. She'll hate me! She'll loathe
me! How could she help it at first! But
just after a little, if I weren't there, the love
she has for me might move her somehow or
other — and by degrees perhaps — to forgive —
Austin. I don't deny that you will have
to go through a terrible degradation with her
— but that is nothing compared with what
you deserve. If you. tell her, at least the
humiliation is secret, locked there between
you two, and no one else in the world can
ever know what happens; hut if you send
some one else, and no matter who, — any one
else but you is an outsider, — you ask her
to make a spectacle of her humiliation, to
let a third in as witness to the relations and
emotions between you two! It's insulting
her again! Don't you see?
[A pause.
Geoffrey. Yes, I see! My God! I must
tell her myself.
Austin. That's right, don't waver, make
up your mind and do it — Come!
[Urging him up.
Geoffrey. [Hesitates a moment.] And
Jinny?
Austin. Oh, she'll come round all right;
she always does.
Geoffrey. And she doesn't suspect?
Austin. Not the slightest.
[A pause.
Geoffrey. Need she?
Austin. The worst? No, never!
Geoffrey. [He rises, with new encourage-
ment.] You'll give me your word?
Austin. Yes. [Shakes his hand.] I know
how much she loves you; / wouldn't have her
know anything. It's made us some ugly
scenes, but they soon pass, and when you
are once out of your trouble for good, we'll
have no excuse, I'm sure, for any more!
Geoffrey. 1 hen I shall go to bed to-night
with the respect still of at least two women
who are dear to me, my mother and Jinny,
even if I lose the respect and love of the one
woman who is dearer! Only think, Jack,
how I've got to stand up there — never mind
about myself — and make her suffer tortures!
Good-by. God give me courage to do the
heart-breaking thing I must do.
Austin. I am sure the one hope you have
of forgiveness is in your manliness of going
to her as you are doing and telling her your-
self «// the truth!
Geoffrey. And that, like everything
else, I owe to you.
Austin. No, to Jinny! Good luck!
[He shakes Geoffrey's hand and Geof-
frey goes out Right.
Austin. [Goes to the door Left, opens it, and
calls to Jinny, in the next room.] Jinny,
Geoffrey's gone, — what are you doing?
Jinny. [Answers in a very little staccato
voice.] Waiting till you should have the
leisure to receive me!
Austin. Come along!
[Leaves the doorway.
[Jinny enters Left and stands in the doorway.
Jinny. [With affected nonchalance.] I
didn't care to go downstairs for dinner, so I
have had a tray up here. Maggie brought
up something for you, too; would you like it
now?
Austin. [Ignoring purposely her mood and
manner.] I shouldn't mind! I do feel a little
hungry.
[He sits in the armchair.
Jinny. [Speaks off through the doorway
Left.] Bring in the tray for Mr. Austin,
Maggie.
Maggie. [Off stage.] Yes'm.
[Jinny pulls forward a little tea table beside
his chair. Her whole manner must be
one of slow, dragging carelessness, like the
calm before a storm. Her expression
must he hard. She carries the telegram
still unopened, and on top of it the
theater tickets torn in pieces.
[Maggie brings in the tray, puts it on the
table, and goes out Right. On the tray are
chops, peas, some whiskey, a syphon, a
roll, etc.
THE GIRL WITH THE GREEN EYES
341
Austin. [Sits dozen quickly and with a
shozu of eagerness.] Ah!
[Begins to eat as if he were hungry and
enjoyed it.
[Jinny sits on the sofa at his Lefty and looks
at hiruy — Austin is of course conscious of
Jinny's mood, but pretends not to notice it.
Austin. [After a silence during which he
eats.] I say I am hungry! And these chops
are very good, aren't they?
[No answer.
I'll tell you what it is, Jinny! Of course
traveling is great sport and all the rest of it,
but after all one does get tired of hotels,
and to quote a somewhat familiar refram,
"There's no place like home.'*
[No answer.
Have you a headache, Jinny?
Jinny. [Very short.] No.
Austin. That's a good thing, and I hope
you are not as disappointed as I am about
the theater.
Jinny. [Half laughs.] Humph!
Austin. I'll celebrate your birthday to-
morrow and take you.
Jinny. [Quickly.] Why did you go to
Brooklyn ?
Austin. On the private business of some
one else.
Jinny. [With all her nerves tied tight].
That's the best answer you will give me?
Austin. My dear girl, it's the only answer
I can give you.
Jinny. When you are through I have
something for you!
Austin. What?
Jinny. I'll give it to you when you have
finished.
Austin. I'm ready. [He rises. Jinny rises
too, and gives him the telegram with the torn
tickets on top, and then rings the bell, at Right.]
What are these torn papers?
Jinny. Our theater tickets!
[He looks at her.
Austin. And when did this telegram
come ?
Jinny. This afternoon.
Austin. Why didn't I get it when I came
in?
Jinny. [Bitingly.] I kept it to have the
pleasure of giving it to you myself; it's from
Ruth Chester.
Austin. How do you know?
Jinny. Oh, I haven't opened it! But I
know! When I held it in my liand it burnt
my fingers! [Maggie enters Right.] Take
away the tray, please, Maggie.
Maggie. Yes'm.
[She leaves the room with the tray.
[Jinny replaces the small table carelessly y
almost roughly.
[Austin opens and reads the telegram; there
is a second's pause.
Jinny. May I read it?
Austin. [After a moment's hesitation.] Yes,
if you wish.
[Not handing it to her.
Jinny. I do!
Austin. [Reaches over and hands her the
telegram; he speaks quietly.] When you
behave like this it's impossible for me to
feel the same toward you.
Jinny. And how do you think I feel when
I read this?
[Reads it, satirically, bitterly.
"Arrived safely; please let me see you before
the day goes. Ruth." ''Ruth'' if you please!
Austin. [Standing over Jinny.] I want you
to be careful to-night. I want you to control
yourself. I've been through a great deal to-
day, and if you make me angry God knows
what I mightn't say and do!
Jinny. And Vve been through a great deal
for ma?iy a day now, and I want the truth
about this at last! It's all very well for you to
spare her by not telling me what this mys-
terious trouble is about which you've been
hoodwinking me ever since we were married,
but 7WW you've got to choose between spar-
ing her and sparing me!
[She sits determinedly.
Austin, Is this your answer to me when I
beg you to be very careful to-night to control
yourself?
Jinny. It's your turn to be careful!
What did you marry me for if you were in
love with Ruth?
Austin. Jinny!
Jinny. [A little frightened, to excuse her-
self.] You gave me your word of honor she
would stay abroad indefinitely.
Austin. Nonsense! I said I understood
she was going to stay some time — in-
definitely.
Jinny. It's the same thing, and here she is
back practically the moment we are!
Austin. I can't control Miss Chester's
movements — I couldn't foresee when she
34-
CLYDE FITCH
would conu- hack. In Rome slu' told iiic she
would stay on.
Jinny. [Rising atid facing him.] Ah! that's
what I wanted to see, if you really zvould he
to me!
Austin. What do you mean. ^
Jinny. [Beside herself.] Liar! [He only
looks at her, with his face hard and set; she is
insane zvith jealousy for the moment.] You
sent for Ruth to come back.
Austin. And if / did?
Jinny. You tried to deceive me about it.
And if you'll tell me a lie about one thing,
you'll tell me a lie about another, and I don't
believe one word of all your explanations
about the intrigue between you and Ruth
Chester!
Austin. [Taking her tzvo hands.] Sit down!
[She sits in the armchair, half forced by him.
Jinny. Why did you send for Ruth Chester
to come back.^
Austin. I have told you before, I am
trying to help Miss Chester.
Jinny. ''Ruth!''
Austin. I am trying to help her in a
great and serious trouble.
Jinny. Why did you send for her to come
back.^ What's the trouble.?
Austin. I've told you before I can't tell
you.
Jinny. You daren't tell me, and you
haven't even the face to tell another lie
about it!
Austin. If you say another word, I shall
hate you! If you wont control yourself, I
must make you, as well as keep my own
sane balance. You have insulted my love
for you to-night as you've never done before;
you've struck at my own ideal o^ you; you've
almost done, in a word, what I warned you
you might do — kill the love I have for you!
Jinny. [Frightened.] Jack!
Austin. I mean what I say!
Jinny. [In tears.] That — that you — you
don't love me?
Austin. That is not what I said, but I
tell you now that since I first began to care
for you, never have I loved you so little as I
do to-night.
Jinny. [With an efort at angry justifica-
tion.] And suppose I tell you it is your own
fault, because you haven't treated me —
Austin. [Interrupting her.] Like a child,
instead of a woman!
Jinny. No, because you've kept part of
yourself from me, and that part you've
given —
Austin. For God's sake, stop! [A pause —
Jinny is now thoroughly frightened; slowly she
comes to her senses.] Do you want a rupture
for good between us.? [A*o answer.] Can't
you see what I tell you is true.? That I can't
bear any more to-night.? That if you keep
on you will rob me of every bit of love I have
for you, just as you've already robbed me of
the woman I thought you were.?
Jinny. "Already!" No, no, Jack, don't
say that. Oh, what have I done!
[She cries.
Austin. You've done something very
serious, and before you do more — [Speaking
hardly.] — I think we'd better not stay in this
evening; it would be wiser for both of us if
we went out somewhere.
Jinny. No, I couldn't go out feeling this
way! I've hurt you, hurt you terribly! Oh,
why do I do it.? Why can't I help myself?
Austin. I think one more scene to-night
would finish things for us. I warn you of
that, Jinny —
[He goes to the desk and sits at it, looking
blankly before him. She comes slowly,
almost timidly, behind his chair.
Jinny. No, don't say it! don't say it! Try
to forgive me — oh. Jack, I hate myself, and
I'm so ashamed of myself! I know I've dis-
appointed you awfully, awfully! You did
idealize me; I knew it when you married me,
but I told you then I wasn't worth your
loving me, didn't I.? I never pretended to be
worthy of you. I always knew I wasn't.
Austin. Hush!
Jinny. It's true! it's only too awfujly true.
But do you remember how you answered me
then when I told you I wasn't worth your
loving me.?
Austin. [Coldly and without looking at
her.] No.
Jinny. You took me in your arms and
held me so I couldn't have got away if I'd
wanted to — which I didn't — and stopped
the words on my lips with your kisses. [Her
throat fills. He makes no reply. She goes on
very pathetically.] How I wish you'd answer
me that way now!
Austin. Whose fault is it?
Jinny. Oh, mine! mine! I know it. You
don't know it one-half so well as I! I love
THE GIRL WITH THE GREEN EYES
343
you better than anything in the world, love
everything of you — the turn of your head,
the blessed touch of your hand, the smallest
word that comes from your dear lips — the
thoughts that your forehead hides, but
which my heart guesses when I'm sane!
And yet, try as hard as I can, these mad fits
take hold of me, and although I'd willingly
die to save you pain, still /, / myself, hurt
and wound you past all bearing! It doesn't
make any difference that / suffer too! /
ought to! I deserve to — you don't! Oh, no!
I know I'm a disappointment and a failure!
[Her eyes fill up with tears and her voice
breaks.
Austin. [He turns to her.] No, Jinny, not
so bad as that, only I thought you were big —
and you're so little, oh, so small!
Jinny. Yes, it's true; I'm small — I'm
small! Oh, I'd like to be big, too! I want to
be noble and strong, but I'm not — I'm as
weak as water — only it's boiling water! I
want to be Brunhilde, and I'm only Frou
Frou! Yes, I'm little; but I love you — / love
you!
[She sinks on to a stool beside him. A
moment's pause.
[JVith a trembling voice.
You don't mind my sitting here.''
Austin. No —
[Very quietly, he places his arm about her
neck, his hand on her shoulder. She
quickly steals up her hand to take his,
and leaning her head over it, kisses his
hand. He draws it away and kisses her
hair.
Jinny. [Timidly, very softly.] You forgive
me.''
Austin. [With a long sigh.] Yes.
Jinny. [Bursting into tears and burying her
face upon his knees.] Thank you — thank
you — I know I don't deserve it — I don't
deserve it — I don't deserve it!
Austin. [Softly.] Sh! —
[Jinny half turns and looks up at him.
Jinny. [Very, very quietly.] You forgive
me — but still — yes, I see it in your face, you
don't love me the same. You look so tired,
dear.
Austin. [Also very quietly.] I am. Jinny.
Jinny. And — happy.''
Austin. I'm not quite happy.
Jinny. I wish I could make you so — make
you love me the old way. You used to
smile a little when you looked at me — Jack,
you don't any more. Hut I mean to make
you to-night, if I can, and to make you love
me as much as ever you did.
Austin. Good luck, dear.
Jinny. [Brightening.] What time is it?
Austin. [Looking at his watch.] Nearly
nine.
Jinny. I suppose it is too late for me to
dress and for us to go to the theater?
Austin. Oh, yes, — and I'm too tired.
Jinny. [Triumphantly.] Well, then, you
shall have your theater at home ! If Mahomet
won't go to the mountain, the mountain
must go to your lordship!
Austin. I don't understand!
Jinny. Well, just wait — [She blows her
nose.] — till I bathe my face and eyes a little;
I feel rather bleary! [Starting to go, she stops
and turns.] Good-by?
[Questioningly.
Austin. [Quietly.] Good-by.
Jinny. [Who wanted him to call her to him
and kiss her.] Oh, very well ! but I'll make you
smile yet and kiss me of your own accord
to-night — you'll see!
[She goes out Left.
[She is heard singing in her room. Austin
goes to the desk and after a long sigh he
begins to write.
Austin. [Writing.] Dear Ruth. The
satisfaction of the visit to Brooklyn prevents
me from being disappointed at having
missed your telegram till too late to go to
your house to-night. My heart aches for
the blow you must have this evening, but
please God you will bear it bravely. The
man who loves you is not bad, but he has
been weak. However, I feel once he can
shake off the burden of his present marriage,
you will never have cause to complain of
him again. And if your future happiness lies
truly in his hands, it will be safe there. i
Jinny. [Calls from her room.] Are you
ready?
Austin. Yes.
[He stops writing.
Jinny. In your orchestra chair?
Austin. Yes.
Jinny. What will you have, tragedy or
comedy?
Austin. [Smiling.] Shall we begin with
tragedy?
Jinny. All right.
344
CLYDE FITCH
Austin. [Continut's to ^rri/r.] So far I have
been able to keep Jinny in absolute igno-
rance, but I fear the blow must fall upon her
soon, and I dread to think of what she, too,
will suffer. Help me to keep it from her as
long as we can, won't you.''
[Jinny comes back; she has changed her
dress to a loose negligee gozvn^ zvith a red
turban on her head; she brifigs two sheets
zvith her.
Jinny. Excuse me one minute while I set
the stage! [Moving toward each other the
big armchair and the sofa, she covers them
with the sheets. Austin turns from his letter
on the desk, to watch.] Uncle Tom's Cabin,
Act Four! [She goes out only for a moment,
and reenters, zvearing a mans overcoat, with
a pillow tied in the middle with a silk scarf,
eyes, nose, and mouth made on it with a burnt
match.] Eliza crossing the ice! Come,
honey darling! [To the pillow.] Mammy'll
save you from de wicked white man!"
[Jumping up on the sofa, and moving zvith the
springs.] You ought to do the bloodhounds
for me, Jack! Excuse me, but you look the
part! [Austin watches her, not unamused,
but zvithout smiling.] Hold tight to Lize,
honey, and don't be afeerd o' dat big black
man over dah — dat's Uncle Tom, [Crossing
to the arm-chair.] Don't be afeerd, honey;
it's Lize dat's cuttin' de ice this time. [She
throws the pillow away and drags off the two
sheets.] Oh, I can see this is too serious for
you!
[She starts singing a Cakewalk and dances
across the room until she reaches him,
where she finishes.
Austin. Very good, Jinny! I'm sure we
couldn't have seen better at the theater.
Jinny. Ah! You're getting yourself
again! — Darling! Come! — Come! — come to
the pianola and you shall have the sex-
tette! It's in there ready; I heard mother
struggling with it. You don't suppose she
has designs upon the Casino, do you.?
Now — ready.'*
\He goes to the pianola and starts to play the
sextette from '^ Florodora." She runs to
the opposite side of the room and begins to
sing and dance, crossing to Austin as he
plays.
Austin. [After a few moments.] But I
can't see you and play at the same time; I
don't like it!
Jinny. [Delighted.] You want to see me, do
you .''
Austin. Of course I do!
Jinny. Jack! [Delighted.] Well, then,
turn round!
[Jinny, hurrying the time of the song, turns it
into a regular skirt dance. She dances de-
lightfully and Austin cannot resist her
charm. His face lightens, he smiles, and
love comes into his eyes. Jinny sees and
dances and sings all the better till she
reaches him.
Austin. [Rising, he takes her into his arms.]
You adorable Jinny! ,
Jinny. Ah, Jack! You're smiling again
and — you love me!
[Clasping her arms about his neck.
Austin. Yes! Is the theater finished.?
Jinny. No, only the first act. [He sits in
the big armchair, Jinny on his knee.] I'm
tired! [He kisses her. There is a pause. There
is a knock o?i the door at Right.] Oh, hang it!
[K7iock repeated.] Dont answer it! ^ We
haven't half made up yet!
Austin. But we must answer it, dear.
Jinny. [As she rises unwillingly.] I don't
see why — I should have let her knock till she
went away.
Austin. Come in!
[Maggie enters with a letter.
Jinny. What is it, Maggie.?
Maggie. A note from Miss Chester, m*m,
and she's downstairs herself waiting for an
answer.
Jinny. For m.e?
[Taking the letter.
Maggie. No, m'm; I think she said it was
for Mr. Austin.
Jinny. Oh! — You may wait outside for the
answer, Maggie.
Maggie. Yes, m'm. [She goes out.
Jinny. [Slowly goes to Austin and gives
him the letter, lightly.] I see now why you
were so anxious to let Maggie in. Perhaps
you were expecting this.
Austin. Jinny! [Holding her by the hand
and trying to pull her over to him.] Come, I'll
give you a kiss for the letter.
Jinny. No, thank you, I don't want kisses
that are given by you for letters from Ruth
Chester. Yes! do kiss me! [He kisses her.] I
wont be jealous! / wont be! [Clinching her
teeth.] See, I'm not jealous a bit! Read your
old letter!
THE GIRL WITH THE GREEN EYES
345
[Austin opens the note and reads it. As he
does so Jinny has passed on to the desk
and sees Austin's unfinished letter to
Ruth, zvhich after a little hesitation she
picks up and reads. Austin, having read
Ruth's note, looks up thoughtfully a
secondy and then re-reads it. Jinny is
furious over zvhat she reads. As she
finishes she gives a little cry from the
very depths of her heart.
Jinny. Oh, Jack!
Austin. What is \0.
Jinny. Nothing!
[She sinks by the desk, crushing the letter in
her hand. She looks over at Atw, and then
dozvn at the letter , and then back at him.
Austin. Maggie!
Jinny. [Rising suddenly. She speaks with a
voice trembling with only half -contained
emotion and passion.] I told her to wait in
the hall; may I read it?
[Holding out her hand for the letter.
Austin. Now look here. Jinny, — I always
let you read everything, don't I?
Jinny. [Hiding his letter behind her back.]
Yes. [Holding out her other hand.] Give it to
me!
Austin. Now begin to show that you
really are going to turn over a new leaf, and
that your love is going to have perfect
confidence, and don't ask to see this letter.
Jinny. But I do ask to see it!
Austin. Then this time I must refuse
you!
Jinny. What! is it even more compromis-
ing than your letter to her?
Austin. What letter? [Looking first on the
desk, he looks across at her and sees it in her
hand. He is angry , but also frightened for
fear it has told her her brother s secret.] And
you've read it?
Jinny. It lay open on the desk there, and
anyway the end justifies me!
Austin. [In an agony.] What does it tell
you? I forget what I wrote!
Jinny. It tells me that my jealousy all
along has been right, that I've been a fool to
let you blind me!
Austin. [JVith a great sigh of relief.] Is
that all?
Jinny. [Beside herself.] **Is that all!"
Isn't that enough? Dear God, isn't that
enough? That there's an understanding
between you and Ruth to get rid of me!
Austin. If it tells you that, the letter
lies! Give it to me!
Jinny. No! /'// read it to you! [Reads
with bitter emphasis.] "The satisfaction of the
visit to Brooklyn prevents me from being
disappointed at having missed your telegram
till too late to go to your house to-night!"
So — you and she went to Brooklyn, did you,
and that's why you came back too late to
go to the theater with me? You cheat! [She
screams in her madness. A pause.] Why
don't you answer — why don't you say
something?
Austin. Because if I speak as I feel, I'm
afraid of saying something I'll regret all my
life!
Jinny. You don't deny, then?
Austin. Yes! that is due to Ruth. What-
ever you may feel about me, you have no
right to insult her!
Jinny. Oh, there's more to the letter!
Austin. Jinny, don't you see what you're
doing?
Jinny. Yes, I'm getting at the truth at
last! [Reads.] "My heart aches for the blow
you must have this evening! The man who
loves you — "
Austin. You shan^t read any more; you're
mad now!
[Tearing the letter away from her.
Jinny. I don't need the letter, the words
are burning in here! [Pressing her hands to her
forehead.] "The man who loves you isn't
bad, only weak. However, I feel once we
can shake off the burden of this present mar-
riage^'— oh! you — you brute to say that! —
"you will never have cause to complain of
him again! So far I have been able to keep
Jinny in perfect ignorance, but I feel the
blow must fall upon her now — "
[Interrupted.
Austin. Shall I tell you the truth?
Jinny. You don't have to; I've found it
out for myself!
Austin. [In weariness, in disgust, in utter
hopelessness.] No! what's the use. You've
done it now — let it go! Let it all go — the
whole thing! What's the use! — it's finished!
— [A knock on the door at Right.] Come in!
[Maggie enters and closes the door behind her.
Maggie. Please, sir. Miss Chester came
upstairs and made me knock again to see if
there was an answer and if you will see her
now or not.
346
CLYDE FITCH
Jinny. [Suddi-nly — a/lame with her idea.]
Yes! Maggie, show her in!
Austin. No, no! What do you want to do!
I'll see Miss Chester to-morrow, Maggie.
[Jinny has crossed to the door, Right.
Jinny. Ruth! Ruth!
Ruth. [Offstage.] Yes.? May I come?
Jinny. Do come in!
[She recrosses room; she and Austin face
each other for a second.
Austin. [In a lowered voice.] For God's
sake, be careful!
[Ruth enters Right.
Ruth. Jinny!
[Going to her quickly to embrace her.
[Jinny, without speakifig, draws away a?id
stares at her with a look of hatred. Ruth,
seeing it, stops short, and looks from
Jinny to Austin for explanation — she
turns to Austin and gives him her hand,
which he takes, presses^ and drops;
Jinny's shoulders contract at this mo-
ment; Ruth immediately turns again to
Jinny.
Ruth. What is it. Jinny.? [To Austin.]
Surely she doesn't blame me in any way.
Jinny. Blame you!
Austin. She doesn't know.
Jinny. That's a lie! I know everything,
Ruth! I know why you followed my hus-
band to Rome, and why he sent for you to
come back here. I know that you and he
were in Brooklyn this afternoon, and that
you only plan to get rid of me by some
divorce, and by hook or crook to marry each
other!
Ruth. No!— No!—
Jinny. Oh, you can lie, too, can you.? I
won't keep you waiting long! You've stolen
my husband from me — take him. I won't
share him with any woman! He's yours now,
and I'll soon be out of your way!
Austin. Jinny!
Ruth. [To Austin.] She must be told the
truth.
[Austin hows his head.
Jinny. Now you'll make up your story,
will you.? I tell you it's useless. If he
wouldn't let me see your compromising
letter, I've seen a letter from him to you
to-night that gives the whole thing away.
Ruth. [Very quietly.] Your husband went
to Brooklyn without me, as your brother will
tell you, to see the clergyman who married
me, or thought he married me to Geoffrey
Tillman three months ago! [Jinny looks up
with a start.] That marriage was illegal
because your brother was already married,
and Mr. Austin tried and did get the promise
of silence this afternoon about the Brooklyn
service, to prevent a charge of bigamy
against your brother. The first marriage,
which still holds good, was with — Maggie,
your present servant —
[Jinny stands iinmovable. There is a
silence.
Austin. Geoffrey is not at your house?
Ruth. No, he left when I came on here.
As I wrote you in the note I sent upstairs, I
was too stunned by what he told me to
answer then, and I wanted a word of advice
with you. [She turns to Jinny.] / knew
what I thought was my marriage to your
brother must be kept secret, but I could not
learn why. This was my trouble, which,
after your marriage, I selfishly laid on your
husband's shoulders, thinking he might
help me! [No answer from Jinny, who stands
as if struck dumb and into stone.] Mr. Austin
only learned the whole truth when we met
that day in Rome. / did not learn till to-day
that I was not honestly your brother's wife.
I had to be told, because divorce proceedings
are to be started at once to break — the
other — marriage. [No answer from Jinny.)
To spare me, and above all to spare you the
knowledge of your brother's sin, your
husband has kept Geoffrey's secret from you.
You have well repaid him! [She turns again
to Austin.] Good-by — I feel to-night I
couldn't marry Geoffrey again. He's
tumbled so far off his pedestal he has fallen
out of my heart. But still — we'll see; I've
told him to come to-morrow. Thank you
from the bottom of my heart — it's full of
gratitude, even if it is broken!
[She goes out Right.
[Jinny slowly turns, almost afraid to look at
Austin. He stands stern, with set face.
Jinny. [In a low voice, ashamed to go near
him.] Can you forgive me? Can you —
Austin. Ugh!
[Crossing room for his coat.
Jinny. I'm mad! You know I don't
know what I do. But I love you — I love you!
Forgive me!
Austin. Never!
[Taking up his coat.
THK (]IRL WITH THE GREEN EYES
347
Jinny. Where are you going?
Austin. Out of this house.
Jinny. If you leave me, I'll not bear it!
I'll kill myself! I warn you!
Austin. Bah! — Good-by!
[Going to the door Right.
Jinny. No! Where are you going.''
Austin. Out of this house for good!
[At the door he turns and looks at her.
Jinny. [Echoes.] For good.''
Austin. For good!
[He goes out, slamming the door behind
him.
[Jinny stands a moment motionless. She
then cries faintly — "Jack!" She goes to
the door and pushes it open, crying out
again in loud, strong despair, **Jack!"
There is a moment's pause. She cries
out again weakly, heartbrokenly, *' Jack!"
— comes back into the room, and throwing
herself down on the floor, her head resting
on her arms in the arm-chair, she sobs
hysterically, wildly, "What have I
done! Dear God, what have I done!" as
THE CURTAIN FALLS
ACT IVi
Scene I
Dawn of the next day. At the rise of the
curtain Jinny is by the open window, whose
curtains she has thrown aside. The sky is
blood-red and streaked with gold the moment
before sunrise. Jinny is worn and haggard,
with hair disheveled.
Jinny. [Turning and leaning against the
window.] Day at last! What a night — what a
night — but now it's morning and he hasn't
come back! He means it! And it's my own
fault — it's my own fault! [She shivers. She
closes the window and comes away. After a
moment's pause she goes deliberately and looks
at the several gas fixtures in the room. She
then closes all the doors and locks them. She
carefully draws down the shade and closes in
the curtains of the window. She hesitates,
then pulls aside the curtains and the shade, and
takes a long, last look at the dawn. She closes
it all in again. She gets Austins picture
from the desk and places it on the table near
the center of the room. She then goes to the
1 The scene remains the same as in the preceding act.
gas bracket at the Right and turns on the gas.
She lights it to see if the gas is all right; then
blows It out. She then crosses to the other
bracket and turns that on; she goes to the
chandelier at center, and, mounting a chair,
turns on its three jets. She then sits down by
the table with Austin's picture before her, and
looking into its eyes, her elbows on the table, her
head in her hands, she waits.] Oh, Jack, my
beloved! I couldn't help it — I never for one
minute stopped loving you better than
everything else in my life, but no more than
I could stop loving you could I stop or help
being jealous! Once the cruel idea has got
hold of me it seems to have to work its way
out! Everything gets red before me and I
don't seem to know what I say or do! It's no
excuse, I know. I've got no excuse, only I
love you! You'll forgive me when I'm gone,
won't you, Jack.^ You'll know I loved you! — ■
loved you so I couldn't live without you! —
loved you! — loved you! [She kisses the
photograph tenderly, adoringly, slowly, in
tears.] Loved — you — loved you! — loved —
[Her head drops fonvard as
THE curtain falls
Scene II
The same morning, three hours later. The
curtain rises on the same scene in a dull,
cold, early morning light. The lamp has
burnt itself out. A tiny ray of sunlight
steals through a slip between the curtains.
Jinny sits by the table, her arms spread
over it and her head on her arms — she is
perfectly still. Austin's picture is before
her. There is a moment's silence. Voices
are heard outside, approaching door, at
Right. Gradually what they say is dis-
tinguished.
Maggie. No, sir. She hasn't been to bed;
I've been to her bedroom — that door's not
unlocked.
Tillman. She's been here all night.''
Maggie. Yes, sir. But twice in the night,
sir, I came to the door and spoke to her and
she wouldn't answer me — but I could hear
her walking up and down and sometimes
talking to herself.
Tillman. [Calls softly.] Jinny! [Knocks
softly.] It's father! [No answer \ It looks as
if she were asleep now.
.148
CLYDE FITCH
Austin. [Jt a litflc distance.] Father!
Tillman. I'm outside the hbrnry door.
Austin. [Nearer.] I can't wait — have you
seen her.'' Will she see me?
I'illman. She's locked herself in here.
She's not been to her own room.
Austin. Not been to bed at all! Poor
Jinny — God forgive me.
Tillman. Maggie says she's walked the
floor all night.
[He knocks on the door Right.
Austin. [Outside the dooty Right, rather
softly.] Jinny! I'm so sorry! I can't say how
sorry! I've thought it out through the night,
and I think I understand things better. [He
waits a moment for an answer.] Jinny,
answer me! you shall be as jealous as you
like, and I'll always explain and kiss away
those doubts of yours, and I'll have no more
secrets from you, dear. Not one! Jinny!
[As he calls there is a slight movement of one of
Jinny's arms. With a note of alarm.] Father!
I can't hear a sound of breathing! [A mo-
ment's pause as they listen.] She threatened
it — she threatened it several times! [With
great determination.] We must get into this
room — do you hear me — we must get in if
we have to break the door down! [They
shake the door. He calls a little louder.]
Jinny, Jinny darling — do you hear me.''
[Jinny makes a sort of feeble effort to lift her
heady but fails.] Jinny, for God's sake,
answer me! I love you, Jinny — Jinny!
[Very slowly Jinny lifts her head and, with
difficulty, she hears as if in a dream; she is
dazed, barely alive \ She doesn't answer!
Tillman. See if the key is in the lock.
Austin. No.
Tillman. Get the other keys, Maggie.
Austin. Father! Gas! Don't you smell it.?
Tillman. What!
Austin. Gas, I tell you! O God! she's
killed herself! Jinny! Jinny!
[Beating the door.
[Jinny staggers up, she tries to call ''Jack"
— but the word only comes out in a half-
articulate whisper! She tries again, but
fails.
Maggie. Here's a key, sir.
[Jinny tries to go to the door; she staggers a
fezv steps and then falls.
[They try one key — it does not unlock the
door; they try another.
[Jinny half raises herself and makes an
effort to crawl, but is unable and sinks
back upon the floor.
AuvSTiN. Break the door in, father! We
daren't waste any more time!
Tillman. No, this has done it!
[They open the door and rush in. They stop
aghast at Jinny a7id the oppressiveness of
the gas in the room.
Tillman. Jinny!
Austin. Quick — the window! [Tillman
tears aside the curtains and throws open the
window. The sunshine of full morning pours
in. He then rushes to the opposite gas burners
and turns them off. Kneeling quickly beside
her.] Jinny! My wife! My beloved!
[He takes her up in his arms aiid hurries to
the window.
Tillman. Are we too late.?
Austin. I don't know. No! she's breath-
ing— and see — see! — she knows me! — she
knows me! [Jinny smiles at him pathetically.]
Send Maggie for the doctor!
[Tillman goes out Right.
Austin. Jinny, forgive me! Forgive me!
Forgive me! [She slips her two arms up and
joins them about his neck. Austin kisses her.]
Father! We've saved her! Oh, thank God,
we've saved her!
[Bringing her to big chair and putting her
in it, he kneels at her feet.
Jinny. [Whispers faintly.] Dear Jack!
You forgive me — all my beastly jealousy.?
Austin. There's one thing stronger even
than jealousy, my Jinny. And that's love!
That's LOVE!
[He kisses her hands, and
the curtain falls
STEPHEN CRANE (1871-1900)
Crane, the fourteenth child of a Methodist preacher who had only some nine or ten years more
to hve, was born in Newark, New Jersey, on i November, 1871. He was a dehcate child, too much
subject to colds and a sore throat from his earliest days. As he grew up he became strong, but in his
early manhood he fell a victim to chronic and severe indigestion and the threat of trouble from his
lungs never left him; — on the contrary, becoming a reality, it was the immediate cause of his early death
on the night of 4 June, 1900. Into his few years he crowded a vast deal not only of varied experi-
ence, but also of literary work, despite the fact that, as his wife said, his great difficulty was that he
could not write steadily with sustained application. His formal education was fragmentary, and it
brought him but the slightest positive benefit. He spent a year and a half in 1887-1888 in the Hud-
son River Institute, at Claverack, New York, where he became eminent as a baseball player and as a
fighter — the fight in which he showed his strength having been started, curiously enough, by Crane's
assertion that Tennyson's poetry was "swill." Thence, after a summer of work for his brother, who
ran a press bureau at Asbury Park, Crane went to Lafayette College, where he stayed a year (1889-
1890). At this time he considered Tolstoy the world's greatest writer and was also reading Flaubert,
though with less admiration. The following year was spent at Syracuse University, where he acted
as correspondent for the New York Tribune, and this was the end of his collegiate life. He had
already determined to become a writer, and his mother, who was soon to die, gave her approval, tell-
ing him only that he must always be good and independent and honest. Independence and honesty
were precisely his aims in his work, and, if he was neither good nor careful, he was at least better than
would be supposed from the marvelous and scandalous tales which envious gossipers freely invented
or circulated concerning him, as his biographer (Thomas Beer) has made clear.
Crane now became outwardly a journalist. He was not a good reporter, but his startling and
colorful writing opened to him the doors of newspapers and periodicals. His real work, however, was
the search for the intense and burning core of "reality." He turned in disgust from the sentimental-
ism and prim decorum characteristic of much popular American fiction in his day, and felt that even
the self-confessed realists saw life through blinders. He concluded that the bare, essential truth about
life was to be discovered by stripping it of its decoration, of its accretions of culture and respectability.
His biographer tells an illuminating story of later days. When Crane and Acton Davies were war-
correspondents in Cuba in 1898 the latter "was moaning for his dear Broadway. He wanted such
and such dishes at his pet restaurant, such wines and a lustrous lady to sit across from him. Crane
cut short the dream by saying, 'Why don't you just say you want a good meal and a girl and be done
with it.?'" This is the measure of his simplification of life in his search for the "real." In 1891, in
New York, he thought the Bowery the center of the human stage, and there sought to know pros-
titutes and tramps. Maggie, A Girl of the Streets {\)untQ(\ at Crane's expense, after unsuccessful efforts
to sell it, at the end of 1892) was the outcome, a novel of power which won the admiration of W. D.
Howells, who tried in vain to secure recognition for it. Howells did, however, succeed in helping
Crane in another direction, for he read to him some of the poems of Emily Dickinson, which aroused
Crane's keenest interest and impelled him to his own striking experiments, in a loose unrhymed form
of verse, which, both in style and in aim, remarkably anticipated some of the distinctive American
poetry of the early twentieth century. Crane's verses are all contained in two thin volumes. The
Black Riders and Other Lines (1895) and War is Kind (1899).
Meanwhile the search for the "real" continued, and Crane began to imagine that it would be
rewarded by the study of war, which, he thought, by its cruelties and terrors strips men of their acci-
dental trappings and exposes their essential natures. This interest brought forth The Red Badge of
Courage (1895), a masterly novel written with true insight which was at once successful and which has
been widely read ever since its publication. The same interest continued to excite Crane, and sent
him to Florida in the middle 1890's in the hope of witnessing trouble in Cuba, and then as a war-cor-
respondent to Greece, and finally back to Cuba in 1898. Thus material was gathered for a number
of short-stories. During the last several years of his life (save for the interval when he was in Cuba)
Crane lived in England, latterly near Rye, when he won the cordial friendship of Henry James. He
also was a valued friend of Joseph Conrad.
349
350
STEPHEN CRANE
Crane's ideal m both prose and virsc was honesty accordinp to Ins own lights. His vision was
one-sided, and it led him towards a brutal naturalism. Despite this limitation, however, his motive
was one which demands respect, as does eiiually his courage in following it against strong currents of
contemporary fashion and prejudice. His work was fragmentary, and much of it was carelessly and
imperfectly executed, but it signalized a fundamentally wholesome reaction of high significance, and
it is now recognized that distinctively modern American prose fiction and verse both have their begin-
nings in Crane.
His volumes and their dates, other than those already mentioned, are: George's Mother (1896),
The Little Rei^iment and Other episodes of the American Civil War (1896), The Third J'iolet (1897), The
Open Boat (189S; tales), Active Sennce (1899), Th^ Monster (1899; tales), JVounds in the Rain (1900;
tales), If'hilnmville Stories (1900), Great Batiles of the JVorld (1901), Last JVords (1902; sketches and tales),
and The 0' Ruddy (1903).
THE BLACK RIDERS AND
OTHER LINES 1
I
Black riders came from the sea.
There was clang and clang of spear and
shield,
And clash and clash of hoof and heel,
Wild shouts and the wave of hair
In the rush upon the wind:
Thus the ride of sin.
Ill
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart m his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend.''"
"It is bitter — bitter," he answered;
"But I hkeit
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."
VII
Mystic shadow, bending near me.
Who art thou.''
Whence come ye.''
And — tell me — is it fair
Or is the truth bitter as eaten fire.?
Tell me!
Fear not that I should quaver.
For I dare — I dare.
Then, tell me!
IX
I STOOD upon a high place,
And saw, below, many devils
Running, leaping,
» The poems from The Black Riders and Other Lines
by Stephen Crane are reprinted with the permission of,
and by special arrangement with, Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., the authorized publishers.
And carousing in sin.
One looked up, grinning.
And said, "Comrade! Brother!"
XI
In a lonely place,
I encountered a sage
Who sat, all still.
Regarding a newspaper.
He accosted me:
"Sir, what is this.^"
Then I saw that I was greater.
Aye, greater than this sage.
I answered him at once,
"Old, old man, it is the wisdom of the
age." 10
The sage looked upon me with admiration.
XVII
There were many who went in huddled
procession.
They knew not whither;
But, at any rate, success or calamity
Would attend all in equality.
There was one who sought a new road.
He went into direful thickets,
And ultimately he died thus, alone;
But they said he had courage.
XX
A LEARNED man came to me once.
He said, "I know the way, — come."
And I was overjoyed at this.
Together we hastened.
Soon, too soon, were we
Where my eyes were useless,
And I knew not the ways of my feet.
I clung to the hand of my friend;
But at last he cried, "I am lost."
XXIV
I SAW a man pursuing the horizon;
Round Tnd round they sped.
WAR IS KIND
351
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
"It is futile," I said,
"You can never" —
"You lie," he cried,
And ran on.
XXX
Supposing that I should have the courage
To let a red sword of virtue
Plunge into my heart.
Letting to the weeds of the ground
My sinful blood,
What can you offer me?
A gardened castle.''
A flowery kingdom.''
What.? a hope.''
Then hence with your red sword of vir-
tue. 10
XLIV
I WAS in the darkness;
I could not see my words
Nor the wishes of my heart.
Then suddenly there was a great light —
"Let me into the darkness again."
XLV
Tradition, thou art for suckling children,
Thou art the enlivening milk for babes;
But no meat for men is in thee.
Then —
But, alas, we all are babes.
XLVIII
Once there was a man, —
Oh, so wise!
In all drink
He detected the bitter.
And in all touch
He found the sting.
At last he cried thus:
"There is nothing, —
No life,
No joy, 10
No pain, —
There is nothing save opinion,
And opinion be damned."
WAR IS KIND 2
I
Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward
the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone.
Do not weep.
War is kind.
Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment.
Little souls who thirst for fight.
These men were born to drill and die.
The unexplained glory flies above them,
Great is the battle-god, great, and his
kingdom — 10
A field where a thousand corpses lie.
Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow
trenches.
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
Swift blazing flag of the regiment.
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of slaughter, 20
Make plain to them the excellence of
killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.
Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son.
Do not weep.
War is kind.
IV
A LITTLE ink more or less!
It surely can't matter.''
Even the sky and the opulent sea.
The plains and the hills, aloof.
Hear the uproar of all these books.
But it is only a little ink more or less.
XIII
A NEWSPAPER is a collection of half-injustices
Which, bawled by boys from mile to mile.
Spreads its curious opinion
To a million merciful and sneering men.
* The poems from War is Kind by Stephen Crane
are reprinted with the permission of, and by special
arrangement with, Alfred A.Knopf, Inc., the authorized
publishers.
352
STEPHEN CRANE
While families cuddle- the joys of the fireside
When spurred by tale of dire lone agony.
A newspaper is a court
Where every one is kindly and unfairly tried
By a squalor of honest men.
A newspaper is a market lo
Where wisdom sells its freedom
And melons are crowned by the crowd.
A newspaper is a game
W here his error scores the player victory
While another's skill wins death.
A news jia per is a symbol;
It is fetless life's chronicle,
A collection of loud tales
Concentrating eternal stupidities,
That in remote ages lived unhaltered, 20
Roaming through a fenceless world.
XIV
The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with wefds.
"Ha," he said,
" I see that none has passed here
In a long time."
Later he saw that each weed
W as a singular knife.
"Well," he mumbled at last, 10
"Doubtless there are other roads."
XV
A SLANT of sun on dull brown walls,
A forgotten sky of bashful blue.
Tow^ard God a mighty hymn,
A song of collisions and cries.
Rumbling wheels, hoof-beats, bells.
Welcomes, farewells, love-calls, final moans,
Voices of joy, idiocy, warning, despair,
The unknown appeals of brutes.
The chanting of flowers,
The screams of cut trees, 10
The senseless babble of hens and wise men —
A cluttered incoherency that says at the
stars *
"O God, save us!"
XXII
A MAN said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me '
A sense of obligation."
A MYSTERY OF HEROISM ^
lui: d:irk uniforms of the men were so
coated with dust from the incessant wrestling
of the two armies that the regiment almost
seemed a part of the clay bank whicii
shielded them from the shells On the top
of the hill a battery was arguing in tremen-
dous roars with some other guns, and to
the eye of the infantry, the artillerymen,
the guns, the caissons, the horses, were
distinctly outlined upon the blue sky.
When a piece was fired, a red streak as round
as a log flashed low in the heavens, like a
monstrous bolt of lightning. The men of the
battery wore white duck trousers, which
somehow emphasized their legs; and when
they ran and crowded in little groups at the
bidding of the shouting officers, it was more
impressive than usual to the infantry.
Fred Collins, of A company, was saying:
"Thunder! I wisht I had a drink. Ain't
there any water round here?" Then some-
body yelled, "There goes th' bugler!"
As the eyes of half the regiment swept
in one machine-like movement there was an
instant's picture of a horse in a great con-
vulsive leap of a death wound and a rider
leaning back with a crooked arm and
spread fingers before his face. On the ground
was the crimson terror of an exploding shell,
with fibers of flame that seemed like lances.
A glittering bugle swung clear of the rider's
back as fell headlong the horse and the man.
In the air was an odor as from a conflagra-
tion.
Sometimes they of the infantry looked
down at a fair little meadow which spread
at their feet. Its long, green grass was
rippling gently in a breeze. Beyond it was the
gray form of a house half torn to pieces by
shells and by the busy axes of soldiers who
had pursued firewood. The line of an old
fence was now dimly marked by long
weeds and by an occasional post. A shell
had blown the well-house to fragments.
Little lines of gray smoke ribboning upward
from some embers indicated the place where
had stood the barn.
» Reprinted from The Little Regiment by Stephen
Crane with the permission of, and by special arrange-
ment with, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., the authorized pub-
lishers. This volume of tales was first published in
1896.
A MYSTERY OF HEROISM
353
From beyond a curtain of green woods
there came the sound of some stupendous
scuffle, as if two animals of the size of
islands were fighting. At a distance there
were occasional appearances of swift-movmg
men, horses, batteries, flags, and, with the
crashing of infantry volleys were heard,
often, wild and frenzied cheers. In the
midst of it all Smith and Ferguson, two
privates of A company, were engaged m a
heated discussion, which involved the great-
est questions of the national existence.
The battery on the hill presently engaged
in a frightful duel. The white legs of the
gunners scampered this way and that way,
and the officers redoubled their shouts. The
guns, with their demeanors of stolidity and
courage, were typical of something infinitely
self-possessed in this clamor of death that
swirled around the hill.
One of a "swing" team was suddenly
smitten quivering to the ground, and his
maddened brethren dragged his torn body
in their struggle to escape from this turmoil
and danger. A young soldier astride one of
the leaders swore and fumed in his saddle,
and furiously jerked at the bridle. An officer
screamed out an order so violently that his
voice broke and ended the sentence in a
falsetto shriek.
The leading company of the infantry
regiment was somewhat exposed, and the
colonel ordered it moved more fully under
the shelter of the hill. There was the
clank of steel against steel.
A lieutenant of the battery rode down and
passed them, holding his right arm carefully
in his left hand. And it was as if this arm
was not at all a part of him, but belonged to
another man. His sober and reflective
charger went slowly. The officer's face was
grimy and perspiring, and his uniform was
tousled as if he had been in direct grapple
with an enemy. He smiled grimly when
the men stared at him. He turned his
horse toward the meadow.
Collins, of A company, said: "I wisht I
had a drink. I bet there's water in that there
ol* well yonder!"
*' Yes; but how you goin* to git it?"
For the little meadow which intervened
was now suflPering a terrible onslaught of
shells. Its green and beautiful calm had
vanished utterly. Brown earth was being
flung in monstrous handfuls. And there
was a massacre of the young blades of grass,
rhey were being torn, burned, obliterated.
Some curious fortune of the battle had made
this gentle little meadow the object of the
red hate of the shells, and each one as it
exploded seemed like an imprecation in the
face of a maiden.
The wounded officer who was riding across
this expanse said to himself, "Why, they
couldn't shoot any harder if the whole
army was massed here!"
A shell struck the gray ruins of the house,
and as, after the roar, the shattered wall
fell in fragments, there was a noise which
resembled the flapping of shutters during a
wild gale of winter. Indeed, the infantry
paused in the shelter of the bank appeared
as men standing upon a shore contemplating
a madness of the sea. The angel of calam-
ity had under its glance the battery upon
the hill. Fewer white-legged men labored
about the guns. A shell had smitten one
of the pieces, and after the flare, the smoke,
the dust, the wrath of this blow were gone,
it was possible to see white legs stretched
horizontally upon the ground. And at
that interval to the rear, where it is the
business of battery horses to stand with
their noses to the fight awaiting the command
to drag their guns out of the destruction
or into it or wheresoever these incompre-
hensible humans demanded with whip and
spur — in this line of passive and dumb
spectators, whose fluttering hearts yet
would not let them forget the iron laws of
man's control of them — in this rank of brute-
soldiers there had been relentless and
hideous carnage. From the ruck of bleeding
and prostrate horses, the men of the infantry
could see one animal raising its stricken
body with its fore legs, and turning its nose
with mystic and profound eloquence toward
the sky.
Some comrades joked Collins about his
thirst. "Well, if yeh want a drink so bad,
why don't yeh go git it!"
"Well, I will in a minnet, if yeh don't
shut up!'*
A lieutenant of artillery floundered his
horse straight down the hill with as great
concern as if it were level ground. As he
galloped past the colonel of the infantry,
he threw up his hand in swift salute. "We've
354
STEPHEN CRANE
got to get out of tliat," lie roared angrily.
He was a black-bearded officer, and his eyes,
wlijch resembled beads, sparkled like those
of an insane man. His jumping horse sped
along the column of infantry.
The fat major, standing carelessly with
his sword held horizontally behind him and
with his legs far apart, looked after the reced-
ing horseman and laughed. "He wants to
get back with orders pretty quick, or there'll
be no batt'ry left," he observed.
The wise young captain of the second
company haphazarded to the lieutenant
colonel that the enemy's infantry would
probably soon attack the hill, and the
lieutenant colonel snubbed him.
A private in one of the rear companies
looked out over the meadow, and then
turned to a companion and said, "Look
there, Jim!" It was the wounded officer
from the battery, who some time before had
started to ride across the meadow, supporting
his right arm carefully with his left hand.
This man had encountered a shell apparently
at a time when no one perceived him, and
he could now be seen lying face downward
with a stirruped foot stretched across the
body of his dead horse. A leg of the charger
extended slantingly upward precisely as
stiff as a stake. Around this motionless pair
the shells still howled.
There was a quarrel in A company.
Collins was shaking his fist in the faces of
some laughing comrades. "Dern yeh! I
ain't afraid t'go. If yeh say much, I will
go!
"Of course, yeh will! You'll run through
that there medder, won't yeh.-*"
Collins said, in a terrible voice, "You see
now!" At this ominous. threat his comrades
broke into renewed jeers.
Collins gave them a dark scowl and went
to find his captain. The latter was convers-
ing with the colonel of the regiment.
"Captain," said Collins, saluting and
standing at attention — in those days all
trousers bagged at the knees — "Captain, I
want t'get permission to go git some water
from that there well over yonder!"
The colonel and the captain swung about
simultaneously and stared across the
meadow. The captain laughed. "You
must be pretty thirsty, Collins.?"
"Yes, sir, I am."
"Well — ah," said the captain. After a
moment, he asked, "Can't you wait?"
"No, sir."
The colonel was watching Collins's face.
"Look here, my lad," he said, in a pious
sort of a voice — "look here, my lad" —
Collins was not a lad — "don't you think
that's taking pretty big risks for a little
drink of water.''"
"I dunno," said Collins uncomfortably.
Some of the resentment toward his com-
panions, which perhaps had forced him into
this affair, was beginning to fade. "I dunno
wether 'tis."
The colonel and the captain contemplated
him for a time.
"Well," said the captain finally.
"Well," said the colonel, "if you want to
go, why, go."
Collins saluted. "Much obliged t'yeh."
As he moved away the colonel called after
him. "Take some of the other boys' can-
teens with you an' hurry back now."
"Yes, sir, I will."
The colonel and the captain looked at
each other then, for it had suddenly occurred
to them that they could not for the life of
them tell whether Collins wanted to go or
whether he did not.
They turned to regard Collins, and as they
perceived him surrounded by gesticulating
comrades, the colonel said: "Well, by
thunder! I guess he's going."
Colhns appeared as a man dreaming. In
the midst of the questions, the advice, the
warnings, all the excited talk of his company
mates, he maintained a curious silence.
They were very busy in preparing him for
his ordeal. When they inspected him care-
fully it was somewhat like the examination
that grooms give a horse before a race; and
they were amazed, staggered by the whole
affair. Their astonishment found vent in
strange repetitions.
"Are yeh sure a-goin'.?" they demanded
again and again.
"Certainly I am," cried Collins, at last
furiously.
He strode sullenly away from them. He
was swinging five or six canteens by their
cords. It seemed that his cap would not
remam firmly on his head, and often he
reached and pulled it down over his brow.
There was a general movement in the
A MYSTERY OF HEROISM
355
compact column. The lonp; animal-like
thing moved slightly. Its four hundred eyes
were turned upon the figure of Collins.
"Well, sir, if that ain't th' derndest thing!
I never thought Fred Collins had the blood
in him for that kind of business."
"What's he goin' to do, anyhow.'*"
"He's goin* to that well there after water."
"We ain't dyin' of thirst, are we.'' That's
foolishness."
"Well, somebody put him up to it, an'
he's doin' it."
"Say, he must be a desperate cuss.'*
When Collins faced the meadow and
walked away from the regiment, he was
vaguely conscious that a chasm, the deep
valley of all prides, was suddenly between
him and his comrades. It was provisional,
but the provision was that he return as a
victor. He had blindly been led by quaint
emotions, and laid himself under an obliga-
tion to walk squarely up to the face of
death.
But he was not sure that he wished to
make a retraction, even if he could do so
without shame. As a matter of truth, he
was sure of very little. He was mainly
surprised.
It seemed to him supernaturally strange
that he had allowed his mind to maneuver
his body into such a situation. He under-
stood that it might be called dramatically
great.
However, he had no full appreciation of
anything, excepting that he was actually
conscious of being dazed. He could feel
his dulled mind groping after the form and
color of this incident. He wondered why he
did not feel some keen agony of fear cutting
his sense like a knife. He wondered at this,
because human expression had said loudly
for centuries that men should feel afraid of
certain things, and that all men who did
not feel this fear were phenomena — heroes.
He was, then, a hero. He suffered that
disappointment which we would all have if
we discovered that we were ourselves capable
of those deeds which we most admire in
history and legend. This, then, was a hero.
After all, heroes were not much.
No, it could not be true. He was not a
hero. Heroes had no shames in their lives,
and, as for him, he remembered borrowing
fifteen dollars from a friend and promising
to pay it back the next day, and then
avoiding that friend for ten months. When
at home his mother had aroused him for the
early labor of his life on the farm, it had
often been his fashion to be irritable, child-
ish, diabolical; and his mother had died
since he had come to the war.
He saw that, in this matter of the well, the
canteens, the shells, he was an intruder in
the land of fine deeds.
He was now about thirty paces from his
comrades. The regiment had just turned
its many faces toward him.
From the forest of terrific noises there
suddenly emerged a little uneven line of
men. They fired fiercely and rapidly at
distant foliage on which appeared little
puffs of white smoke. The spatter of
skirmish firing was added to the thunder of
the guns on the hill. The little line of men
ran forward. A color sergeant fell flat with
his flag as if he had slipped on ice. There
was hoarse cheering from this distant field.
Collins suddenly felt that two demon
fingers were pressed into his ears. He could
see nothing but flying arrows, flaming red.
He lurched from the shock of this explosion,
but he made a mad rush for the house, which
he viewed as a man submerged to the neck
in a boiling surf might view the shore. In
the air, little pieces of shell howled and the
earthquake explosions drove him insane
with the menace of their roar. As he ran,
the canteens knocked together with a
rhythmical tinkling.
As he neared the house, each detail of the
scene became vivid to him. He was aware
of some bricks of the vanished chimney
lying on the sod. There was a door which
hung by one hinge.
Rifle bullets called forth by the insistent
skirmishers came from the far-off bank of
foliage. They mingled with the shells and
the pieces of shells until the air was torn
in all directions by hootings, yells, howls.
The sky was full of fiends who directed all
their wild rage at his head.
When he came to the well, he flung
himself face downward and peered into its
darkness. There were furtive silver glint-
ings some feet from the surface. He grabbed
one of the canteens and, unfastenmg its cap,
swung it down by the cord. The water
flowed slowly in with an indolent gurgle.
356
STEPHEN CRANE
And now ns he l;iy witli liis fact' nnntcl
nway lie was siuldcnK' sinitrcn wirli the
terror. It came upon his heart hke the p;rasp
of claws. All the power faded from his mus-
cles. For an instant he was no more than a
dead man.
The canteen filled with a maddening
slowness, in the manner of all bottles.
Presently he recovered his strength and
addressed a screaminc; oath to it. He leaned
over until it seemed as if he intended to
try to push water into it with his hands.
His e3'es as he gazed down into the well
shone like two pieces of metal and in their
expression was a great appeal and a great
curse. The stupid water derided him.
There was the blaring thunder of a shell.
Crimson light shone through the swift-
boiling smoke and made a pink reflection
on part of the wall of the well. Collins
jerked out his arm and canteen with the
same motion that a man would use in with-
drawmg his head from a furnace.
He scrambled erect and glared and hesi-
tated. On the ground near him lay the old
well bucket, with a length of rusty chain.
He lowered it swiftly into the well. The
bucket struck the water and then, turning
lazily over, sank. When, with hand reachmg
tremblingly over hand, he hauled it out, it
knocked often against the walls of the well
and spilled some of its contents.
In running with a filled bucket, a man
can adopt but one kind of gait. So through
this terrible field over which screamed
practical angels of death Collins ran in the
manner of a farmer chased out of a dairy by
a bull.
His face went staring white with anticipa-
tion— anticipation of a blow that would
whirl him around and down. He would fall
as he had seen other men fall, the life knocked
out of them so suddenly that their knees
were no more quick to touch the ground
than their heads. He saw the long blue line
of the regiment, but his comrades were
standing looking at him from the edge of an
impossible star. He was aware of some deep
wheel ruts and hoofprints in the sod beneath
his feet.
Th" artillery officer who had fallen in this
meadow had been making groans in the teeth
of the tempest of sound. These futile cries,
wrenched from him by his agony, were heard
only by shells, bullets. When wild-eyed
Colhns canie runnmg, this officer raised
himself. His face contorted and blanched
from pain, he was about to utter some great
beseeching cry. But suddenly his face
straightened and he called: "Say, young
man, give me a drink of water, will you."*"
Collins had no room amid his emotions for
surprise. He was mad from the threats of
destruction.
"I can't!" he screamed, and in his reply
was a full description of his quaking appre-
hension. His cap was gone and his hair was
riotous. His clothes made it appear that he
had been dragged over the ground by the
heels. He ran on.
The officer's head sank down and one
elbow crooked. His foot in its brass-bound
stirrup still stretched over the body of his
horse and the other leg was under the steed.
But Collins turned. He came dashing
back. His face had now turned gray and in
his eyes was all terror. "Here it is! here it
IS!
The officer was as a man gone in drink.
His arm bent like a twig. His head drooped
as if his neck were of willow. He was sinking
to the ground, to lie face downward.
Collins grabbed him by the shoulder.
"Here it is. Here's your drink. Turn over.
Turn over, man, for God's sake!"
With Collins hauling at his shoulder, the
officer twisted his body and fell with his fact
turned toward that region where lived the
unspeakable noises of the swirling missiles.
There was the faintest shadow of a smile on
his lips as he looked at Collins. He gave a
sigh, a little primitive breath like that from
a child.
Collins tried to hold the bucket steadily,
but his shaking hands caused the water to
splash all over the face of the dying man.
Then he jerked it away and ran on.
The regiment gave him a welcoming roar.
The grimed faces were wrinkled in laughter.
His captain waved the bucket away.
"Give it to the men!"
The two genial, skylarking young lieu-
tenants were the first to gain possession of it.
They played over it in their fashion.
When one tried to drink the other teas-
ingly knocked his elbow. "Don't, Billie!
You'll make me spill io" said the one. The
other laughed.
A GRAY SLEEVE
357
Suddenly there was an oath, the tliud of
wood on the ground, and a swift murmur of
astonishment among the ranks. The two
Heutenants glared at each other. The
bucket lay on the ground empty.
PASSAGE FROM
A GRAY SLEEVE!
Along the rear of the brigade of infantry a
column of cavalry was sweeping at a hard
gallop. A lieutenant, riding some yards to
the right of the column, bawled furiously
at the four troopers just at the rear of the
colors. They had lost distance and made a
little gap, but at the shouts of the lieutenant
they urged their horses forward. The bugler,
careering along behing the captain of the
troop, fought and tugged like a wrestler
to keep his frantic animal from bolting
far ahead of the column.
i On the springy turf the innumerable
hoofs thundered in a swift storm of sound.
In the brown faces of the troopers their
eyes were set like bits of flashing steel.
The long line of the infantry regiments
standing at ease underwent a sudden
movement at the rush of the passing squad-
ron. The foot soldiers turned their heads
to gaze at the torrent of horses and men.
The yellow folds of the flag fluttered back
in silken, shuddering waves as if it were a
reluctant thing. Occasionally a giant spring
of a charger would rear the firm and sturdy
figure of a soldier suddenly head and
shoulders above his comrades. Over the
noise of the scudding hoofs could be heard
the creaking of leather trappings, the
jingle and clank of steel, and the tense, low-
toned commands or appeals of the men to
their horses. And the horses were mad with
the headlong sweep of this movement.
Powerful underjaws bent back and straight-
ened so that the bits were clamped as
rigidly as vices upon the teeth, and glistening
necks arched in desperate resistance to the
hands at the bridles. Swinging their heads in
rage at the granite laws of their lives, which
compelled even their angers and their
1 Reprinted from T/ie Little Regiment by Stephen
Crane with the permission of, and by special arrange-
ment with, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., the authorized
publishers.
ardors to cliosen directions and chosen faces,
their flight was as a flight of harnessed
demons.
The captain's bay kept its pace at the
head of the scjuadron with the lithe bounds
of a thoroughbred, and this horse was proud
as a chief at the roaring trample of his
fellows behind him. The captain's glance
was calmly upon the grove of maples whence
the sharpshooters of the enemy had been
picking at the blue line. He seemed to be
reflecting. He stolidly rose and fell with the
plunges of his horse in all the indifference of
a deacon's figure seated plumply in church.
And it occurred to many of the watching
infantry to wonder why this officer could
remain imperturbable and reflective when
his squadron was thundering and swanning
behind him like the rushing of a flood.
The column swung in a saber-curve to-
ward a break in a fence, and dashed into a
roadway. Once a little plank bridge was en-
countered, and the sound of the hoofs upon
it was like the long roll of many drums. An
old captain in the infantry turned to his
first lieutenant and made a remark which
was a compound of bitter disparagement of
cavalry in general and soldierly admiration
of this particular troop.
Suddenly the bugle sounded, and the
column halted with a jolting upheaval amid
sharp, brief cries. A moment later the men
had tumbled from their horses, and, carbines
in hand, were running in a swarm toward the
grove of maples. In the road one of every
four of the troopers was standing with
braced legs, and pulling and hauling at the
bridles of four frenzied horses.
The captain was running awkwardly in his
boots. He held his saber low so that the point
often threatened to catch in the turf. His
yellow hair rufiied out from under his faded
cap. "Go in hard now!" he roared, in a voice
of hoarse fury. His face was violently red.
The troopers threw themselves upon the
grove like wolves upon a great animal.
Along the whole front of woods there was the
dry, crackling of musketry, with bitter,
swift flashes and smoke that writhed like
stung phantoms. The troopers yelled shrilly
and spanged bullets low into the foliage.
Eor a moment, when near the woods, the
line almost halted. The men struggled and
fought for a time like swimmers encountering
358
STKPHEN CRANK
a powerful current. I Inn with a sujireine
effort they went on a^ain. They dashed
madly at the grove, whose foliage from the
high light of the field was as inscrutable as a
wall.
Then suddenly each detail of the calm
trees became apparent, and with a few more
frantic leaps the men were in the cool gloom
of the woods. There was a heavy odor as
from burned paper. Wisps of gray smoke
wound upward. The men halted and,
grimy, perspiring, and puffing, they searched
the recesses of the woods with eager, fierce
glances. Pigures could be seen flitting afar
off. A do/en carbines rattled at them in an
angry volley.
During this pause the captain strode along
the line, his face lit with a broad smile of
contentment. "When he sends this crowd to
do anything, 1 guess he'll find we do it pretty
sharp," he said to the grinning lieutenant.
"Say, they didn't stand that rush a
minute, did they.'"' said the subaltern.
Both officers were profoundly dusty in their
uniforms, and their faces were soiled like
those of two urchins.
Out in the grass behind them were three
tumbled and silent forms.
WILLIAM CRARY BROWNELL (1851- )
Mr. Brownell was born in New York on 30 August, 1851. He was graduated from Amherst
College In 1871, and since then has received two honorary degrees from that institution, as well as
another from Columbia University. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and
Letters. In 1879 he joined the staff of the New York Nation, and remained in that position for sev-
eral years. Shortly thereafter he became a literary adviser of Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, and
has continued since to hold this post. Mr. Brownell has devoted himself wholly to criticism, and has
published a number of volumes each of which is a weighty and valuable contribution to this field of
literature. Their titles and dates of publication are: French Traits, An Essay in Comparative Criticism
(1889), French Art, Classic and Contemporary Pai?iting and Sculpture (1892), Victorian Prose Mas-
ters (1901; essays on Thackeray, Carlyle, George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, Ruskin, and George Mere-
dith), American Prose Masters (1909; essays on Cooper, Hawthorne, Emerson, Poe, Lowell, and
Henry James), Criticism (1914), Standards (1917), and The Genius of Style (1924).
Depreciation of criticism has doubtless flourished among disappointed writers and artists since the
dawn of history, but it was an unfortunate aspect of the romantic movement of the first years of the
nineteenth century that it tended to encourage such depreciation on the part of the whole reading pub-
lic. For the reading public in immediately following years was being rapidly enlarged, thanks to
cheap printing and popular education, while the new members' bumptious self-confidence, born of
ignorance, was also being encouraged from another quarter by the spread of equalitarian political
doctrine. The result was a chaos of mediocrity and vulgarity masquerading as literature, accom-
panied by a stubborn contempt for criticism and, of course, for critics. It was not realized that, as
Mr. Brownell has observed, "some standard is a necessary postulate, not only of all criticism, but of
all discussion or even discourse." It was not realized — is perhaps not yet sufficiently realized — that
criticism is really an important division of literature, essential to its fruitful development and likewise
essential to the growth of culture and even, indeed, to the continuance of a high level of civilization.
Despite misunderstanding and opposition, however, significant criticism early made its appearance
in America, in the work of Emerson and Poe; and it is one of the most encouraging signs of the
present day, full of meaning for the future of literature and art and culture in the United States,
that in recent years criticism has had a great development, in the hands of a few contemporaries
attaining a classic strength and weight and depth which enable it to court and survive comparison
with the best criticism of any other age or country. This recent development of a fully informed,
mature, reflective criticism is, in fact, one of the most significant aspects of American literature since,
let us say, 1890.
Mr. Brownell's contributions to this difiicult art are of a very distinguished order, and he has
himself clearly stated his conception of its function: "Criticism . . . may not inej^actly be described
as the statement of the concrete in terms of the abstract. It is its function to discern and characterize
the abstract qualities informing the concrete expression of the artist. Every important piece of lit-
erature, as every important work of plastic art, is the expression of a personality, and it is not the
material of it, but the mind behind it, that invites critical interpretation. Materially speaking, it is
its own interpretation. The concrete absorbs the constructive artist whose endeavor is to give sub-
stance to his idea, which until expressed is an abstraction. The concern of criticism is to measure
his success by the correspondence of his expression to the idea it suggests and by the value of the idea
itself." "The true objects of" the critic's "contemplation are the multifarious elements of truth,
beauty, goodness, and their approximations and antipodes, underlying the various phenomena which
express them, rather than the laws and rules peculiar to each form of phenomenal expression; which,
beyond acquiring the familiarity needful for adequate appreciation, he may leave to the professional
didacticism of each. And in thus confining itself to the art and eschewing the science of whatever
forms its subject — mindful mainly of no science, indeed, except its own — criticism is enabled to extend
its field while restricting its function, and to form a distinct province of literature, while relinquishing
encroachments upon the territory of more exclusively constructive art." {Criticism, pp. 16-17, 18.)
359
^6o
WILLIAM CRAin' BROWNKLL
COOPER
The literary standard of his coiintryiiuii
is undoubtedly far hij^her than it was in
Cooper's own day. No writer at present
with a tenth of his ability would commit his
literary faults — faults for which the standard
of his day is largely responsible, since it was
oblivious to them and since they are precisely
those which any widely accepted standard
would automatically correct. In other words,
Cooper wrote as well as, and builded better
than, any one required of him — and though
genius, ex hypothesis escapes the operation of
evolutionary law, literary or any other
artistic expression is almost as much a matter
of supply and demand as railroads or any
other means of communication; the demand,
that is, produces, controls, and gives its
character to the supply. The theory that
art is due to artists leaves the origin of artists
unexplained.
But it is a depressing phenomenon in
current American letters that our standard,
though satisfactorily higher, should be applied
with so little intelligence and elasticity, so
mechanically. It is widely held, and the
puniest whipsters flourish it like a falchion
when they play at soldiers — our popular
literary game at present, it sometimes seems.
It is not to deny that this diversion has its
uses to assert that it has its limitations. To
have popularized a high literary standard is
an accomplishment of which American letters
may well be proud. Indeed it is, perhaps,
the result of which hitherto — a few eminent
names excepted — it has most reason to be
proud. And no doubt there is still reason to
hope that our high popular standard may
become even higher and more popular than
it is! Meantime one would like to see its
application more elastic, less mechanical.
The way in which it has been applied to the
detriment of Cooper's fame, has been not
merely unintelligent but thoroughly dis-
creditable. F'or Cooper, from any point of*
view, is one of the most distinguished of our
literary assets, and there is something ludi-
crous in being before all the world — as,
assuredly, we sometimes are — in recognizing
1 Reprinted from American Prose Masters with the
permission of Messrs. Charles Scribncr's Sons.
our own merit where it is contestable and in
neglecting it where it is not.
It is only superficially remarkable that
Cooper should ha\e been over thirty when
he wrote his first story. Had he possessed
the native temperament of the literary artist,
he certainly would not have deferred ex-
perimentation so long. Nor would he,
probably, if he had had to cast about for a
livelihood, or if his environment had been
other than it was. But to determine the
literary vocation of a man of literary genius,
yet nevertheless a man who had been occupied
in wholly unliterary pursuits until so ripe a
maturity as his, the accident of a whim was
not only an appropriate but altogether the
most natural cause. Precaution was the
result of such an accident. It has no other
merit, but it established the fact, which
apparently he had never suspected, that he
had the gift of improvisation; and when
he found his material, in his next book, he
produced a work that established his repu-
tation as a writer of romance. He did much
better, as he did far worse, afterward, but
The Spy is eminently characteristic. It
betrays his faults — very nearly all of them,
I think — and most of his virtues. It sig-
nalized the entrance into the field of romance,
in the fullness of untried but uncommon
powers, of a born story-teller. This he was
first of all. Some of his stories are dull, but
they are never not stories. He belongs,
accordingly, in the same category with Scott
and Dumas and George Sand, and in general
the writers whose improvising imagination
is a conspicuous if not their preponderant
faculty — a faculty which, though it may
sometimes weary others, seems itself never
to tire.
To be one of the great romancers of the
world is, in itself, a distinction. But there is
more than one kind of romance, and Cooper's
has the additional interest of reality. It is
based on very solid substance. It is needless
to say that it has no interest of literary form
— such as distinguishes, though it may not
preserve, the exhilarating sophistication of
Stevenson. It quite lacks the spiritual fancy
of Hawthorne, the inventive extravagance of
Foe, the verve of Dumas's opulent irresponsi-
bility, the reach and scope of Scott's massive
imaginativeness, the richness and beauty of
George Sand's poetic improvisation. It has,
COOl^P.R
361
however, on its side a certain aclvantaj;c in
being absolutely native to its material.
More than any other writer of "tales"
Cooper fused romance and realism. His
books are flights of the imagination, strictly
so-called, and at the same time the human
documents which it has been left to a later
age thus to label. 7 here is not a character,
not an incident, in Cooper that could be
accused of exaggeration from the standpoint
of rationality. And yet the breeze of ad-
venture blows through his pages as if he
had no care whatever for truth and fact.
Second, no doubt, to Scott in romantic
imaginativeness, he is even his superior in the
illusion which gives his books an unpreten-
tious and convincing air of relating rather
than of inventing, of keeping within bounds
and essaying no literary flights — of, as Arnold
said in eulogy of German poetry, "going near
the ground."
II
The circumstances of his life explain the
characteristics of his books with even more
completeness than circumstances — as has
now become a commonplace — explain every-
thing, and constitute as well as alter cases.
He had little systematic education. His
character v^^as developed and affirmed before
his mind was either trained or stored. His
taste naturally suffered. Taste is the product
of tradition, and of tradition he was quite
independent, quite ignorant. Fortunately,
he was also ignorant of its value, and when
at thirty he began to produce literature his
energy was unhampered by diffidence. But
it was inevitable that the literature he pro-
duced should be extremely unliterary, and
noticeably so in proportion to its power. The
fact that he was thirty before he took up his
pen is proof enough that he was not a literary
genius, proof enough, indeed, that his talent
was not distinctively a literary talent. He
had not even a tincture of bookishness. Of
the art of literature he had perhaps never
heard. It was quite possible in his day —
singular as it may seem in ours — not to hear
of it. He indulged in no youthful experi-
mentation in it, unlike Irving. He left school
early and was a sailor, a man of business, a
gentleman of more or less leisure — enough,
at all events, to encourage a temperament
that was aristocratic and critical, and not in
the least speculative, adventurous, and
aesthetic.
What encouragement the literary temper-
ament could find, too, in the America of his
youth is well known. The conditions drove
Irving abroad, and made a recluse of Haw-
thorne. Cooper throve under them. They
suited his genius, and when he had once
started he worked freely in them. He was
personally interested in life, in people, in
social and political phenomena, in American
history and promise, American traits as
already determined, American ideas and
"institutions," in the country itself, its lakes
and woods and plains and seashore, its
mountains and rivers, as well as its cities
and "settlements" — as Leatherstocking calls
them. At least until he began The Spy he
had never thought of all this as "material,"
if, indeed, he ever did afterward — in the
express and aesthetic sense in which, for
example, Stevenson would have regarded it.
He was its historian, its critic, its painter, in
his own view. He classed his books as works
of the imagination in the rather conventional
and limited sense in virtue of which fiction is
necessarily, and by definition, imaginative.
His "art" was for him the art of story-telling,
in which the characters and incidents are
imagined instead of being real. That his
fiction was imaginative rather than merely
imagined, I mean, probably never occurred
to him. He never philosophized about it
at all, and as he began it by conscious imita-
tion of convention, continued it conven-
tionally, so far as his procedure was conscious.
As he wrote Precaution to determine whether
or no he "could write a novel," he wrote
The Pilot to prove that he could write a
more seamanlike tale than The Pirate of
Scott. He continued to write story after
story, because he had made a success of
story-telling, and demonstrated it to be his
vocation.
Hut story-telling did not absorb his in-
terests. He wrote other things, too. He has
decided rank as a publicist. And he spoiled
some of his novels by his preoccupations of
that kind — although, indeed, he gave value
and solidity to others of them in the same
way; The Bravo is, for example, as strong a
story as The Ways of the Hour is weak.
Distinctly what we should call "unliterary,"
362
WILLIAM CRAin' HROWNELL
however, his point of view remained, as it had
been at the outset. Without tlie poetic or
artistic temperament — at least in sufficiently
controlling force to stimulate self-expression
before almost middle life — he subsisted in an
environment, both personal and national,
so hostile to the aesthetic and academic as to
color what manifestations of these it suffered
at all with a decidedly provincial tinge. The
conjunction was fortunate. If it was re-
sponsible for a long list of the most unliterary
works by any writer of eminence in any
literature — as I suppose Cooper's may be
called — it nevertheless produced an author of
acknowledged power and indisputable orig-
inality, whose force and vitality are as
markedly native and personal as their various
manifestations are at times superficial, care-
less, and conventional. In a word. Cooper
was, if not a great writer, a man of con-
spicuously large mental and moral stature, of
broad vision, of wide horizon, of independent
philosophy.
His prolixity is perhaps his worst fault;
it is, at all events, the source of the worst
fault his novels have, the heaviest handicap
a novel can have — namely, their tedium.
To begin with, hardly one of them is without
its tiresome character. Not a few have
more than one. Few of his best characters
avoid tedium at times; at times even
Leatherstocking is a bore. Cooper must
himself, in actual life, have been fond of
bores. Perhaps his irascibility was soothed
by studying this particular foible of his
fellows. The trait is to be suspected in
other writers of fiction; Scott, for example.
For my own part, I recall no character in
Cooper as tiresome as some of "Scott's
bores," as they are proverbially called.
Cooper, however, in this respect is, in
general, unsurpassed. The Scotch doctor
in The Spy, the Dutch father in The Water-
Witchy the Italian disputants in Wing-and-
Wingy the crack-brained psalmodist in The
Last of the Alohicans — but it is idle to
specify, the list is too long.
It is true that to represent a bore ade-
quately a novelist can hardly avoid making
him tiresome. That is his raison d'etre, and
for a novelist nihil humani can be alienum.
But Terence himself would have modified his
maxim if he could have foreseen Cooper's
addiction to this especial genius. And, as
I say, some of the best and most Interesting
of his personages prose at times interminably;
the Pathfinder talking about his own and
Killdeer's merits at the prize-shooting, not a
few, indeed, of the deliverances of this star
character of Cooper's entire company are
hard to bear. And both the bores who are
— so explicitly and, thus, exhaustively —
exhibited as such and the non-bores who
nevertheless so frequently bore us have the
painful and monotonous family resemblance
of all being tiresome in one way — in prolixity.
They are really not studied very closely as
bores or as occasionally tiresome personages,
but are extremely simplified by being repre-
sented merely as long-winded. No shades of
character, no particular and Individual
weaknesses are illustrated by their prolixity.
Their prolixity is itself the trait that dis-
tinguishes them.
The conclusion is inevitable that his char-
acters are often so prolix and often such
prolix characters because — which also we
know to be the fact — Cooper himself was.
Speaking of the unreadable Mercedes of
Castile, Professor Lounsbury truly says that
the author is as long getting under way with
his story as Columbus himself was in arrang-
ing for his voyage. And though this in-
explicable novel is probably his dullest, there
are few others that do not contain long
passages whose redundancy is remorseless.
He has no standards. He feels no respon-
sibility. He never thinks of the reader.
He follows his own inclination completely,
quite without concern for company, one must
conclude. There was no tribunal whose
judgments he had to consider; there was
no censure to be dreaded, no praise he had
to try to earn by being other than his own
disposition prompted, by being more simple,
more concise, more respectful of the reader's
intelligence — no ideal of perfection, in short,
at which the pressure of current criticism
constrained him to aim. And of technical
perfection in any but its broadest details —
such as general composition and construction
— he had no notion. His pace was leisurely,
because such was his habit of mind, and
there was nothing extraneous to hasten it.
He lingered because he liked to, and his
public was not impatient. He repeated be-
cause he enjoyed repetition, and there was
no one to wince at it. He was as elaborate in
COOPER
363
commonplace as the dilettante can be in
paradox because novelty as such did not
attract nor familiarity repel either himself or
his public. As to literary standards, the
times have certainly changed since his day.
In literary performance there is perhaps an
occasional reminder that the tendency to
prolixity still subsists. And in actual life!
— but, of course, changes in the macrocosm
are naturally more gradual.
Yet even our own time may profitably in-
quire how it is that Cooper's popularity has
triumphed so completely over so grave a
fault. Largely, I think, it is due to the fact
that the fault is a "literary'* — that is to say,
a technical — defect, and is counterbalanced
by the vitality and largeness of the work of
which it, too, is a characteristic. It is far
from negligible. On the contrary, it is,
however accounted for, the chief obstacle
that prevents Cooper from attaining truly
classic rank — the rank never quite attained
by any one destitute of the sense of form, the
feeling for perfection which is what makes
art artistic, however inane or insubstantial it
may be. But Cooper's technical blemishes
are in no danger of being neglected. As
Thackeray said impatiently of Macaulay's,
"What critic can't point them out?" To
point out Cooper's is so easy that his critics
are singularly apt to sag into caricature in the
process. Nevertheless, though it is in-
dubitable that his prolixity is a grave defect,
it is important to remember that it is a
formal rather than a substantial one, and
that in popular esteem it has been more than
counterbalanced by compensations of sub-
stance. What is less evident, but what is still
more worth indicating, is that there is,
speaking somewhat loosely, a certain artistic
fitness in his difFuseness, and that this is
probably the main reason why it has so
slightly diminished not only his popularity,
but his legitimate fame. It is, in a word, and
except in its excess, an element of his illusion.
And in a sense, thus, it is rather a quality
than a defect of his work. His illusion is
incontestable. No writer of romance has
more. It is simply impossible to praise him
too highly here. And where the effect is so
plainly secured one may properly divine some
native felicity in the cause, however, ab-
stractly considered, inadequate to anythmg
such a cause may seem.
Ill
Cooper is usually called the American
Scott in a sense that implies his indebtedness
to Scott as a model and a master. His
romances are esteemed imitations of the
Waverley Novels, differing from their orig-
inals as all imitations do in having less
energy, less spontaneity — of necessity, there-
fore, less originality. This is to consider mere
surface resemblance. How much or how
little Cooper owed to Scott is a question for
the literary historian rather than the critic.
Doubtless he copied Scott in various prac-
tical ways. Romance had received a stamp,
a cacheU from Scott that, devoted to the
same genre^ it was impossible to ignore.
Scott's own derivation may be defined quite
as clearly, and the record of it is, like similar
studies, one that has its uses. But for other
than didactic purposes it is the contrast
rather than the resemblance, even, between
him and Cooper that is pertinent. It is mis-
leading to compare them — in any sense
which implies that Cooper's originality is in
any way inferior. It is idle to characterize so
voluminous a writer as imitative. Whatever
its initial impetus imitation will not furnish
the momentum for forty volumes. Cooper's
inspiration is as genuine, his zest as great, his
genius as individual, as Scott's own. He was
less of an artist. He was nothing at all of a
poet — at least, in any constructional sense.
It is simply impossible to fancy him essaying
verse. Even balladry, even rhyming, is
beyond him.
Tunstall lies dead upon the field,
His life-blood stains the spotless shield;
— there is not a note like that in his equipment.
For a writer of romance the defect is grave.
Nor did he know the world of society as Scott
knew it. Any one who can take literally
Scott's generous compliment to Miss Austen
must never have read St. Ronans Well.
Neither did he inhabit the same world of the
imagination. If he had far less temperament
he had also far less culture. His environment
forbade it; and he lived in the present. His
conservatism was a rationalized liberalism —
nothing akin to the instinctive toryism that
made it natural for Scott to poetize history.
And consequently his environment and his
genius combined to confine him in the main
3^4
WILLIAM CRAkV HROWNELL
to a field \\ Imh, Iiowcver intcrestin<2, in itself,
is iiKoiittstahly inferior to the grandiose
theater of Scott's fiction. A sjiiendid his-
torical paji;eant winds its way thr()iij;h the
VVaverley Novels, with which nothing; that
the pioneer America of Cooper's day furnished
could compare.
It is, indeed, in his material that Cooper
presents the greatest possihie contrast to
Scott. It is vain, I think, for American
chauvinism itself to deny that our civilization
is less romantic than an older one, than that
of Europe. To begin with, it has less back-
ground, and, as Stevenson pointed out,
romanticism in literature largely consists in
consciousness of the background. Nothing,
it is true, is more romantic than nature,
except nature plus man. But the exception
is prodigious. Nature in Cooper counts as
romantically as she does in Scott, but it is
nature without memories, without monu-
ments, without associations. Man, too,
with him, though counting on the whole as
romantically, does not count as background.
His figures are necessarily foreground figures.
They are not relieved against the wonderful
tapestry of the past. In a word, there is
necessarily little history in Cooper. Of course,
there is The Bravo^ as admirable a tale as
Mercedes of Castile is an unprofitable one.
But the mass of Cooper's most admirable
accomplishment is thoroughly and for-
tunately American, and compared with
Europe America has no history. Scott's
material in itself, thus, constitutes an incon-
testable romantic superiority. For fiction
history provides offhand a whole world for
the exercise of the imagination.
It may undoubtedly be urged that a
romantic situation is such in virtue of its
elements and not of its associations; that the
escape of Uncas from the Hurons in The Last
of the Mohicans is as romantic as Edward
Waverley's visit to the cave of Donald Bean
Lean. Or to consider more profoundly, it
may be said that, looking within, Hawthorne
found in the spiritual drama of New England
Puritanism the very quintessence of the
romantic, thrown into all the sharper relief
by its excessively austere and arid environ-
ment— that is to say, by a featureless and
thoroughly wnromantic background. Still,
in considering the mass of a writer's work its
romantic interest is not to be admeasured
mainly by its situations, or its psychology, but
by the texture of its entire fabric. And owing
to its wealth of imaginative association,
the romance of the Waverley Novels is in-
dubitably deeper, richer, more important
than that of the Leatherstocking Tales.
Bernardin de Saint Pierre passes for the
father of French literary romanticism, for
instance, but it can be only in a purely
poetic or very technical sense that Paul et
Virginie can be called as romantically im-
portant as The Cloister and the Hearth.
There is a quality in Cooper's romance,
however, that gives it as romance an almost
unique distinction. I mean its solid alliance
with reality. It is thoroughly romantic, and
yet — very likely owing to his imaginative
deficiency, if anything can be so owing — it
produces, for romance, an almost unequaled
illusion of life itself. This writer, one says to
one's self, who was completely unconscious
of either the jargon or the philosophy of
*' art," and who had but a primitively romantic
civilization to deal with, has, nevertheless,
in this way produced the rarest, the happiest,
artistic result. He looked at his material as
so much life; it interested him because of
the human elements it contained. Scott
viewed his through an incontestably more
artistic temperament, as romantic material.
Quentin Durzvard is, it is true, a masterpiece
and, to take an analogous novel of Cooper's,
IVie Bravo is not; the presentation of the
latter's substance is not masterly enough to
answer the requirements of a masterpiece;
the substance itself is far less important than
the splendid historical picture, with its
famous historical portraits, that Scott has
painted in his monumental work. But Scott
was inspired, precisely, by the epic poten-
tialities for painting and portraiture of the
struggle between Louis and Charles and
its extraordinarily picturesque accessories.
Cooper's theme was the effect of oligarchical
tyranny on the social and political life of
Venice at the acme of her fame and glory.
Humanly speaking. The Bravo has more
meaning. Historical portraiture aside, I do
not think there is in Quentin Durzvard the
sense of actual life and its significance that
one gets from the tragedy of Jacopo Fron-
toni's heroic story and the picture of the
vicious Venetian state whose sway corrupted
"alike the ruler and the ruled" and where
COOPER
3^5
"each lived for himself." The gist of the
latter book is more serious; it is conceived
more in the modern manner; it is not a mere
panorama of medieval panoply and per-
formance, but a romance with a thesis — at
least so much of a thesis as any highly con-
centrated epoch must suggest to a thinking
and reflective, instead of a merely seeing
and feeling, student of its phenomena.
Cooper's genius was a thinking and re-
flective one. He was certainly not a medi-
tative philosopher, but it was life that
interested him and not story-telling as such,
even if he might at times get less life and
more convention into his books than a
romancer piir sang. The essence oi his
romance is that there is no routine in his
substance — only in its presentation. His
central theme, his main substance, is, like
Scott's, his native land. As a romancer his
whole attitude toward the pioneer civilization
he depicted was one of sympathetic and
intelligent interest. He was an observer,
a spectator, sufficiently detached to view his
subject in the requisite perspective. Some
of it he caricatured, and he was oppressively
didactic in some of his poorer books. But
that proceeded from his constitutional
limitations as an artist. On the whole his
general and personal interest in the life he
depicted makes his account of it solider art,
gives his romance even, as I said, more
substance and meaning than Scott's histori-
ography. It is more nearly "criticism of
life" than the result of a romantic tempera-
ment dealing in a purely romantic way with
purely romantic elements can be. It is true
that Tory as he was, Scott held the balance
very true in his pictures of the Cavalier and
Roundhead, the Stuart and Hanoverian,
contests. But there is more of the philosophy
of the latter struggle in The Tzuo Admirals
than there is in JFaverley itself.
In IVaverley the romantic element of the
struggle i)etween the legitimist and the
legitimate parties, as we may say, is power-
fully set forth, the passionate ardor of the
one and the practical good sense of the other
eflfectively contrasted, though largely by
indirection and in an accessory way. In
Wyandotte the antagonism between Tory and
patriot, between the British and the American
partisan, is given far more relief. It is not
used merely as a romantic element, tragically
dividing a household as it does, but exhibited
as a clash of states of mind, of feeling, of
conscience, of tradition. It is the subject, or
at least a part of the subject, not mainly a
contribution to its color. The reader notes
the reasons that made Major Willoughby a
loyalist and Captain Beekman a patriot.
The book is a picture of the times, as well as
a story, in presenting not only the action but
the thinking of the times. One remarks in it
that there were "issues" then as well as
events. And, of course, with Cooper's note-
worthy largeness they are presented with due
impartiality, and in this way, too, acquire a
sense of verisimilitude and a value that treat-
ment of them as solely romantic elements
could not secure.
And in the way of pure romance — romance
quite independent of any associations of time
and place^there are novels of Cooper that
are unsurpassed. For an example of this
element, in virtue of which, after all, Cooper's
tales have made the tour of the world, take
the introductory book of the famous Leather-
stocking Tales. The Deerslayer is, indeed,
a delightful romance, full of imaginative
interest, redolent of the woods, compact of
incident, and alive with suspense. How
many times has the genuine lover of Cooper
paid it the tribute of a rereading? For such
a reader every small lake in the woods is a
Glimmerglass; around its points might at
any moment appear one of old Hutter's
canoes; at any moment down on yonder
sand-spit Le Loup Cervier might issue from
the underbrush; in a clearing beyond the
nearer tree-tops the Deerslayer might so
easily be bound to the stake, be looking into
the rifle barrel of his torturer — reassured by
his expert knowledge and sang-froid to note
its ever so slight deflection from a fatal aim!
Treasure Island? A literary tour de force,
not only suspiciously clever (aside from the
admirable beginning), but so rigorously
romantic, so little illusory! La Dame de
MonsoreauF Pure melodrama, impossible of
realization even on the stage, its unreality
certain of exposure even by the friendly
histrionic test. Quite without the aid of a
"literary" presentation, quite without the
supplement of historic suggestion and a
monumental background, the romance of
The Deerslayer is, nevertheless, so intrinsic,
so essential, and so pervasive as to give the
366
WILTJAM CRARV BROWNELL
work conimnndinp; rnnk in its class. No
tinsel, literary or otlur, accentuates its
simplicity, and no footlii^lit illumination
colors its freshness. Cooper is hardly to be
called a poet, as I have said. Yet The
Deerslayer s romance is, in the net impression
it leaves, in the resultant effect of its extra-
ordinary visualization of wild and lovely
material, as poetic as Chateaubriand's, and
fully as effective as that of any work of Scott.
IV
The verisimilitude of Cooper's Indians has
been the main point of attack of his cari-
caturing critics. None of them has failed to
have his flinp; at this. It is extraordinary
what a convention his assumed idealization
of the Indian has become. I say extraor-
dinary, because it is the fact that the so-called
"noble red man/* whom he is popularly
supposed to have invented, does not exist in
his books at all. Successful or not, his
Indians, like his other characters, belong to
the realm of attempted portraiture of racial
types, and are, in intention, at all events, in
no wise purely romantic creations.
If they were they would, of course, be
superabundantly justified. Ethnology might
be reminded that fiction is, to some extent,
at least, outside its jurisdiction. The claims
of history are far higher, but only a pedant
sneers at Ivanhoe, in which Freeman asserted
there was an error on every page, though
this is undeniably regrettable; and, in recent
times, certainly, the great Dumas is not
asked to be otherwise, though a reader here
and there may be found who would give him
higher rank had he been something other.
The introduction into literature of the North
American Indian, considered merely as a
romantic element, was an important event
in the history of fiction. He was an unpre-
cedented and a unique figure — at least on
the scale and with the vividness with which
he is depicted in Cooper, for the Indians of
Mrs. Behn and Voltaire and Chateaubriand
can in comparison hardly be said to count
at all. \ hey are incarnated abstractions
didactically inspired for the most part;
L'Ingenu, the virtuous, for example, being
no more than an expedient for the contrasted
exhibition of civilized vices. But Cooper's
Indians, whatever their warrant in truth,
were notable actors in the picturesque drama
of pioneer storm and stress. They stand out
in individual as well as racial relief, like his
other personages, American, English, French,
and Italian, and discharge their roles in
idiosyncratic, as well as in energetic, fashion.
lo object to them on the ground that, like
Don Quixote and Athos, the Black Knight
and Saladin, Uncle Toby and Dalgetty, they
are ideal types without actual analogues
would be singularly ungracious.
However, they are not ideal types, but
depend for their validity in large degree on
their reality of portraiture as well as on their
romantic interest. As I say, they stand
on the same ground as Cooper's other char-
acters, and share with them the seriousness a
close correspondence to life gives to fiction
that has a realistic basis, however great its
romantic interest may also be. They are
not in the least "ideal" personages. Cooper
does not, to be sure, take quite the cowboy
view of the Indian, and people with a smat-
tering of pioneering who regard the cowboy
as an expert in Indians and echo his opinion
that "the only good Indian is a dead one,"
may find him unduly discriminating. Still,
the cowboy's ethnological experience is,
after all, limited, and the frontiersman of
recent years has had to deal not with the
Indian of the time of Cooper's tales, but with
his descendants demoralized by contact with
his censors, to say nothing of the "century of
dishonor." Cooper's view is certainly that
the Indian is human. But the fact which is
so generally lost sight of is that the "noble
red man" — the fictitious character he is
charged with inventing — is a stranger to his
pages. In general he endows the Indian with
traits that would be approved as authentic
even by the ranchman, the rustler, or the
army officer. His Indians are in the main
epitomized in Magua. And in the mass the
race is depicted pretty much as Hawkeye
conceived the Mingoes of the Mohawk
Valley and Leatherstocking the Sioux of the
prairies — "varmints" one and all. The
exceptions are few. There are the Delawares,
Chingachgook and Uncas, Conanchet, and
the Pawnee Hardheart — hardly any others
of importance. And the "goodness" of
these is always carefully characterized as siii
generis. The difl^^erence between their moral
"gifts," as Leatherstocking often enough
ax)ia^:R
3^7
points out, and those of the white man is
always made to appear as radical. The
most "idealized" of them is shown as pos-
sessing passions and governed by a code that
sharply distinguish him from a white of
analogous superiority to his fellows. Nor is
his ability exaggerated. In spite of his
special senses, developed by his life in peace
and war, his woodcraft and physical prowess,
when it comes to the pinch in any case his
inferiority to the white man is generally
marked. So far from being untruthful
idealizations Cooper's little group of "good
Indians" is in both quality and importance
considerably below what a writer not actuated
by the truly realistic purpose that was always
his would be justified in depicting as repre-
sentative of the best specimens of the Indian
race. The history of this country abounds in
figures from Massasoit to Brant, from Osceola
to Joseph, of moral and mental stature hardly
emulated by any of Cooper's aborigines.
The only approach to them is in the sage
Tamenund of the Lenni Lenape, who is
introduced at a great age, and with failing
faculties almost extinct. Chingachgook
dies a drunkard as old Indian John. Uncas
is slain when a mere youth, before his
character is thoroughly developed. Con-
anchet proves untamable by the best of
white influences. Wyandotte preserves his
fundamental treachery and vengefulness
through years of faithful service to the
family to which he is attached. Catlin,
who passed his life among the Indians, took a
far more favorable view of them.
The truth is that not only is Indian char-
acter not misrepresented by Cooper, at least
in being idealized, but his Indian characters
are as carefully studied and as successfully
portrayed as his white ones. Their psy-
chology even is set forth with as much defi-
nition. They are as much personalities and
differ from each other as much. Represen-
tatives of a single tribe have their marked
individual differences. The Hurons Rivenoak
and Le Renard Subtil have but a family
resemblance. With the naturally greater
simplicity of the savage they are, neverthe-
less, not represented without the com-
plexities that constitute and characterize the
individual. The Tuscarora who enters the
room where a mortal struggle is taking place,
extinguishes the light, and, one against a
dozen, slays the enemies of the white house-
hold he serves, in a fray as dramatic as, and
far more credible than, the famous fatal
fight of the Chevalier de Bussy, is a genuine
hero. Yet he is the same man who, for
injustice long since forgotten by all but
himself, murders his benefactor in absolute
cold blood. And the inconsistency is not
an anomaly. It is an Indian trait. In short,
Cooper's Indians are at once Indians to the
core, and thoroughly individualized as well.
The "stock" Indian is no more to be found
in his books than the "ideal" primitive hero.
He has added to the traditional material of
romance an entire race of human beings,
possessing in common the romantic elements
of strangeness and savagery, but also illus-
trating a distinctive and coherent racial
character.
V
"If Cooper," said Balzac, "had succeeded
in the painting of character as well as he did
in the painting of the phenomena of nature
he would have uttered the last word of our
art." The phenomena of nature considered
as material for literary art probably seem
less important, less apt, at any rate, now-
adays than they did in Balzac's time. In
France especially the generation to which
Chateaubriand remained an Inspiration
esteemed them in a degree that appears to us
exaggerated. They were much more of a
novelty, to begin with. The eighteenth
century, even in England, had certainly little
minded them. And certainly they are well
handled by Cooper. Nowhere else has prose
rendered the woods and the sea so vividly,
so splendidly, so adequately — and so simply.
Too much can hardly be said of this element
of the sea stories and the Leatherstocking
Fales. But there is a peculiarity in Cooper's
view and treatment of nature. Nature was
to him a grandiose manifestation of the
Creator's benevolence and power, a vision of
beauty and force unrolled by Omnipotence,
but a panorama, not a presence. There
was nothmg Wordsworthian, nothing pan-
theistic in his feeling for her — for "it" he
would have said. No flower ever gave him
thoughts that lay too deep for tears. He
was at one with nature as Dr. Johnson was
with London. There is something extremely
tonic and natural in the simplicity of such an
368
WILLIAM CRAR^' liROWNKLL
attitude, and as :» romancer the reality and
soundness of it stood Cooper in pood stead.
It is due to it that nature in his books is an
environment, an actual medium, in which his
personages live and move rather than a
background against which they are relieved,
or a rival to which their interest yields. It
is the theater of their action. It simply never
occurs to Cooper to "paint the phenomena of
nature" except as thus related to his people
or their story — though generally more closely
related than an accessory, and never less
so than an atmosphere. But he knew the
sea and the woods, and felt them as no other
romancer has ever done, and he made such
distinguished use of them as abundantly to
merit Balzac's eulogy.
To say, however, that he did not succeed in
the painting of character as in a domain
wherein he was unrivaled is not to depreciate
his portraiture. And certainly Balzac's
meaning is merely that in the one field his
excellence was unique and in the other it was
not. Balzac, moreover, exaggerated, as I
have intimated, the value for fiction of
painting the phenomena of nature; he meant
his praise to be very high praise indeed, and
it would greatly have surprised him, we may
be sure, to have had any one, as has since
been done, take his reference to Cooper's
powers of portraiture as depreciatory, as a
putting of his finger on Cooper's weak point.
He adored Cooper. His admiration of him
was not undiscriminating — any more than
any other of his admirations. But his en-
thusiasm for him at his best — even at his
second best — was unbounded. The Path-
fijidcTy says his latest biographer, M. Andre
Le Breton, *^liii arrachait de veritahlcs rugisse-
ments de plaisir et d'adiniratioiu'^ It is idle
to refer Balzac's *' rugissements de plaisir" —
at any rate as late as 1840 — altogether to the
"painting of the phenomena of nature."
It is true that what captivated him especially
perhaps was the life in general that Cooper
depicted — the wild, free, savage life of the
frontier, easily paradisaic (in idea!) to a
Parisian. "Oh," he says in a letter of 1830,
"to lead the life of a Mohican, to run over
the rocks, to swim the sea, to breathe the free
air, the sun! Oh, how I have conceived the
savage! Oh, how admirably I have under-
' Roused him to veritable roars of pleasure and of
admiration.
stood the pirates, the adventurers, their
lives of opposition and outlawry! There, I
said to myself, life is courage, good rifles, the
art of navigating in the wide ocean, and the
hatred of men." And ten years later his
enthusiasm was quite as great. But it is
naive to suppose that what made this "life"
so attractive to Balzac was in the last analysis
anything else than the people who lived it.
In Jack Tiery for example, the phenomena of
nature are as effectively depicted as in the
somewhat analogous Red Rover. What makes
the book itself less effective? Mainly the
comparative inferiority of the characters,
though the story, it is true, is less heroic and
though some of the characters are very good
indeed. However, here is Balzac's own
estimate of Leatherstocking: "/^ ne sais pas
si roeuvre de Walter Scott four nit une creation
aussi grandiose que celle de ce heros des savanes
et des forets.""^ And though, in speaking of
Cooper and Scott, he says *' f un est I'historien
de la naturey ['autre de I'hunianite,"^ the
antithesis is doubtless due to the greater
prominence of nature in Cooper's works as
in his material, to Cooper's artistic inferiority
and to the vaster stage of the Waverley drama
— to say nothing of the charms for Balzac of
antithesis in itself. Cooper, continues M. Le
Breton, after citing the above phrase, is not
less than Scott "a great painter of man-
ners," and "I fear," he says, later, "that
the usurers of Balzac, his lawyers, bankers,
and notaries, owe too much to the sojourn
his imagination had made in the cabin of
Leatherstocking or the wigwam of Chingach-
gook, and that there are in the Comedie
Ilumaine too many Mohicans in spencers
or Hurons in frock-coats."
The criticism of Balzac is sound enough,
but the compliment to Cooper is equally
clear. To have shared w4th Scott the deriva-
tion of "the master of us all," as Mr. Henry
James calls Balzac (who has other titles to
fame, but in the light of a provenience from
Cooper none so piquant), of itself consti-
tutes a position in the hierarchy of fiction.
And in so far as Balzac does derive from
Cooper, he does so in virtue of Cooper's
2 I do not know whether the work of Walter Scott
affords a creation of such grandeur as that of this hero
of the plains and the forests.
3 The one is the historian of nature, the other of
humanity.
COOPER
369
realism. His Mohicans in spencers and
Hurons in frock-coats really testify to the
vivid reality of Cooper's characters, which so
impressed the great French realist as to lead
him to transfer to the boulevards in uncon-
scious caricature the t\"pes which in their
native environment possessed a vitality
energetic enough to impose imitation even
on a romancer of whose greatness originality
is a conspicuous trait.
Interesting testimony, however, to the
force and truth of Cooper's characters as
Balzac's authoritative approval and their
influence on his own are, it is interesting only
in an authoritative way, and as counter-
balancing the judgment of critics of less
weight. The characters are there to speak
for themselves — to any reader, as they
spoke to Balzac. Sainte-Beuve praises them
without reserve. In reviewing an early work
he speaks enthusiastically of Cooper's
"faculu creatrice qui enfante et met au monde
des caracteres nouveauXy et en vertu de laquelle
Rabelais a produit Panurge, Le Sage Gil
Bias, et Richardson Clarissa. "^ They certainly
diflfer in value and solidity, and not only
because the types they represent or the con-
ceptions they incarnate so differ, but in what
for the sake of clearness may be called the
un-Shakespearean way of being characterized
with varying effectiveness. Balzac notes the
inferiority of his secondary personages to
those of Scott — which is true only of his
conventional secondary personages, I think.
For these he had not the zest that the true
artist has in all his creations. His personages
interested him personally or not at all. And
when he has no interest he is the last word
of the perfunctory. But it is certainly true
that he is nowhere less perfunctory than in
the creation of character, and that as a rule
even his secondary characters adequately fill
the role assigned to them. Even if they are
not made much of, even if he does not, as the
French expression is, les faire valoir, they are
real enough. They are the exact analogues of
the negligible folk one meets in life.
There are, however, those who, appre-
ciating Cooper's success with Leatherstocking,
with Long Tom Coffin, with Betty Flanagan,
1 Creative power which brings forth and gives to the
world new characters, the power by virtue of which
Rabelais created Panurge, Le Sage Gil Bias, and Rich-
ardson Clarissa.
and others, have maintained that it is with
low life only that he is successful, and that he
fails when he attempts to depict the higher
social types. The view is a superficial one.
It is in general a superficial or else an insig-
nificant view when taken of a writer of con-
spicuous distinction in character portrayal.
Character is character. There are not two
kinds of it, high and low, except in the sense
in which youth and old age, for example,
may be said to differ in character. There is as
much and as little of it at one end of the social
scale as at the other. What types a writer
with an eye for it and a faculty for effectively
embodying his conception of it will best
succeed in depends upon his experience.
When Cooper wrote his experimental English
novel Precaution he was writing of something
he knew nothing about. In The Spy and
The Pioneer, which followed it, the gentry are
as good as the humble folk. Leatherstocking
and Betty Flanagan are effective largely
because they are picturesque, and it is in the
lower walks of life that the picturesque is
especially to be found. And romance deals
largely in the picturesque.
Of course temperament is to some extent a
factor in determining the types that an
author treats most successfully. So great a
writer as Dickens, it is true, has sometimes
been said to have succeeded best with char-
acters from low life. If one contrasts Lord
Frederick Verisopht with Sam Weller one
perceives that the author's genius is most at
home in the society of the latter. And
whatever Dickens's experience his tempera-
ment, undoubtedly, led him to depict the
lower, with more zest than the .upper, ten.
He depicted them, however, for the benefit of
the upper. And, whatever his feeling for
character, his high spirits irresistibly im-
pelled him toward caricature. Naturally a
novelist producing caricature for the benefit
of the reading classes finds the material
readiest to his hand in another class. Nat-
urally, too, a writer of romance and ad-
venture finds most effective what is, except
in its outlines and saliencies, least familiar.
Stevenson's readers would find John Silver
rather flat if he were a titular gentleman.
Readers aside, moreover, the more civilized,
the higher in the social scale, the character is,
the less accentuated it is, externally. For
romantic purposes, at least for the purposes
370
WILLIAM CRAin' HROWNELL
of realistic romance such as Cooper's, it is
normally of inferior interest, for less is apt
normally to happen to it. In ideal romance,
of course, neither this nor any similar con-
sideration matters. No one expects a char-
acter in Dumas or in Disraeli to be tn char-
acter otherwise than to be consistent with
itself. The ends of realistic romance are
better served by the more elemental natures
that have not been smoothed and polished
into conformity and are independent of
convention. The passions that agitate
aristocratic bosoms arc more sophisticated
and their dramatic result is in the domain
rather of the novelist of manners or of the
psychological novelist than of the realistic
romancer.
Any preponderance of low over high life
personages, therefore, among Cooper's suc-
cessful characters might very well be ac-
counted for by the kind of fiction he wrote.
Certainly beyond such as may be thus ac-
counted for no such preponderance exists. He
had simply no talent at all for caricature. His
failures when he attempted it are grotesque.
For example, the vulgar American journalist
in Homeward Bound. He could no more
have invented a Dick Swiveller than he could
have imagined Hamlet. But within his
range of experience and imagination, one of
his characters is as good as another, so far as
the class to which they belong is concerned.
The "blue" admiral in The Two Admirals is
quite as fine in his way as Long Tom Coffin is
in his. His type is simply less picturesque.
Perhaps, indeed, a fo'castle reader, were
there such, would think him equally pictur-
esque. In all the nautical novels, in fact, the
quarter-deck people are quite as well done
as the able seamen. Lord Geoffrey Cleve-
land, the midshipman favorite of Admiral
Bluewater, is a charming character. There
are a score of lieutenants, most of them of
gentle birth and breeding, that are extra-
ordinarily good, each one of them an in-
dividual and no more mere types than the
actual people of one's acquaintance. Griffith,
Barnstable, Winchester, Yelverton, Griffin —
I have my own idea, I confess, of how each
of them looks. When The Pilot appeared
Miss Mitford wrote: "No one but Smollett
has ever attempted to delineate the naval
character; and then his are so coarse and
hard. Now this has the same truth and
power witii a deep, grand feeling. . . .
Imagine the author's boldness in taking
Paul Jones for a hero, and his power in
making one care for him." This is very true.
Cooper does on occasion combine truth,
power, and a deep, grand feeling. He was
the manliest of men himself and he had a
sympathetic sense for what is noble and
elevated in character. He found it, to be
sure, in the humbler social types, but I think
not disproportionately. His patricians are,
on the whole, as good as his plebs, so far as
verisimilitude is concerned. To find him
exclusively or mainly successful in the
characters belonging to "low life" is, I think,
to miss his chief distinction — that is to say,
his genius for the portrayal of character as
character, within the limits of his experience
and the types his observation suggested to
his imagination.
If he had imagined no other character than
Leatherstocking, this creation alone would
set him in the front rank of the novelists of
the world. It is singular that this feat, as it
may in justice be called, has brought him so
little purely literary recognition. Perhaps it
IS because every one makes Leatherstocking's
acquaintance in childhood, and acceptance
of him is accordingly perfunctory and un-
thinking, like that of Robinson Crusoe, for
example. No one seems really to reflect
on the extraordinary nature of Cooper's
accomplishment. Merit in American litera-
ture is the last thing, one would say, that
escapes notice — at least at home. We have
apparently a national disposition to create
our geniuses out of hand. Our criticism is
geniality itself. It assigns us great writers —
poets, historians, novelists, critics — with the
utmost imperturbability, and on the slightest
provocation. Certainly in no country, at
any epoch, has appreciation of its own men of
letters been as ready or, as one may say, so
energetic. The predisposition in their favor
is perhaps the most persistent survival from
days — pungently depicted by Cooper, who
seems, in this respect, too, to have few
successors — in which it was a wide-spread
belief that on any battlefield we could "lick
all creation." Yet here is an American literary
possession that really ranks with all but the
greatest, who is never thought of when our
literary auctioneers are extolling and exalting
our stock. Nol long ago one of our acutest
COOPER
371
and most careful critics was coupling; Lcath-
erstocking with Irving's Knickerbocker and
speculating about the ideal or mythical
character of both. They were this and not
that, et catera.
Thackeray wrote literary criticism lightly
and had an instinctive repugnance to curbmg
his prejudices. But in the matter of fiction
his authority is unimpeachable. No one
ever — and others have tried — parodied
Cooper so well. His "Leatherlegs" is an
amusing figure. His serious judgment,
however, is as follows: **I have to own," he
says, "that I think the heroes of another
writer, m., Leatherstocking, Unoas, Hard-
heart, Tom Coffin, are quite the equals of
Scott's men; perhaps Leatherstocking is
better than any one in 'Scott's lot.' La
Longue Carabine is one of the great prize
men of fiction. He ranks with your Uncle
Toby, Sir Roger de Coverley, FalstafF —
heroic figures all, American or British — and
the artist has deserved well of his country
who devised them." He has indeed.
From the point of view of literature the
drama itself is finally assayed for character
rather than action. This is true even of
Greek tragedy, where everything revolves
about the action, where the action is alto-
gether the overwhelming motif. The Greeks
were nothing if not didactic, one may say,
and the gospel of art for art's sake w^ould be
understood no more on Parnassus than on
Olympus, would seem equally aloof from the
vital interests of man to the audiences of
Menander and to the pupils of the Platonic
Academy, where no one entered who was
ignorant of geometry, and where the basis of
sesthetics was assumed to be ethical and
utilitarian. Even in a drama which — in the
best of taste, of course, and in the most
serious artistic sense — preached, as we may
be sure The Coephori preached to the trembl-
ing Felixes of its day, a drama of which the
thesis is so tremendously concrete as to make
the characters seem abstract, the vigor of the
presentation is due to the force with which
the characters, however traditional, are
conceived and portrayed. And the same
thing is true of romance. What gives the
story vital rather than transient interest is
the personages to whom the events happen.
It is the human nature in the Arabian
NightSy in the Decameron^ in Gil Bias, that
secures their perennial interest. Just as this
element in Balzac usually counteracts the
effect of his occasional melodrama, and in
Dumas often palliates his essential levity,
and in Hugo endues with grandeur what else
would be insipid. An example of romance
deprived of this element is Stevenson's
Prince Otto. Story, style, everything is there
but character. The personages are the toys
of the dilettante. The Prisoner of Zenda is a
more considerable performance precisely
because, inferior in other respects, its char-
acters are felt and rendered with more
energy. It is far less " literary," it is true, but
so far as it goes it is solider literature. What
is it that gives such a romance as Ivanhoe its
value as literature — in other words, its
enduring interest.'' Not the tourney, the
attack on Front de Boeuf's castle, the bout
between Friar Tuck and the Black Knight,
the archery exhibition of Locksley, but the
character of Rebecca of York and the warfare
between good and evil in the passionate soul
of the Templar, as truly the protagonist of
the book as Lucifer is of Paradise Lost, or
Hector — who has infinitely more character
than Achilles — of the Iliad. What would the
ultra-romantic Rob Roy be without Di
Vernon and Rashleigh Osbaldistone.^ What
would Robinson Crusoe be without the auto-
biographer's account of his interior expe-
riences as well as his ad ventures .f* Could
anything more insipid be imagined than the
mere adventures of Don Quixote recounted
by a Dumas or a Stevenson.'' Gautier's
Le Capitaine Fracasse is a delightful imagi-
native work, but the defect that has probably
prevented its ever being reread is that its
figures are feeble. On the other hand, the
character interest of Hamlet or Macbeth, for
example, is so overwhelming as to obscure
for most readers, probably, the splendidly
romantic setting in which it is fixed. But the
point is too obvious to dwell upon. The
most inveterate lover of the story for the
story's sake must admit that what makes
literature of romance is the element that dis-
tinguishes its classic examples from the
excellent stories of Horace Walpole and
Mrs. Radcliffe — the element of character,
namely. On any other theory that now
forgotten masterpiece, The Three Spaniards,
a veritable marvel of purely narrative
I romance, should still be in every one's hands.
37-
WILLIAM CRAin' HROWNELL
Even in romance, therefore, the play being
not so much the thinu; after all as the players,
it may be said that the function of the most
romantic events is largely to elucidate the
actors in them. A main excellence of ro-
mance as a literary form is that it elucidates a
range of character with whicii only the
imagination can adequately deal, traits and
personalities which lie outside the realm of
the novel of manners. Its environment has
thus its own peculiar advantages, but when
it exalts its environment at the expense of its
figures it proportionately loses value as
literature. What, accordingly, sets Cooper
by the side of Scott is his instinct and
practice in precisely this respect. He always
has a story and always tells it well. What-
ever its defects it moves, and it never lacks
incident. No tedium of disquisition or
digression, no awkwardness of construction,
prevents it from being a series of events, a
succession of pictures organically interrelated
and tending cumulatively toward a climax.
He accepted the story quite unconsciously as
the essential condition of his production, and
developed it not only loyally but enthusi-
astically with all the energy of remarkable
powers of invention and an attentive con-
formity to what he conceived to be its
general character and import. This is why
the young will always read him. He is, in
fact, one of the great story-tellers of literature
— so much so, indeed, that the narrative
probably absorbed most of his conscious
effort in all his books. He thought of these,
and often described them on his title-pages as
"tales." In his day the narrative had not
become "a slender thread." Things hap-
pened in it. Whether it followed the most
commonplace traditions of the novel, and
continued the practice of slipshod contra-
dictions and inherent improbabilities, or
whether it exhibited a nice sense of con-
structive propriety and singleness of effect
(as in fVing-and-Wingy or The Deerslayer)y
it was invariably his preoccupation.
But if his characters, on the other hand,
show no particular care, it is because they are
the direct products of his genius. They
probably "came to him in his sleep." They
are not "studied" from life or worked out
from a central imaginative conception. They
are thoroughly realistic and yet imaginatively
typical simply because Cooper had a re-
markable instinct for character. He could
read it and divine it m life, and when he came
to create it and put it in situations of his own
imagining he knew how it would act and
what traits it would develop. For the time
being he undoubtedly lived with his creations
as if they were actual people. His accjuaint-
ance with actual people was very large. He
alludes in The Tzvo Admirals to "the course
of a checkered life in which we have been
brought in collision with as great a diversity
of rank, profession, and character, as often
falls to the lot of any one individual," and
the multifarious variety of personages with
which his novels are peopled proceeds from
this circumstance — plus, of course, his
genius in transmuting through his imagina-
tion his experience into his creation. And
not only was his experience wide — both in his
native pioneer civilization and in the more
highly developed European world — but he
was conspicuously endowed with the philo-
sophic temperament. On what he saw he
reflected. The individuals he met did not
merely impress him with their peculiarities,
they taught him human nature. He had
the great advantage, associated with his
deficiency of not being a writer from the
first, of having been first a man. No writer
of romance has been, as indisputably Cooper
was, distinctly a publicist also. Scott's
politics, for example, are negligible; Cooper's
are rational, discriminating, and suggestive.
He knew men as Lincoln knew them — which
is to say, very differently from Dumas and
Stevenson.
Consequently, the world of his creation is
above all a solid one. Romantic as it is in
form, its substance is of the reality secured
by confining the form, the story, to its office
of creating the illusion and not constituting
the primum mobile. Slipshod as his story is
now and then in disregarding probability and
consistency so far as incident is concerned,
the characters are never compromised by this
carelessness, and where they are concerned he
always checks his romance by the law of the
situation, so to speak. They never share the
occasional improbability or inconsistency
of the events in which they participate, and
the latter, accordingly, in any large sense,
count no more than a self-correcting misprint.
The consistency of Leatherstocking's char-
acter, for example, is hardly affected by his
COOPER
373
being represented as eighty years old on one
page of The Prairie and eighty-odd on
another. In The Deerslayer a single set of
chessmen is provided with five castles.
But such carelessness does not destroy the
illusion of the story sufficiently to impair the
integrity of the characters. These surely
triumph over even a superfluity of chess
castles, and like their congeners in all, or
nearly all, the other books, establish the
solidity of the world they inhabit by the
definiteness, completeness, and comprehen-
sion with which they are portrayed.
No writer, not even the latest so-called
psychological novelist, ever better under-
stood the central and cardinal principle of
enduing a character with life and reality —
namely, the portrayal of its moral complexity.
The equal in this vital respect of the New
Hampshire man, Ithuel Bolt, in JVing-and-
Wingy hardly exists in Scott, and must be
sought in Thackeray or George Eliot. An
essay could be written on him as on a char-
acter of history. As a New England type,
too, he is a masterpiece of great representa-
tive value. Having him end his days as a
deacon of his religious denomination, after
a lifetime of chicane and deceit, notably self-
deception, was an inspiration, which must
have been appreciated, even, or perhaps
particularly, in New Hampshire itself.
Spike in Jack Tier is a scoundrel, but he has,
nevertheless, a side in virtue of which his
wife clings to him — far otherwise explicably
than Nancy to Bill Sikes, for example. The
struggle between good and evil impulses in
the breast of the Red Rover is a truly heroic
portrayal. The internal conflict that para-
lyzes the will of the "blue" admiral in The
Two Admirals is treated with truly psycho-
logic insight. To open any of the more
important "tales" is to enter a company of
personages in each of whom coexist — in
virtue of the subtle law that constitutes
character by unifying moral complexity —
foibles, capacities, qualities, defects, weakness
and strength, good and bad, and the in-
veterate heterogeneity of the human heart is
fused into a single personality. And the
variety, the multifariousness of the populous
world that these personages, thus con-
stituted, compose, is an analogue on a
larger scale of their own individual differen-
tiation. Cooper's world is a microcosm quite
worthy to be set by the side of those of the
great masters of fiction and, quite as effec-
tively as theirs, mirroring a synthesis of the
actual world to which it corresponds, based
on a range of experience and framed with
imaginative powers equaled by them alone.
VI
Cooper's women are generally believed, I
suppose, especially to illustrate his limitations
as a novelist of character. They are usually
decried if not derided. His heroines are
deemed the woodenest of conventional types,
and their sisters the most mechanical of foils.
Y heir creator's practice of referring to them
as "females" is found amusing, for though it
was a common enough practice of his day it
has certainly become so obsolete as to seem
singular to the reader of current books ex-
clusively. Professor Lounsbury, who is the
wittiest of writers, and in consequence a little
at the mercy of a master faculty, has a good
deal of fun with these "females" in his
model biography. He pictures for them all
"the same dreary and rather inane future,"
as members of Dorcas societies, as "carrying
to the poor bundles of tracts and packages of
tea," as haling ragged children into the
Sunday-school and making slippers for the
rector. He says that "in fiction at least one
longs for a ruddier life than flows in the
veins of these pale bleached-out personifica-
tions of the proprieties," though "they may
possibly be far more agreeable to live with"
than the "women for whom men are willing
or anxious to die." As regards not by any
means all but a certain class of Cooper's
"females," one can but "feel what he
means." Tastes differ, and in the quiet
scholastic closes of New Haven no doubt
they like a little more ginger, "in fiction at
least," than palates more accustomed to it
demand. In the dustier and more driving
world at large the simplicity and sweetness of
these natures may be considered to make in
an equivalent way the same appeal of
novelty. However, what "one longs for, in
fiction at least," is not the measure of a
novelist's success in character portraiture.
To say that his characters are conventional is,
if they are, a just reproach. To say that they
are insipid is not. IVofessor Lounsbury may
very explicably sigh for "the stormier char-
374
WILLIAM CRARY HROWNKLL
actcrs of fiction tli.it" — :>s he conceives —
"are dear to the carnal-niinded," and the
carnal-minded may in turn perversely dehf2;ht
in Arcadian innocence; but the business of
the novehst, and of the reahstic romance
writer such as Cooper, is to "pander" to the
desires of neither, but to "feel" his char-
acters as individuals, whatever their nature,
and to depict them with personal zest and
attention.
It would, of course, be idle to deny that
some of Cooper's "females" are conven-
tional, but I think they are far fewer than is
popularly imagined. Some, at all events, of
those gentle and placid beings that he was
fond of creating are very real. It is possibly
because they are measured by the standard
provided by more modern fiction rather than
by actual life that they are found conven-
tional. They would appear truer according
to this paradoxical standard if they were
more exceptional. But the very definite
forecast that Professor Lounsbury makes
for them shows how real they seem to him,
after all. The reader, he says, "is as sure as
if their career had been actually unrolled
before his eyes of the part they will play in
life." They are types of a kind of woman
probably far more persistent in life than in
fiction and more persistent in life than is
generally suspected at the present perhaps
transitional crisis in mankind's view of
woman. In fiction we have, for the moment
at least, and except in such rare instances
as the fiction of Mr. Howells^ lost sight of
that side of the "female" in virtue of which
she used to be called "the weaker vessel."
The rise and education, the enormous
increase and differentiation of the activities
of woman at the present time, have in life
also somewhat obscured this side of her
nature. It is, however, too essential and
integral a side to be more than temporarily
forgotten, and it would not be surprising if,
in the not remote future, some disquietude
at woman's failure to take very significant
advantage of her very signal opportunities
should qualify the current conviction that
her insignificance hitherto has been wholly
due to her subjection. "Educate them as
much as you please and give them all the
privileges the)'^ want," observed an empirical
philosopher once, "you will still have to take
care of them." Woman herself would prob-
ably still agree that when pain and anguish
wring her brow the male of her species is
called upon to be a ministering angel of
extremely energetic efficiency. Cooper's
women certainly have to be taken care of,
but this fact does not demonstrate them to be
wooden and conventional, and is apparently
not inconsistent with the nature of the eivif^
fVeibliches, however tame the resultant
fiction, as fiction, may be found.
At any rate, these types existed in abund-
ance in Cooper's day, and were not per-
functorily adopted by him from the charac-
terless religious and other contemporary
novel. It is in range rather than in quality
that his portraiture of women is deficient.
He portrayed the types he knew as realistically
as he did his men, but his knowledge of
women was not wide. He was eminently a
man's man. The domestic affections prob-
ably taught him most of what he knew or
woman, and of women in general he probably
met comparatively few. And of these, of
course, he "studied" none, that particular
exercise of the literary artist's faculties being
in his day but imperfectly developed. His
clinging weaklings are as good as Scott's,
I think. But he had nothing like Scott's
social experience, and his women are less
varied in consequence. Possibly, also, they
are less varied because he had less ideality;
for Scott was a poet and Cooper was not;
though I think he shows a very charming
ideality in his treatment of his women — not
only is not one of them brutally limned, but
there is a marked chivalry in his treatment of
all of them. Moreover, in some of them
there is a spiritual strength that qualifies
their softness very nobly as well as very truly.
There is scarcely in all Scott the equal in
this respect of Ghita Caraccioli, in fVing-and-
Wing — a tale which, aside from its adven-
turous interest and the admirable art that
makes it exceptional among Cooper's works,
is a particularly moving love story.
And the range of Cooper's female char-
acters is far wider than is commonly appre-
ciated or than is common in romance.
Romance in general does not very insistently
demand the feminine element — except, of
course, the romance that demands nothing
else — such as Paul et Virginie. In the
romance of adventure, woman, almost of
necessity, plays a subordinate part. She is
COOPER
.375
almost inevitably reduced to the type, in
order to count as a dramatic factor. The
realism of Cooper's romance appears here as
elsewhere. There are few of his women who
are purely lay figures even among the insipid
ones, as I have said, at least if we except the
inferior novels — novels which, in Cooper's
case, ought not to be considered at all; he
wrote enough good ones to earn negligibility
for such books as Mercedes of Castile and The
IVays of the Hour. Even such effaced char-
acters as Alice Munro in The Last of the
Mohicans are real enough. In almost every
case, however insignificant and insipid they
may be, they have the effect of being thor-
oughly alive — of having been felt and defi-
nitely visualized by their author. To this
extent and in this way they bear, perhaps,
even more striking witness to his master
faculty, the faculty of creating character,
than their more accentuated sisters.
But these latter are, for romance, as
distinguished from the novel of character
and manners pure and simple (which Cooper
essayed, to be sure, but in which certainly his
success was not notable), unusually numer-
ous and varied. Compare the women of
Ivanhoe and Waverley, for example, with
those of The Last of the Mohicans and The
Deerslayer. The background of the two
former books has more dignity and impor-
tance than the woods of America in the
middle of the eighteenth century could
possibly provide. But the characters of the
four American "females" and the contrast
between the members of each couple of
them are at least as firmly drawn, as vivid,
and as effective; they do not so markedly
function merely as antagonistic influences
on the heart of the hero or the action of the
tale. Cora Munro, with her strain of negro
blood appealing so strongly to both of her
redskin admirers, her inevitably hopeless
passion for Heyward and her truly tragic
predestination, is an original and admirable
creation. The two girls in The Deerslayer
are masterpieces. Judith Hutter parti-
cularly is a character worthy of a place
among the important figures of fiction. Her
beauty, her worldliness, her exotic refine-
ment, set off against the rude and vulgar
background of her family environment and
blending exquisitely with the wild beauty of
her lacustrine surroundings, her sensibility to
such simple elevation as she finds in the
Deerslayer's character, the delicacy of her
wooing of him and acquiescence in his
rejection of her, and her final acceptance
of her inevitable fate, compose a portrait
with accessories rare in fiction of any kind
and particularly rare in romance.
The feeble-minded Hetty, who serves
superficially as her foil, is portrayed with
equal attentivenessandgreatdelicacy. There
is something very gentle and attaching in the
art with which Cooper, quite without the con-
sciousness of doing anything unusual, and as
simply as if it were the most natural thing in
the world, achieves the difficult task of
making convincing and interesting a char-
acter whose rectitude and fearlessness of
nature enable her to play a role of pathetic
dignity hardly hampered by a clouded mind.
Here his touch, so heavy in generalization,
in humor, and in broader portraiture often,
is lightness itself. Some sympathetic strain
in his nature endued him, too, with an
analogous felicity in portraying such Ariel-
like women as the masquerading mistresses
of the Red Rover and the Skimmer of the
Seas. These characters with him are the
very converse of conventional, both in
conception and in presentation, and they are
at the same time perfectly embodied and
realized with a definiteness and verisimilitude
such as Scott in vain labored to impute to
his tricksy Fenella in Peveril of the Peak.
They have the touch of fancy and the magic
of strangeness, but they are understood as
women in a way quite beyond the reach of a
writer to whom the sex is the sealed book it is
sometimes asserted to have been for Cooper.
Katharine Plowden in The Pilot is a breezy
and even a brilliant girl. The heroine of
The Bravo is extremely winning and pathetic.
Mildred Dutton in The Two Admirals has
as much dignity and resource as gentleness.
The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish is a unique study,
or at least sketch, of a white girl with an
Indian soul. Maud Willoughby in Wyan-
dotte is a charming beauty with a reserve of
force such as Kingsley might have conceived.
And of Betty Flanagan in The Spy it is
perhaps enough to record Miss Edgeworth's
testimony in a letter to the author asserting
that no Irish pen could have drawn her
better. In fine, to my own sense, at least,
Cooper drew well in the main such women
376
WILLIAM CRAR^' BROWNELL
as he drew. Of sonic of them lie made
memorable successes. That he drew no
great variety of them and essentially dupli-
cated his "females" now and then was very
largely due, as I have already said, to the
limitedness of his experience, so generally
confined to his own sex save for a circle
probably without much variety. The wide
experience of people he speaks of in The Two
Admirals in the passage I have already cited
refers exclusively to men. Of course if he
had been a sufficiently imaginative writer, if
rather his imagination had not been less
spiritual than romantic, he would have been
less dependent on experience. But the
romantic writer with a spiritual imagination
is apt to be as insubstantial as he is rare,
and in his portraits of women, as elsewhere,
Cooper's romanticism is thoroughly realistic,
and with whatever modification due to the
sex of its subjects, thoroughly substantial
and robust.
VII
There is one aspect of his contribution to
literature that makes American neglect of
Cooper's merits and his fame incompre-
hensible on any creditable grounds. That
aspect is as varied as it is salient, but from its
every facet is reflected the rational aggrandize-
ment of America. Quite aside from the
service to his country involved in the fact
itself of his foreign literary popularity —
greater than that of all other American
authors combined — it is to be remarked
that the patriotic is as prominent as any
other element of his work. To him, to be
sure, we owe it that immediately on his
discovery, the European world set an Amer-
ican author among the classics of its own
imaginative literature; through him to this
world not only American native treasures of
romance, but distinctively American traits,
ideas and habits, moral, social, and political,
were made known and familiar. He first
painted for Europe the portrait of America.
And the fact that it is in this likeness that
the country is still so generally conceived
there eloquently attests the power with which
it was executed. The great changes that
time has wrought in its lineaments have
found no hand to depict them vigorously
enough — at least in fiction — to secure the
substitution of a later presentment for
Cooper's. But in speaking of the patriotic
element in his work, I refer only indirectly
to its service in exalting American literature
in European eyes and acciuainting European
minds with American character. Mainly I
wish to signalize — what indirectly this
proceeds from — the truth that in a large
sense the subject of Cooper's entire work is
America, nothing more, nothing less.
The substance of it, of course, is, materially
speaking, preponderantly American. But
what I mean is that even when he was writing
such books as The BravOy The Ileadsmauy
and The Ileidenmauery he was distinctly
thinking about his own country as well as his
more immediate theme. In each of these
novels the theme is really democracy. The
fact has been made a reproach to him, and
charged with the assumed "inartistic" in-
trusion of preachment into his romance.
Doubtless a picture of Venice, at the time
when her sinister oligarchy was most des-
potic, painted by a pure literary artist like
Theophile Gautier, for example, might be
spectacularly more "fetching." Cooper's,
however, has the merit of being significant.
One gets a little tired of the fetich of art,
which is, nowadays, brought out of its shrine
on so many occasions and venerated with
such articulate inveteracy. Art in any
other sense than that of a sound and agree-
able way of doing things in accordance with
their own law might sometimes, one impa-
tiently reflects, be left to itself, to its practi-
tioners, and to the metaphysicians. One may
wish incidentally there were more of it!
But to reproach such a work as The Bravo
with a quality that secures its effectiveness
is not at all credibly to assert that it would
have been a masterpiece of pure beauty had
it lacked this quality. As it is, it is an
extremely good story made an extremely
effective one by the fact that Cooper's
democracy gave him a point of view from
which the mockery styled the Republic of
Venice appeared in a particularly striking
light. These novels show at any rate how
good a democrat Cooper was, how firmly
grounded were his democratic principles,
how sincere were his democratic convictions.
They show him also as an American demo-
crat— believing in law as well as liberty, that
is to say — and not in the least a visionary.
The preface alone of The Headsman demon-
COOPER
.-^77
strates the intelligent enthusiasm with
which he held his social and political creed.
Europe, which nevertheless he thoroughly
appreciated, did not disorient him. Nor on
his return, whatever may superficially be
inferred from his splenetic expressions of
disgust with its defects, did his own country
disillusionize him.
The undoubted aristocratic blend of his
temperament and his traditions did not in
the least conflict with his democracy, his
Americanism. There is nothing a priori
inconsistent in the holding of democratic
convictions by the most aristocratic natures.
The history of all religions, for example, is
conclusive as to this; and from Pericles to
the Gracchi, from Montaigne to Emerson,
the phenomenon is common enough in
politics and philosophy as well. Nor are
Cooper's later American books a posteriori
evidence of his defection. The excesses and
perversions, the faults, and even the eccen-
tricities of democracy, and the way in which
these were illustrated by the democracy of
his day, are certainly castigated — caricatured
on occasion — with vigor, with zest, w^ith
temper, indeed. But the wounds are the
faithful ones of a friend — an extremely
candid friend, of course — in a period of
American evolution when candor of the
kind was apt to be confounded with censure.
His candor, however, was merely the measure
of his discrimination. His censure is always
delivered from a patriotic standpoint. The
things, the traits, he satirizes and denounces
are in his view the excrescences of democracy,
and infuriate him as perversions, not as
inherent evils. There is not the remotest
trace of the snob in him. His often trivial
and sometimes absurd excursions into the
fields of etiquette and etymology, his rating
of his countrymen for their minor crudities
and fatuities, are the naive and sometimes
elephantine endeavors of a patriotic censor
conscious of the value of elegance to precisely
such civilization as our own. We can see
readily enough to-day that it is calumny to
attribute his democracy in Europe to pure
idealism, and his disgust with demagogy
after his return to an irascibility that changed
his conviction. The discriminating American
— Lowell, for a prominent example — is
naturally an advocate of democracy abroad
and a critic of it at home. And Cooper's
temperament was not more irascible than
his mind was judicial. There is, apparently,
a native relation between irascibility and
the judicial (juality. Hreadth of view, unless
it is combined with the indifference of the
dilettante, is naturally impatient of narrow-
ness.
Defects of temper, at all events, which
were conspicuous in Cooper, certainly co-
existed with a fair-mindedness equally
characteristic. Not a great, he was dis-
tinctly a large, man in all intellectual respects.
Professor Trent in his History of American
Literature recurs to this central trait again
and again, one is glad to note, in his excepn
tionally appreciative characterization. He
was peppery, but not petulant, iracund
without truculence. His quarrels with his
encroaching Cooperstown neighbors, and
with the unspeakable press of his day,
undoubtedly lacked dignity, but in all cases
he was in the right, and his outraged sense
of justice was at the bottom of his violence.
And his fair-mindedness so penetrated his
patriotism as to render it notably intelligent,
and therefore beneficent. In his day intel-
ligent patriotism was not thoroughgoing
'enough to be popular. Partisanship was
exacted. The detachment which Cooper
owed to his experience and judicial-minded-
ness was simply not understood. It seemed
necessarily inconsistent with patriotic feeling.
Such skepticism is, in fact, not unknown in
our own time! But in Cooper's, appreciation
of foreign, and criticism of native, traits
was in itself almost universally suspect.
Yet such candor as his in noting excellence
in men and things of other nations and
civilizations is even nowadays rarely to be
encountered. France, Italy, England, the
Irish, Swiss, Germans — every nationality,
in fact, that figures in his pages — are de-
picted with absolute sympathy and lack of
prejudice. In Jack Tier, written during the
Mexican War, the Mexican character at its
best is incarnated in the most polished and
high-minded, the most refined and least
vulgar of personalities. In the matter of
national traits it is still more or less true that,
as Stendhal observed, ''la difference fait la
haine" ; ^ but to no writer of the English
tongue at all events, even since his time,
1 Dissimilarity creates dislike.
378
WILLIAM CRARY BROWNKLL
could the icproacli he adclresscd with less
reason tiiaii to Cooper. If'iuii^-cnid-Jf'ing is a
text-hook of true cosmopolitanism, and
JVyandotte a lesson in non-partisanship at
home.
No douht it is only loo;ical to he cosmo-
politan and liheral when one is lecturing one's
countrymen on their narrowness and pro-
vinciality. Hut the disposition to lecture
them on this particular theme itself witnesses
Cooper's genuine fair-mindedness and his
desire to communicate it to his readers.
Moreover, the quality appears in his writings
quite as often instinctively as expressly;
it pervades their purely artistic as well as
their didactic portions. And there are two
manifestations of it that are particularly
piquant and certainly to be reckoned among
Cooper's patriotic services. One is his
treatment of New England, and the other
that of the Protestant "sects" as distin-
guished from the Episcopal "Church."
Upon the New England of his day Cooper
turned the vision of a writer who was also a
man of the world — a product of civilization
at that time extremely rare within its borders.
He was himself an eminent example of
what used to be called in somewhat esoteric
eulogy by those who admired the type, a
conservative, and New England was the
paradise of the radical, the visionary, the
doctrinaire. He had no disposition, accord-
ingly, to view it w^ith a friendly eye or to pass
by any of its imperfections. The narrowness,
the fanaticism, the absurd self-sufficiency
and shallowness, the contempt for the rest
of the country, the defects of the great New
England qualities of thrift and self-reliance
characteristic of the section, were particularly
salient to him, and to signalize them was
irresistible to an emancipated observer who
could contemplate them from a detached
standpoint. It would be idle to pretend that
he interpreted New England types with the
intimate appreciation of Hawthorne. On
the other hand, his detachment being more
complete, his portrayal of them often gives
them the relief which can only be brought
out by the colorless white light of cold im-
partiality. Occasionally, without doubt, he
satirizes rather than depicts them — though
more rarely than his heavy touch leads the
reader to imagine. But from Wing-and-JVing
to Satanstoe the New England contingent of
his company of characters is portrayed with
a searching and self-justifying veracity, at
least as to its essential features; and, as
was his habit, discriminatingly portrayed.
Ithuel Bolt is certainly one of the notable
characters of fiction, and yet he could no
more have been born and developed outside
of New England than Leatherstocking could
have hailed from Massachusetts. If the Rev.
Meek Wolfe in The Wept of Wish-ton- Wish
is a caricature, he is fully oflFset by the fine
portrait of the Puritan head of the household.
It is difficult now to recall the New England
of Cooper's day. Never, perhaps, in the
world's history was so much and so wide-
spread mental activity so intimately asso-
ciated with such extreme provinciality. For
a miniature portrait of it consult the first
pages of Lowell's essay on Thoreau. At
present we need to have the eminence of the
section recalled to us. Professor Barrett
Wendell's engaging Literary History, in
which he not only limits American literature
of much value to New England, but even
tucks it into the confines of Harvard College,
is an interesting reminder of days that seem
curiously distant. Between 1825 and 1850,
at all events. New England, always the apex,
had become also the incubus of our civiliza-
tion, and called loudly for the note-taking of
a chiel from beyond its borders. Cooper
performed that service. And, as I say, it is
to be counted to him for patriotism. To him
we owe it that not only American authorship
but American literature has been from his
day of national rather than sectional char-
acter. The world he represented to the
Europe of his day was a comprehensively
American world, and the country as a whole,
with the theretofore false proportion of its
different sections duly rectified, first ap-
peared in effective presentation in the
domain of art.
His analogous hostility to ecclesiastical
sectarianism was, perhaps, a corollary of his
view of the New England whence largely
this sectarianism came. English non-
conformity transplanted added to its own
defects those inseparable from an establish-
ment, which practically it enjoyed. Its
contentiousness became tyrannous, and its
virtual establishment, destitute of traditions,
served mainly to crystallize its crudities.
Cooper's episcopalianism was in a doctrinal
COOPER
379
sense, no doubt, equally narrow. And his
piety was strongly tinctured with dogma.
Some of his polemic is absurd, and when
he is absurd he is so to a degree only ac-
counted for by his absolute indifference to
appearing ridiculous. The Crater is an
extraordinary exhibition of denominational
fatuity. But in his day his churchmanship
gave him in religious matters the same
advantage of detachment that his treatment
of New England enjoyed. It gave him a
standard of taste, of measure, of decorum,
of deference to tradition and custom, and
made him a useful and unsparing critic of
the rawness and irresponsibility so rife
around him, in a field of considerably more
important mundane concern to the com-
munity of that time than — owing largely to
its own transformation — it has since become.
He knew the difference in the ecclesiastical
field, as few in his day did, between *'a
reading from Milton and a reading from
Eliza Cook.** The intellectual mediocrity of
the Episcopal pulpit did not blind him,
as it did others, to "the Church's" distinctive
superiorities, secular and religious. A ritual,
a clergy (however triturate as a hierarchy),
a sense of historic continuity, the possession
of traditions, the spirit of conformity in Heu
of self-assertion (a spirit so necessary to "the
communion of saints"), set off the "Church-
men" of that day somewhat sharply from
the immensely larger part of their respective
societies. And Cooper's criticism of the
more unlovely traits of the descendants of the
Puritans and the Scotch-Irish immigration
on the whole made for an ideal which,
socially considered, must be regarded as
superior to that he found defective. His
"conservative" spirit, in a word, enabled
him to perform a genuine and patriotic
service to our civilization in this respect, as
it did in the case of its portrayal of New
England types of character. And as in the
latter case he is not to be charged with a
provinciality equivalent to that which he
exposed, but really judges it from an open-
minded and cosmopolitan standpoint, so, too'
— though naturally in a distinctly lesser
degree, in consequence of his own eccle-
siastical and theological rigidities — he ex-
hibits the defectiveness of American non-
conformity from a distinctly higher plane
than its own. The proof of this and of his
large tolerance in religious matters — where
his controversial spirit is not aroused — is the
fact that Catholicism and Catholics always
receive just and appreciative treatment at
his hands. Even atheism itself he treats with
perfect and comprehending appreciation.
In this respect the scene in fVing-and-JVing
where Raoul Yvard is about to be executed as
a spy forms a striking contrast to the some-
what analogous one in Quentin Durzvardy
where Scott uses the death of the unbelieving
Hayraddin Mograbin to point a series of
perfunctory commonplaces.
I come back in conclusion to Professor
Trent's epithet. Cooper's was above all a
large nature. Even his littlenesses were
those of a large nature. Let us refine and
scrutinize, hesitate and distinguish, when we
have appropriate material to consider. But
in considering Cooper's massive and opulent
work it is inexcusable to obscure one's
vision of the forest by a study of the trees.
His work is in no sense a jardin des plantes;
it is like the woods and sea that mainly form
its subject and substance. Only critical
myopia can be blind to the magnificent
forest, with its pioneer clearings, its fringe of
"settlements," its wood-embosomed lakes,
its neighboring prairie on the one side, and
on the other the distant ocean with the
cities of its farther shore — the splendid
panorama of man, of nature, and of human
life unrolled for us by this large intelligence
and noble imagination, this manly and
patriotic American representative in the
literary parliament of the world.
WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY (1869-1910)
Moody was born at Spencer, Indiana, on 8 July, 1869. His father had gone West from the state
of New York, and was for some years a steamboat captain. He died in 1886, and Moody's mother
had died two years earlier. Ihus at seventeen Moody was left without parents, and also without
resources. Nevertheless, he managed, while earning a living by teaching, to prepare himself for Har-
vard College, which he entered in 1889 with, it is said, about $25 in his possession. He continued to
support himself at Harvard by doing every kind of work that offered, and yet, at the same time, he
succeeded within three years in completing the studies necessary for his degree. He was graduated
with the class of 1893, but spent his senior year in Europe, earning his way by acting as a tutor. In
Europe he traveled in Germany and Switzerland, spent the winter in Florence, and made his first visit
to Greece. During the following year he was a graduate student at Harvard, and in 1894- 1895 a
member of the Department of English there. From 1895 until 1903 he was a teacher at the Univer-
sity of Chicago, at first an instructor in English and later an assistant professor. He was a successful
lecturer, and by 1903 was considered so valuable to the University that he was offered the rank and
salary of a professor if he would continue to lecture during only one-quarter of each year. He, how-
ever, had from an early time resolved to devote himself to poetry, and he loathed teaching and unhes-
itatingly abandoned it as soon as he managed to secure another source of income — the History of Eng-
lish Literature (1902) which he wrote for money in collaboration with R. M. Lovett.
Meanwhile Moody had in his vacations from teaching done a good deal of traveling — which
included a second visit to Greece in 1902 — and had published a poetic drama, The Masque of Judgment
(1900) and a volume of poems (entitled simply Poems, 1901). The Masque of Judgment, though earliest
in order of composition, was logically the second member of a trilogy of dramas which he hoped to
write, in ambitious emulation of the masters of Greek tragedy. The logically first member of the
trilogy, dealing with the Prometheus myth, was published in 1904, under the title of The Fire-Bringer.
The third member, The Death of Eve, Moody never succeeded in completing, leaving at his death only
its first act. In the circumstances, it is impossible to judge how great his achievement would have
been, had he succeeded in completing his large plan. His theme was the relation between God and
mankind, and his effort was to embody his conviction that God and his creatures are essentially one,
in the sense that the existence of each involves that of the other, so that Prometheus's effort to sep-
arate man from God was a tragic mistake, while God, were He to destroy man because of his rebel-
lion, would inevitably also destroy Himself. The Death of Eve was to have exhibited the final recon-
ciliation of God and man on the basis of a common understanding of the situation. It is evident that
this is a theme of the greatest diflSculty, and it is not surprising that Moody was unable to grasp it
very closely or handle it rigorously and clearly. The poetic dramas remain notable rather for the
splendor and elevation of isolated passages than as wholes.
The Fire-Bringer was published just as Moody was leaving for a visit to Arizona, where he
received the impressions which he presently put to use in the earlier of his two prose plays. The Great
Divide. This is a realistic study of the conflict between the Eastern and Western elements in Ameri-
can civilization or, more accurately, between the New England conscience and New England culture
on the one side and the "rough-and-ready" but honest frontiersman on the other. The general theme
was one which Moody had discovered through his own experience as a Westerner at Harvard, and
one to which he gave much thought. The play was put on the stage in 1906 (first published in 1909)
and was an immediate and great success, but, though it was a real advance upon the popular plays
of its day both in form and in substance, it showed promise rather than full-grown dramatic power,
and it already seems a little shallow in its treatment of its theme. The second of Moody's prose plays,
The Faith Healer, whose theme is sufficiently indicated by its title, was one which he had begun think-
ing of at some time earlier than 1898, planning at first to write it in verse. It was performed in 1909
(published in 1910), but was not successful, and it is generally regarded as inferior to The Great Divide.
The year before the performance of The Faith Healer, in the spring of 1908, Moody was stricken by
typhoid fever, and from this attack he never fully recovered. In 1909 he married Mrs. Harriet
Brainerd, of Chicago, who had long been his closest friend, but the period of their union was destined
to be brief, for he died on 17 October, 1910.
380
I AM Tllp; WOMAN
381
Moody's life was cut short just when he had given every ground for the confident expectation
that he was about to enter into a great period of high achievement. He was richly endowed by nature
witli passionate, sensuous feehng, with imagination, and, at the same time, with spiritual insight and
with ideal purposes. He was also widely and thoroughly acquainted with the best in ancient and
modern literatures, and his culture and scholarship did not — as happens with lesser men — dull his
independence, but, on the contrary, stimulated him to attempt the synthesis of a fresh, "modern,"
and individual criticism of life with traditional modes of expression. His power of self-criticism devel-
oped slowly, but was constantly growing, with the result that, though the greater part of the work he
left shows high promise rather than fulfillment, still, he also left a few poems which adeciuately embody
his difficult attempt to combine a naturalistic view of life with older ideals of truth, justice, and honor.
I AM THE WOMAN 1
I AM the Woman, ark of the law and its
breaker,
Who chastened her step and taught her knees
to be meek,
Bridled and bitted her heart and humbled
her cheek.
Parceled her will, and cried, "Take more!"
to the taker,
Shunned what they told her to shun, sought
what they bade her seek.
Locked up her mouth from scornful speak-
ing: now it is open to speak.
I am she that is terribly fashioned, the
creature
Wrought in God's perilous mood, in His
unsafe hour.
The morning star was mute, beholding my
feature,
Seeing the rapture I was, the shame, and the
power, 10
Scared at my manifold meaning; he heard me
call,
*'0 fairest among ten thousand, acceptable
brother!"
And he answered not, for doubt; till he saw
me crawl
And whisper down to the secret worm, *'0
mother.
Be not wroth in the ancient house; thy
daughter forgets not at all!"
I am the Woman, fleer away.
Soft withdrawer back from the maddened
mate,
Lurer inward and down to the gates of day
And crier there in the gate,
"What shall I give for thee, wild one,
say]
20
1 This and the following poem here reprinted are
used by permission of, and by arrangement with,
Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers.
The long, slow rapture and patient anguish
of life,
Or art thou minded a swifter way.?
Ask if thou canst, the gold, but O, if thou
must,
Good is the shining dross, lovely the dust!
Look at me, I am the Woman, harlot and
heavenly wife;
Tell me thy price, be unashamed; I will
assuredly pay!"
I am also the Mother: of two that I bore
I comfort and feed the slayer, feed and com-
fort the slain.
Did they number my daughters and sons?
I am mother of more!
Many a head they marked not, here in my
bosom has lain, 30
Babbling with unborn lips in a tongue to be.
Far, incredible matters, all familiar to me.
Still would the man come whispering,
"Wife!" but many a time my breast
Took him not as a husband: I soothed him
and laid him to rest
Even as the babe of my body, and knew him
for such.
My mouth is open to speak, that was dumb
too much!
I say to you I am the Mother; and under the
sword
Which flamed each way to harry us forth
from the Lord,
I saw Him young at the portal, weeping
and staying the rod.
And I, even I was His mother, and I yearned
as the mother of God. 40
I am also the Spirit. The Sisters laughed
When I sat with them dumb in the portals,
over my lamp, —
Half asleep in the doors: for my gown was
raught \
Off at the shoulder to shield from the wind
and the rain
}^^
WILLIAM NAUGHN MOODY
I he wick I tciulcti ;iL;;Mnst the inysterioiis
hour
When the silent City of Heinj^ slioukl rinj^
with sonj:;,
As the Lord came in with Life to the niarriai^e
bower.
"Look!" hiULihed the elder Sisters; and
crimson with shame
I hid my breast away from the rosy flame.
"Ah!" cried the leaning Sisters, pointing,
doing me wrong; 50
"Do you see?" laughed the wanton Sisters.
"She will get her a lover erelong!"
And it was but a little while till unto my
need
He was given, indeed.
And we walked where waxing world after
world went by;
And I said to my lover, "Let us begone,
O, let us begone, and try
Which of them all the fairest to dwell in is,
\\ hich is the place for us, our desirable
clime!"
But he said, "They are only the huts and
the little villages,
Pleasant to go and lodge in rudely over the
vintage-time
60
Scornfully spake he, being unwise.
Being flushed at heart because of our walking
together.
But I was mute with passionate prophecies;
My heart went veiled and faint in the golden
weather,
While universe drifted by after still universe.
1 hen I cried, "Alas, we must hasten and
lodge therein.
One after one, and in every star that they
shed!
A dark and a weary thing is come on our
head-
To search obedience out in the bosom of
sin,
To listen deep for love when thunders the
curse; 70
For O my love, behold where the Lord hath
planted
In every star in the midst his dangerous
Tree !
Still I must pluck thereof and bring unto
thee,
Saying, "The coolness for which all night we
have panted;
Taste of the goodly thing, I have tasted
first!"
Bringing us noway cooJness, but burning
thirst,
(jiving us noway peace, but implacable
strife,
Loosing upon us the wounding joy and the
wasting sorrow of life!
I am the Woman, ark of the Law and sacred
arm to upbear it.
Heathen trumpet to overthrow and idola-
trous sword to shear it: 80
Yea, she whose arm was round the neck
of the morning star at song.
Is she who kneeleth now in the dust and
cries at the secret door,
"Open to me, O sleeping mother! The gate
is heavy and strong.
Open to me, I am come at last; be wroth
with thy child no more.
Let me lie down with thee there in the dark,
and be slothful with thee as before!"
THE DEATH OF EVE
I
At dawn they came to the stream Hiddekel,
Old Eve and her red first-born, who was
now
Grayer than she, and bowed with more than
years.
Then Cain beneath his level palm looked
hard
Across the desert, and turned with out-
spread hand
As one who says, "Thou seest; we are
fooled."
But Eve, with clutching fingers on his arm.
And pointing eastward where the risen sun
Made a low mist of light, said, "It is there!"
II
For, many, many months, in the great
tent 10
Of Enoch, Eve had pined, and dared not
tell
Her longing: not to Irad, Enoch's son.
Masterful like his father, who had held
Harsh rule, and named the tent-place with
his name;
Not to mild Seth, given her in Abel's stead;
Not unto angry Lamech, nor his wives,
Usurpers of her honor in the house;
THE DEATH OF EVE
383
Not to yoiine; Jubal, sonn;s-man of the tribe.
Who touched his harp at twilight by lier
door;
And not to bed-rid Adam, most of all 20
Not unto Adam. Yet at last, the spring
Being at end, and evening with warm stars
Falling upon them by the camel kraal,
Weary with long desire she spoke to Seth,
Touching her meaning faintly and far off
To try him. With still scrutiny awhile
He looked at her; then, lifting doubtful
hands
Of prayer, he led her homeward to the
tent.
With tremulous speech of small and week-
day things.
Next, as she- lay by Adam before dawn, 30
His big and wasted hand groping for hers
Suddenly made her half-awakened heart
Break back and back across the shadowy
years
To Eden, and God calling in the dew,
And all that song of Paradise foredone
Which Jubal made in secret, fearing her
The storied mother; but in secret, too.
Herself had listened, while the maids at
toil
Or by the well at evening sang of her
Untruthful things, which, when she once
had heard, 40
Seemed truthful. Now, bowed upon Adam's
breast,
In the deep hush that comes before the
dawn,
She whispered hints and fragments of her
will;
And when the shaggy forehead made no
sign.
And the blind face searched still as quietly
In the tt/it-roof for what, these many
months.
It seemed to seek for there, she held him
close
And poured her whole wild meaning in his
ear.
But as a man upon his death-bed dreams
That he should know a matter, and knows it
not, 50
Nor who they are who fain would have him
know.
He turned to hers his dim, disastrous eyes.
Wherein the knowledge of her and the long
love
Glimmered through veil on veil of vacancy.
That evening little Jubal, coining hf)me
Singing behind his flock, saw ancient Eve
Crouched by the ruined altar in the glade,
The accursed place, sown deep each early
spring
With stones and salt — the Valley of the
Blood;
And that same night Eve fled under the
stars 60
Eastward to Nod, the land of violence.
To Cain, and the strong city he had built
Against all men who hunted for his soul.
Ill
She gave her message darkly in the gates,
And waited trembling. At day-fall he came.
She knew him not beneath his whitened
hair;
But when at length she knew him, and was
known.
The whitened hair, the bent and listening
frame.
The savage misery of the sidelong eyes,
Fell on her heart with strangling. So it
was 70
That now for many days she held her
peace,
Abiding with him till he seemed again
The babe she bare first in the wilderness.
Her maiden fruits to Adam, the new joy
The desert bloomed with, which the desert
stars
Whispered concerning. Yet she held her
peace.
Until he seemed a young man in the house,
A gold frontlet of pride and a green cedar; 1
Then, leading him apart. Eve told her wish,
Not faltering now nor uttering it far oflF, 80
But as a sovereign mother to her son
Speaks simple destiny. He looked at her
Dimly, as if he saw her not; then stooped.
Sharpening his brows upon her. With a
cry
She laid fierce, shaken hands about his
breast.
Drew down his neck, and harshly from his
brow
Pushing the head-band and the matted
locks.
Baring the livid flesh with violence.
She kissed him on the Sign. Cain bowed his
head
Upon her shoulder, saying, " I will go!" 90
5^4
WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY
IV
Now they Imd come to the stream Hiddekel,
And passed beyond the stream. There, full
in face,
Where the low morning made a mist of
light,
The Garden and its gates lay like a flower
Afloat on the still waters of the dawn.
The clicking leap of bright-mailed grass-
hoppers,
The dropping of sage-beetles from their
perch
On the gnawed cactus, even the pulsing
drum
Of blood-beats in their ears, merged suddenly
Into ethereal hush. Then Cain made
halt, lOO
Held her, and muttered, "Tis enough.
Thou sawest!
His Angel stood and threatened in the sun!"
And Eve said, "Yea, and though the day
were set
With sworded angels, thou would'st wait
for me
Yonder, before the gates; which, look you,
child,
Lie open to me as the gates to him.
Thy father, when he entered in his rage.
Calling thee from the dark, where of old
days
I kept thee folded, hidden, till he called."
So gray Cain by the unguarded portal
sat, I lo
His arms crossed o'er his forehead, and his
face
Hid in hh meager knees; but ancient Eve
Passed on into the vales of Paradise.
Tranced in lonely radiance stood the Tree,
As Eve put back the glimmering ferns and
vines J
And crept into the place. Awhile she
stooped,
And as a wild thing by the drinking-pool
Peers ere it drinks, she peered. Then,
laughing low,
Her frame of grief and body of her years
She lifted proudly to its virgin height, 120
Flung her lean arms into the pouring day,
And circling with slow paces round the
Tree,
She sang her stifled meaning out to God.
EVE S SONG
Behold, against thy zvill, against thy zvordy
Against the zvrath and warning of thy szvordy
Eve has been Eve, 0 Lord!
A pitcher filled, she coynes hack from the brook,
A wain she comes, laden with mellow ears;
She is a roll inscribed, a prophet^s book
Writ strong with characters. 130
Behold, Eve willed it so; look, if it be so, look!
Early at dawn, while yet thy watchers slept.
Lightly her untamed spirit over-leapt
The zvalls where she was kept.
As a young comely leopardess she stood:
Iler lustrous fell, her sullen grace, her fleetness.
They gave her foretaste, in thy tangled woody
Of many a savage sweetness.
Good to fore-gloat upon; being tasted, szueet
and good.
0 szvayer in the sunlit tops of trees, 140
0 comer up with cloud out of the seas,
0 laugher at thine ease
Over thine everlasting dream of mirth,
0 lord of savage pleasures, savage pains.
Knew' St Thou not Eve, who broughtest her to
birth?
Searcher of breast and reins.
Thou should' St have searched thy Woman, the
seed-pod of thine earth!
Herself hath searched her softly through and
through;
Singing she lifts her full soul up to view;
Lord, do Thou praise it, too! 150
Look, as she turns it, how it dartles free
Its gathered meanings: woman, mother, wife.
Spirit that was and is and waits to be.
Worm of the dust of life,
Child, sister — ghostly rays! What lights are
these, Lord, see!
Look where Eve lifts her storied soul on high.
And turns it as a ball, she knows not why.
Save that she could not die
Till she had shown Thee all the secret sphere —
The bright rays and the dim, and these that
run 160
Bright-darkling, making Thee to doubt and
fear,—
Oh, love them every one!
Eve pardons Thee not one, not one. Lord;
, dost Thou hear?
THE DEATH OF EVE
38s
Lovely to Eve zcas Adcuns praising breath;
His face averted bitter was as death;
Abely her son, and Seth
Lifted her heart to heaven, praising her;
Cain with a little frown darkened the stars;
And when the striiigs of Jubal's harp would
stiry
Like honey in cool jars 1 70
The words he praised her withy like rairt his
praises were.
Still, still with prayer and ecstasy she strove
To be the woman they did well approve.
That, narrowed to their love.
She might have done with bitterness and blame;
But still along the yonder edge of prayer
A spirit in a fiery whirlwind came —
Eve*s spirit, wild and fair —
Crying with Eve's own voice the number of her
name.
Yea, turning in the whirlwind and the fire, 180
Eve saw her own proud being all entire
Made perfect by desire;
And from the rounded gladness of that sphere
Came bridal songs and harpings and fresh
laughter;
** Glory unto the faithful!" sounded clear.
And then, a little after,
*^ JVhoso denyeth aught, let him depart from
here!"
Now, therefore. Eve, with mystic years 0 er-
s cored,
Danceth and doeth pleasure to Thee, Lord,
According to the word 190
That Thou hast spoken to her by her dream.
Singing a song she dimly understands,
She lifts her soul to let the splendor stream.
Lord, take away thy hands!
Let this beam pierce thy heart, and this most
piercing beam!
Far off, rebelliously, yet for thy sake,
She gathered them, 0 Thou who lovest to break
A thousand souls, and shake
Their dust along the wind, but sleeplessly
Searchest the Bride fulfilled in limb and
feature, 200
Ready and boon to he fulfilled of Thee,
Thine ample, tameless creature, —
Against thy will and word, behold. Lord, this
is She!
VI
From carven plinth and thousand-galleried
green
Cedars, and all close boughs that over-tower,
The shadows lengthened eastward from the
gates,
And still Cain hid his forehead in his knees.
Nor dared to look abroad lest he might find
More watchers in the portals: for he heard
What seemed the rush of wings; from while
to while 210
A pallor grew and faded in his brain,
As if a great light passed him near at hand.
But when above the darkening desert swales
The moon came, shedding white, unlikely
day,
Cain rose, and with his back against the
stones.
As a keen fighter at the desperate odds,
Glared round him. Cool and silent lay the
night,
Empty of any foe. Then, as a man
Who has a thing to do, and makes his fear
An icy wind to freeze his purpose firm, 220
He stole in through the pillars of the gate,
Down aisles of shadow windowed with the
moon.
By meads with the still stars communicant.
Past heaven-bosoming pool and pooled
stream,
Until he saw, through tangled fern and vine,
The Tree, where God had made its habi-
tation:
And crouched above the shape that had
been Eve,
With savage, listening frame and sidelong
eyes,
Cain waited for the coming of the dawn.
O. HENRY (1862-1910)
William Sidney Porter was horn in Greensboro, North Carolina, on II September, 1862. His
mother died when he was three years old. His father, a physician, lived until 1888, but was not very
useful to William Sidney. He fell a victim to the notion that he could invent a perpetual-motion
machine, and passed with increasing absorption to other inventions, intrinsically less absurd, but
equally impracticable. The boy was not left quite without care, for he had an aunt who kept a private
school, and who was evidently an effective teacher. To her school he went until he was fifteen years
old, when all schooling ceased. He was early inclined to reading, but the books he read, in vast num-
bers, were dime novels. His aunt led him to better things. He himself said that he read more before
he was twenty than during the remainder of his life, and that his taste in reading was at its best dur-
ing the period when practically all of it was done, from his thirteenth year to his twentieth. At the
same time he mentioned two examples. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy and Lane's translation of
The Arabian Nights. But he also read Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Charles Reade, Bulwer Lyt-
ton, Wilkie Collins, Auerbach, Victor Hugo, and Alexander Dumas. ( C. Alphonso Smith, 0.
Henry Biography, 90.) When he was fifteen he began working in his uncle's drug store, where he
remained until 1882, becoming a registered pharmacist. In the latter year his health was suffering
from confinement, and a family friend took him to Texas, and there he lived until 1898. He spent
two years on a ranch, and then moved to Austin, where his life was varied. He was an "occasional
clerk in a tobacco store and later in a drug store, bookkeeper for a real estate firm, draftsman in a
land office, paying and receiving teller in a bank, member of a military company, singer in the choirs
of the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Episcopal churches, actor in private theatricals, editor of a humorous
paper, serenader and cartoonist." His biographer adds that the only segment of the town's life "that
he seems not to have touched was the University."
In 1887 Porter married Athol Estes, of Austin, and after this apparently made his first efforts to
supplement his earnings by writing. He wrote humorous paragraphs, anecdotes, and the like odds and
ends, and found a market for them. In the fall of 1895 he moved to Houston, where he conducted
a daily column in a newspaper. This work suddenly ceased in the summer of 1896 when he received
word that he had been charged with embezzlement while employed by an Austin bank. He started
for Austin to answer the charge, which was not a complete surprise, but on the way, seized by fear of
the possible outcome, he changed his mind and went instead to New Orleans and thence to Central
America. He was brought back early in 1897 by the news that his wife was dying of tuberculosis
(she died on 25 July), surrendered himself, and stood his trial. His flight had seemed a confession of
guilt, he was convicted (1898), and was sentenced to serve five years in the penitentiary at Columbus,
Ohio. He always asserted that he had been innocent, and there would seem to be every reason to
believe that he was really the victim of incredible carelessness in the management of the bank. He
felt his disgrace keenly, was a model prisoner, and was consequently released after he had served only
three years and three months of his sentence. He had begun writing short stories at least as early
as 1897, when he first sold one, and during his imprisonment he wrote steadily, soon showing "a range
of imagination, a directness of style, and a deftness of craftsmanship to which little was to be added."
Immediately after his conviction he adopted the name Sydney Porter, as a first step towards a disguise,
and while he was a prisoner he began to use, in connection with the stories he then sold, the name
O. Henry. There can be little doubt that his imprisonment had the eflfect of sobering O. Henry and
making him determine to master his highly artificial and deliberate craft. He came out of prison a
more purposeful man than he had hitherto been, and one capable of sustained and masterly work.
He first went to Pittsburgh, and was soon writing so acceptably to New York editors that he was urged
to come to New York. He did so, and lived there, save for certain periods spent in North Carolina
— during one of which, in 1907, he was married a second time — until his death on 5 June, 1910.
New York was endlessly stimulating to O. Henry, and he became so identified with the city that
he could work nowhere else. His period of most rapid and successful work, from which dates the
beginning of his fame, commenced in December, 1903, when he contracted with the New York World
to contribute to that newspaper a story each week, to be paid for at the rate of ^loo the story. Dur-
386
A LICKPENNY LOVER
3«7
ing 1904 and 1905 he wrote 1 15 stories, 94 of which appeared in the JVorldy and 99 of which deal with
the New York scene. A number of his stories deal also witli the far West, with the South, and with
Latin America; and, though it is true that O. Henry discovered and proHtcd by the vast Held of the
life of average New Yorkers (the "four million" as opposed to the smart "four hundred "^ still, it is
clear that his real discovery was not a new field for fiction so much as a new method of exploiting the
humor, the pathos, and the romance of average, commonplace human beings. It has illuminatingly
been remarked that his readers are likely to remember the points of his stories, but not their charac-
ters, and the reason is simply that O. Henry did not aim to delineate character. He has most fre-
quently been compared with Poe and de Maupassant, and with justice, though there are also striking
differences to be noted. Like Poe, O. Henry thought first of a particular impression he wished to
create, and then selected and arranged his material to that end, with the utmost directness and econ-
omy, concealed in the latter's case beneath a careless manner. The lack of genuine human interest
in O. Henry's tales is less obvious than in Poe's, because Poe aimed prevailingly at exciting terror,
whereas O. Henry aimed at comedy heightened by pathos and, appropriately to this end, laid his scenes
on such familiar ground as to mislead even competent critics, who have spoken of his tales as "an
amazing transcript of American life." O. Henry's careless manner is another point of difference which
makes his calculated artifice less obvious, though it is no less real. It is, however, equally true of both
that they aimed not at the exploration of human nature, but at the exploitation of human appear-
ances for their own ends. Tennyson was O. Henry's favorite poet, but he was saved from cloying
sentimentalism by his vigorous comic sense. And that sense had the freer play because all of his ideas
were conventional, safe — so eminently safe that he could joke about th»m without fear, and without
arousing fear in the minds of the hundred million readers whose minds were exactly like his own. And
doubtless O. Henry's freedom from the weight of profound intellectual and moral problems aided him
in concentrating himself — as he did with so much success — upon the aim of becoming a consummate
master of artifice.
The earliest of 0. Henry's volumes of tales was Cabbages and Kings (1904). The second was The
Four Million (1906). Others followed rapidly: The Trimmed Lamp (1907), Heart of the West (1907),
The Voice of the City (1908), The Gentle Grafter (1908), Roads of Destiny (1909), Options (1909), Strictly
Business (1910), Whirligigs (1910), Sixes and Sevens (1911), Rolling Stones (1913), and Waifs and
Strays (19 19).
A LICKPENNY LOVERS
There were 3,000 girls in the Biggest
Store. Masie was one of them. She was
eighteen and a saleslady in the gents' gloves.
Here she became versed in two varieties of
human beings — the kind of gents who buy
their gloves in department stores and the
kind of women who buy gloves for unfortu-
nate gents. Besides this wide knowledge of
the human species, Masie had acquired other
information. She had listened to the pro-
mulgated wisdom of the 2,999 other girls
and had stored it in a brain that was as
secretive and wary as that of a Maltese cat.
Perhaps nature, foreseeing that she would
lack wise counselors, had mingled the saving
ingredient of shrewdness along with her
beauty, as she has endowed the silver fox
of the priceless fur above the other animals
with cunning.
1 This and the two following stories are reprinted
with the permission of Messrs. Douhleday, Page, and
Company. The present story was first printed in the
New York Wor/d, 29 May, 1904, and was republished
in T/i£ Voice of the City.
For Masie was beautiful. She was a deep-
tinted blonde, with the calm poise of a lady
who cooks butter cakes in a window. She
stood behind her counter in the Biggest
Store; and as you closed your hand over
the tape-line for your glove measure you
thought of Hebe; and as you looked again
you wondered how she had come by
Minerva's eyes.
When the floorwalker was not looking
Masie chewed tutti frutti; when he was
looking she gazed up as if at the clouds and
smiled wistfully.
That is the shop-girl smile, and I enjoin
you to shun it unless you are well fortified
with callosity of the heart, caramels, and
a congeniality for the capers of Cupid. This
smile belonged to Masie's recreation hours
and not to the store; but the floorwalker
must have his own. He is the Shylock^of the
stores. When he comes nosing around, the
bridge of his nose is a toll-bridge. It is goo-
goo eyes or "git" when he looks toward a
pretty girl. Of course not all floorwalkers
are thus. Only a few days ago the papers
printed news of one over eighty years of age.
388
O. HENRY
One day Irving Carter, painter, million-
aire, traveler, poet, automobilist, happened
to enter the Biggest Store. It is due to him
to add that his visit was not voluntary.
Filial duty took him by the collar and
dragged him inside, while his mother phil-
andered among the bronze and terra-cotta
statuettes.
Carter strolled across to the glove counter
in order to shoot a few minutes on the wing.
His need for gloves was genuine; he had
forgotten to bring a pair with him. But his
action hardly calls for apology, because he
had never heard of glove-counter flirtations.
As he neared the vicinity of his fate he
hesitated, suddenly conscious of this un-
known phase of Cupid's less worthy pro-
fession.
Three or four cheap fellows, sonorously
garbed, were leaning over the counters,
wrestling with the mediatorial hand-cover-
ings, while giggling girls played vivacious
seconds to their lead upon the strident
string of coquetry. Carter would have
retreated, but he had gone too far. Masie
confronted him behind her counter with a
questioning look in eyes as coldly, beauti-
fully, warmly blue as the glint of summer
sunshine on an iceberg drifting in Southern
seas.
And then Irving Carter, painter, million-
aire, etc., felt a warm flush rise to his aristo-
cratically pale face. But not from diffidence.
The blush was intellectual in origin. He
knew in a moment that he stood in the ranks
of the ready-made youths who wooed the
giggling girls at other counters. Himself
leaned against the oaken trysting place of a
cockney Cupid with a desire in his heart for
the favor of a glove salesgirl. He was no
more than Bill and Jack and Mickey. And
then he felt a sudden tolerance for them, and
an elating, courageous contempt for the con-
ventions upon which he had fed, and an
unhesitating determination to have this
perfect creature for his own.
When the gloves were paid for and
wrapped Carter lingered for a moment.
The dimples at the corners of Masie's
damask mouth deepened. All gentlemen
who bought gloves lingered in just that way.
She curved an arm, showing like Psyche's
through her shirt-waist sleeve, and rested
an elbow upon the show-case edge.
Carter had never before encountered a
situation of which he had not been perfect
master. But now he stood far more awkward
than Bill or Jack or Mickey. He had no
chance of meeting this beautiful girl socially.
His mind struggled to recall the nature and
habits of shop-girls as he had read or heard
of them. Somehow he had received the idea
that they sometimes did not insist too strictly
upon the regular channels of introduction.
His heart beat loudly at the thought of pro-
posing an unconventional meeting with this
lovely and virginal being. But the tumult
in his heart gave him courage.
After a few friendly and well-received re-
marks on general subjects, he laid his card
by her hand on the counter.
"Will you please pardon me," he said,
"if I seem too bold; but I earnestly hope
you will allow me the pleasure of seeing
you again. There is my name; I assure you
that it is with the greatest respect that I
ask the favor of becoming one of your
fr acquaintances. May I not hope
for the privilege?'*
Masie knew men — especially men who buy
gloves. Without hesitation she looked him
frankly and smilingly in the eyes, and said:
"Sure. I guess you're all right. I don't
usually go out with strange gentlemen,
though. It ain't quite ladylike. When
should you want to see me again?"
"As soon as I may," said Carter. **If
you would allow me to call at your home,
I "
Masie laughed musically. "Oh, gee, no!'*
she said, emphatically. "If you could see
our flat once! There's five of us in three
rooms. I'd just like to see ma's face if I
was to bring a gentleman friend there!"
"Anywhere, then," said the enamored
Carter, "that will be convenient to you."
"Say," suggested Masie, with a bright-
idea look in her peach-blow face; "I guess
Thursday night will about suit me. Suppose
you come to the corner of Eighth Avenue
and Forty-eighth Street at 7:30. I live right
near the corner. But I've got to be back
home by eleven. Ma never lets me stay out
after eleven."
Carter promised gratefully to keep the
tryst, and then hastened to his mother, who
was looking about for him to ratify her
purchase of a bronze Diana.
A LICKPENNY LOVER
389
A salesgirl, with small eyes and an obtuse
nose, strolled near Masie, with a friendly leer.
"Did you make a hit with his nobs,
Masie?" she asked, familiarly.
"The gentleman asked permission to
call," answered Masie, with the grand air,
as she slipped Carter's card into the bosom of
her waist.
"Permission to call!" echoed small eyes,
with a snigger. " Did he say anything about
dinner in the Waldorf and a spin in his auto
afterward.^"
"Oh, cheese it!" said Masie, wearily.
"You've been used to swell things, I don't
think. You've had a swelled head ever since
that hose-cart driver took you out to a chop
suey joint. No, he never mentioned the
Waldorf; but there's a Fifth Avenue address
on his card, and if he buys the supper you
can bet your life there won't be no pigtail on
the waiter what takes the order."
As Carter glided away from the Biggest
Store with his mother in his electric run-
about, he bit his lip with a dull pain at his
heart. He knew that love had come to him
for the first time in all the twenty-nine years
of his life. And that the object of it should
make so readily an appointment with him at
a street corner, though it was a step toward
his desires, tortured him with misgivings.
Carter did not know the shop-girl. He
did not know that her home is often either
a scarcely habitable tiny room or a domicile
filled to overflowing with kith and kin. The
street-corner is her parlor; the park is her
drawing-room; the avenue is her garden
walk; yet for the most part she is as in-
violate mistress of herself in them as is my
lady inside her tapestried chamber.
One evening at dusk, two weeks after
their first meeting, Carter and Masie strolled
arm-in-arm into a little, dimly-lit park.
They found a bench, tree-shadowed and
secluded, and sat there.
For the first time his arm stole gently
around her. Her golden-bronze head slid
restfully against his shoulder.
"Gee!" sighed Masie, thankfully. "Why
didn't you ever think of that before?"
"Masie," said Carter, earnestly, "j'ou
surely know that I love you. I ask you
sincerely to marry me. You know me well
enough by this time to have no doubts of
me. I want you, and I must have you. I
care nothing for the difference in our sta-
tions."
"What is the difference?" asked Masie,
curiously.
"Well, there isn't any," said Carter,
quickly, "except in the minds of foolish
people. It is in my power to give you a
life of luxury. My social position is beyond
dispute, and my means are ample."
"They all say that," remarked Masie.
"It's the kid they all give you. I suppose
you really work in a delicatessen or follow
the races. I ain't as green as I look."
"I can furnish you all the proofs you
want," said Carter, gently. "And I want you,
Masie. I loved you the first day I saw you.**
"They all do," said Masie, with an
amused laugh, "to hear 'em talk. If I could
meet a man that got stuck on me the third
time he'd seen me I think I'd get mashed
on him."
"Please don't say such things," pleaded
Carter. "Listen to me, dear. Ever since
I first looked into your eyes you have been
the only woman in the world for me.'*
"Oh, ain't you the kidder!" smiled
Masie. "How many other girls did you
ever tell that?'*
But Carter persisted. And at length he
reached the flimsy, fluttering little soul of the
shop-girl that existed somewhere deep down
in her lovely bosom. His words penetrated
the heart whose very lightness was its
safest armor. She looked up at him with
eyes that saw. And a warm glow visited
her cool cheeks. Tremblingly, awfully, her
moth wings closed, and she seemed about
to settle upon the flower of love. Some faint
glimmer of life and its possibilities on the
other side of her glove counter dawned upon
her. Carter felt the change and crowded
the opportunity.
"Marry me, Masie," he whispered softly,
"and we will go away from this ugly city to
beautiful ones. We will forget work and
business, and life will be one long holiday. I
know where I should take you — I have been
there often. Just think of a shore where
summer is eternal, where the waves are
always rippling on the lovely beach and the
people are happy and free as children. We
will sail to those shores and remain there as
long as you please. In one of those far-
away cities there are grand and lovely
390
(). IIKNRV
palaces and towers full of hcaiitifiil pictures
and statues. The streets of the city are
water, and one travels about in "
" I know/* said Masie, sitting up sud-
denly. "Gondolas."
"Yes," smiled Carter.
"I thought so," said Masle.
"And then," continued Carter, "we will
travel on and see whatever we wish in the
world. After the European cities we will
visit India and the ancient cities there, and
ride on elephants and see the wonderful
temples of the Hmdoos and Brahmins and
the Japanese gardens and the camel trains
and chariot races in Persia, and all the queer
sights of foreign countries. Don't you
think you would like it, Masie?"
Masie rose to her feet.
"I think we had better be going home,"
she said, coolly. "It's getting late."
Carter humored her. He had come to
know her varying, thistle-down moods, and
that it was useless to combat them. But he
felt a certain happy triumph. He had held
for a moment, though but by a silken thread,
the soul of his wild Psyche, and hope was
stronger within him. Once she had folded
her wings and her cool hand had closed
about his own.
At the Biggest Store the next day Masie's
chum, Lu!u, waylaid her in an angle of the
counter.
"How are you and your swell friend
making it?" she asked.
"Oh, him?" said Masie, patting her side
curls. "He ain't in it any more. Say,
Lu, what do you think that fellow wanted
me to do?"
"Go on the stage?" guessed Lulu,
breathlessly.
"Nit; he's too cheap a guy for that. He
wanted me to marry him and go down to
Coney Island for a wedding tour!"
JHE ROADS WE TAKE ^
Twenty miles west of Tucson the "Sun-
set Express" stopped at a tank to take on
water. Besides the aqueous addition the
engine of that famous flyer acquired some
other things that were not good for it.
While the fireman was lowering the feed-
1 First printed in the New York fVprU, 7 August,
1904; republished in lyhirligigs.
ing hose. Bob I idball, "Shark" Dodson,
and a quarter-bred Creek Indian called
John Big Dog climbed on the engine and
showed the engineer three round orifices in
pieces of ordnance that they carried. These
orifices so impressed the engineer with their
possibilities that he raised both hands in a
gesture such as accompanies the ejaculation
"Do tell!"
At the crisp command of Shark Dods.^n,
who was leader of the attacking force, the
engineer descended to the ground and un-
coupled the engine and tender. Then John
Big Dog, perched upon the coal, sportively
held two guns upon the engine driver and
the fireman, and suggested that they run
the engine fifty yards away and there await
further orders.
Shark Dodson and Bob Tidball, scorning
to put such low-grade ore as the passengers
through the mill, struck out for the rich
pocket of the express car. They found the
messenger serene in the belief that the
"Sunset Express" was taking on nothing
more stimulating and dangerous than aqua
pura. While Bob was knocking this idea
out of his head with the butt-end of his six-
shooter. Shark Dodson was already dosing
the express-car safe with dynamite.
The safe exploded to the tune of ^30,000,
all gold and currency. The passengers thrust
their heads casually out of the windows to
look for the thunder-cloud. The conductor
jerked at the bell-rope, which sagged down
loose and unresisting, at his tug. Shark
Dodson and Bob Tidball, with their booty
in a stout canvas bag, tumbled out of the
express car and ran awkwardly in their
high-heeled boots to the engine.
The engineer, sullenly angry but wise, ran
the engine, according to orders, rapidly
away from the inert train. But before this
was accomplished the express messenger, re-
covered from Bob Tid ball's persuader to
neutrality, jumped out of his car with a
Winchester rifle and took a trick in the
game. Mr. John Big Dog, sitting on the
coal tender, unwittingly made a wrong lead
by giving an imitation of a target, and the
messenger trumped him. With a ball
exactly between his shoulder blades the
Creek chevalier of industry rolled oflF to the
ground, thus increasing the share of his
comrades in the loot by one sixth each.
I'lII-: ROADS WE TAKK
391
Ivvo miles from the tank the engineer
was ordered to stop.
The robbers waved a defiant adieu and
plunged down the steep slope into the thick
woods that lined the track. Five minutes
of crashing through a thicket of chaparral
brought them to open woods, where three
horses were tied to low-hanging branches.
One was waiting for John Big Dog, who
would never ride by night or day again.
This animal the robbers divested of saddle
and bridle and set free. They mounted the
other two with the bag across one pommel,
and rode fast and with discretion through the
forest and up a primeval, lonely gorge. Here
the animal that bore Bob Tidball slipped
on a mossy boulder and broke a foreleg.
They shot him through the head at once
and sat down to hold a council of flight.
Made secure for the present by the tortuous
trail they had traveled, the question of time
was no longer so big. Many miles and hours
lay between them and the spryest posse
that could follow. Shark Dodson's horse,
with trailing rope and dropped bridle, panted
and cropped thankfully of the grass along
the stream in the gorge. Bob Tidball opened
the sack, drew out double handfuls of the
neat packages of currency and the one sack
of gold, and chuckled with the glee of a
child.
"Say, you old double-decked pirate," he
called joyfully to Dodson, "you said we
could do it — you got a head for financing
that knocks the horns off of anything in
Arizona.'*
" What are we going to do about a boss for
you, Bob.f* We ain't got long to wait here.
They'll be on our trail before daylight in
the mornin'."
"Oh, I guess that cayuse of yourn'll carry
double for a while," answered the sanguine
Bob. "We'll annex the first animal we
come across. By jingoei,; we made a haul,
didn't we.^ Accordin' to the marks on this
money there's ^30,000 — ^15,000 apiece!"
"It's short of what I expected," said
Shark Dodson, kicking softly at the pack-
ages with the toe of his boot. And then he
looked pensively at the wet sides of his tired
horse.
"Old BoIivar^s mighty nigh played out,"
he said, slowly. "I wish that sorrel of yours
hadn't got hurt."
"So do I," said Bob, heartily, "but it
can't be helped. Bolivar's got plenty of
bottom — he'll get us both far enough to
get fresh mounts. Dang it. Shark, I can't
help thinkin' how funny it is that an
Easterner like you can come out here and
give us Western fellows cards and spades
in the desperado business. What part of
the East was you from, anyway.^"
"New York State," said Shark Dodson,
sitting down on a boulder and chewing a
twig. "I was born on a farm in Ulster
County. I ran away from home when I was
seventeen. It was an accident my comin*
West. I was walkin' along the road with my
clothes in a bundle, makin' for New York
Cit}^ I had an idea of goin' there and
makin' lots of money. I always felt like I
could do it. I came to a place one evenin'
where the road forked and I didn't know
which fork to take. I studied about it for
half an hour, and then I took the left-hand.
That night I run into the camp of a Wild
West show that was travelin' among the
little towns, and I went West with it. I've
often wondered if I wouldn't have turned
out different if I'd took the other road."
"Oh, I reckon you'd have ended up about
the same," said Bob Tidball, cheerfully
philosophical. "It ain't the roads we take;
it's what's inside of us that makes us turn
out the way we do."
Shark Dodson got up and leaned against
a tree
I'd a good deal rather that sorrel of yourn
hadn't hurt himself. Bob,'* he said again,
almost pathetically.
"Same here," agreed Bob; "he was sure a
first-rate kind of a crowbait. But Bolivar,
he'll pull, us through all right. Reckon we'd
better be movin' on, hadn't we. Shark? I'll
bag this boodle ag'in and we'll hit the trail
for higher timber."
Bob, Tidball replaced the spoil in the bag
and tied the mouth of it tighdy with a cord.
W^hen he looked up the most prominent
object that he saw was the muzzle of Shark
Dodson's .45 held upon him without a
waver.
Stop your funnin'," said Bob, with a
grin. "We got to be hittin' the breeze."
"Set still," said Shark. "You ain't goin*
to hit no breeze. Bob. I hate to tell you, but
there ain't any chance for but one of us.
392
O. HENRY
liolivar, he's plenty tirctl, aiul he can't carry
chnihle."
"We been pards, me and you, Sliark Dod-
son, for three year," Bob said (jiiietly.
"We've risked our Hves together tlnie and
a .
He stood before her with his hands
clenched, the veins beating in his temples.
She had grown very pale, and her cheeks
looked hollow. When she spoke her voice
had an odd click in it.
*'If — if these ladies and gentlemen have
been coming to my lectures out of charity,
I see nothing to be ashamed of in that "
she faltered.
"If they've been coming out of charity to
mey\\\e retorted, "don't you see you've been
making me a party to a fraud? Isn't there
any shame in that?" His forehead reddened.
"Mother! Can't you see the shame of
letting people think I was a d beat, who
sponged on you for my keep? Let alone
making us both the laughing-stock_of every
place you go to!"
*T never did that, Lancelot!"
"Did what?"
"Made you a laughing-stock "
He stepped close to her and caught her
wrist.
"Will you look me in the face and swear
you never told people you were doing this
lecturing business to support me?"
There was a long silence. He dropped her
wrist and she lifted a limp handkerchief to
her frightened eyes. "I did do it — to support
you — to educate you" — she sobbed.
"We're not talking about what you did
when I was a boy. Everybody who knows
me knows I've been a grateful son. Have I
ever taken a penny from you since I left
college ten years ago?"
"I never said you had! How can you
accuse your mother of such wickedness,
Lancelot?"
"Have you never told anybody in this
hotel — or anywhere else in the last ten
years — that you were lecturing to support
me? Answer me that!"
"How can you," she wept, "before a
stranger?"
"Haven't you said such things about 7ne
to strangers?" he retorted.
"Lancelot!"
"Well — answer me, then. Say you
haven't, mother!" His voice broke un-
expectedly and he took her hand with a
gentler touch. "I'll believe anything you
tell me," he said almost humbly.
She mistook his tone and raised her head
with a rash clutch at dignity.
"I think you'd better ask this gentleman
to excuse you first."
"No, by God, I won't!" he cried. "This
gentleman says he knows all about you and I
mean him to know all about me too. I don't
mean that he or anybody else under this
roof shall go on thinking for another twenty-
four hours that a cent of their money has
ever gone into my pockets since I was old
enough to shift for myself. And he sha'n't
leave this room till you've made that clear
to him."
He stepped back as he spoke and put his
shoulders against the door.
"My dear young gentleman," I said
politely, "I shall leave this room exactly
when I see fit to do so — and that is now. I
have already told you that Mrs. Amyot
owes me no explanation of her conduct."
"But I owe you an explanation of mine —
you and every one who has bought a single
one of her lecture tickets. Do you suppose a
man who's been through what I went
through while that woman was talking to you
in the porch before dinner is going to hold
his tongue, and not attempt to justify him-
self? No decent man is going to sit down
under that sort of thing. It's enough to ruin
his character. If you're my mother's friend,
you owe it to me to hear what I've got to
say.
He pulled out his handkerchief and
wiped his forehead.
"Good God, mother!" he burst out sud-
denly, "what did you do it for? Haven't
you had everything you wanted ever since I
was able to pay for it? Haven't I paid you
back every cent you spent on me when I
was in college? Have I ever gone back on
you since I was big enough to work?" He
turned on me with a laugh. "I thought she
did it to amuse herself — and because there
4o6
EDITH WHARTON
was such a demand for her lectures. Such a
drjnand! That's what she always told me.
When we asked her to come out and spend
this winter with us in Minneapolis she
wrote back that she couldn't because she
had engap;ements all through the south,
and her manager vvouldn't let her off.
That's the reason why I came all the way
on here to see her. We thought she was the
most popular lecturer in the United States,
my wife and I did! We were awfully proud
of it too, I can tell you." He dropped into a
chair, still laughing.
"How can you, Lancelot, how can you!"
His mother, forgetful of my presence, was
clingmg to hmi with tentative caresses.
"When you didn't need the money any
longer I spent it all on the children — you
know I did."
"Yes, on lace christening dresses and life-
size rocking-horses with real manes! The
kind of thing children can't do without."
"Oh, Lancelot, Lancelot — I loved them so!
How can you believe such falsehoods about
me.'^
"What falsehoods about you?"
"That I ever told anybody such dreadful
things.?"
He put her back gently, keeping his eyes
on hers. "Did you never tell anybody in
this house that you were lecturing to support
your son
Her hands dropped from his shoulders
and she flashed round on me in sudden
anger.
"I know what I think of people who call
themselves friends and who come between
a mother and her son!"
"Oh, mother, mother!" he groaned.
I went up to him and laid my hand on his
shoulder.
"My dear man," I said, "don't you see the
uselessness of prolonging this?"
"Yes, I do," he answered abruptly; and
before I could forestall his movement he
rose and walked out of the room.
There was a long silence, measured by the
lessening reverberations of his footsteps
down the wooden floor of the corridor.
When they ceased I approached Mrs.
Amyot, who had sunk into her chair. L held
out my hand and she took it without a trace
of resentment on her ravaged face.
"I sent his wife a seal-skin jacket at
Christmas!" she said, with the tears running
down her cheeks.
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON (1869- )
Mr. Robinson was born at Head Tide, Maine, on 22 December, 1869. His father was a grain mer-
chant in this village, but, his business interests expanding, he removed with his family, about 1872, to
the neighboring town of Gardiner, on the Kennebec River. Here Mr. Robinson passed his boyhood and
youth, and this is the Tilbury Town of his poems. In 1891 he entered Harvard College, but was able to
remain there only two years; and his father's ill health combined with reverses in business now forced
him to make his own way without help. He had already determined upon poetry as his life's work,
and from 1S93 until 1905 he struggled in various ways to earn his living in New York, while writing and
publishing his three earliest volumes of verse. His first volume. The Torrent and the Night Before (1896),
was privately printed. In 1897 he published The Children of the Night, and in 1902 Captain Craig.
Neither of these volumes attracted much attention from the public, but Captain Craig was warmly
praised by Theodore Roosevelt, who also in 1905 gave Mr. Robinson a post in the New York Custom
House. This position he held until 1910, when he published The Tozvn down the River. Since 19 10 he
has been able to give his time entirely to literary work. In 1914 he published a play, Fan Zorn, and in
the following year a second play. The Porcupine. These plays have not aroused the enthusiasm of his
critics, and it is generally felt that his dramatic ability — which is unquestioned and great — has found
more congenial expression in many of his poems. And to poetry he returned in 1916, with tlie publica-
tion of a very striking and distinguished volume. The Man against the Sky. Two individual and sig-
nificant interpretations of the matter of Arthurian legend followed in 1917 and 1920, Merlin and Lanceloty
and in the latter year was published a collection of shorter pieces, The Three Taverns. In 192 1 came
another collection, Avon's Harvest, and in the same year Mr. Robinson's Collected Poems were published,
for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Two long poems have since appeared, Roman Bartholow
(1923) and The Man JVho Died Tzvice (1924; awarded the Pulitzer prize), and a coWectxon, Dionysus in
Doubt (1925). Mr. Robinson has received an honorary doctorate of letters from Yale (1922) and is a
member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
It has been mentioned that Mr. Robinson's earlier volumes of verse did not attract much attention
from the general public. Poetry in America in the last years of the nineteenth century and the first
years of the twentieth seemed to be practically a lost cause. Older poets of high reputation had died,
and the most prominent of those who succeeded them were content to be followers and imitators. They
found, moreover, no inspiration in the actual life or events of their country, but turned to distant lands
or to dream-worlds of the fancy for their matter. Repelled by life's realities, they produced verse which
was mnocuous — and uninteresting. They were soft-spoken, decorative, in a small way melodious;
they were, in a word, the last people in the world to convince an industrial nation, enjoying an extra-
ordinary flow of material prosperity, that poetry could contribute anything valuable to its life. The
work of William Vaughn Moody, and of a few others who had positive energy, vital interests, and high
courage was tentative and at times confused, and did not suffice to change the popular attitude. It
was only about 191 2 — the year in which Poetry: A Magazine of Verse was founded — that a change
began really to take place, a change which has in succeeding years been marked by increasingly wide-
spread popular interest in poetry and by the appearance of a notable body of American verse which has
rewarded that interest highly. The "new poets" have been boldly experimental, attempting to evolve
new forms of expression and to alter poetic diction, with consequent excursions into the bizarre which
have at times excited more curiosity than interest. Bewildered themselves — when not merely in search
of the sensational — they have bewildered the public. In their defense it has been urged that, form and
content in artistic expression being inseparable, the new poets with new things to say have had to try
to discover an appropriately new mode of utterance. This is one of those dangerous half-truths which
are the standing protection of eccentricity, and it has served to obscure the important fact that the
"new poets" have won for themselves a popular hearing primarily because the best of them have an
independent, pertinent, and valuable criticism of life to express, and the courage and feeling to express it
frankly and movingly.
This is well illustrated by Mr. Robinson's achievement. For, as has been happily said, the first
discovery made by Americans newly interested in poetry during recent years was, that in Mr. Robinson
they had been neglecting a poet whose achievement was so high and important as to entitle him to the
407
4o8
KDWIN ARLINGTON RORINSON
first place anioiiK recent and contemporary writers of verse. Yet, altlioiip,h Ins laniziuagc and poetic
form are markedly imlividiial, and altliou^h Ills criticism of life is Independent, pertinent, and valuable,
still, he has not found it necessary to depart from the traditional forms of luiglish versification, nor is
his language violent, slovenly, hi/arre, or otherwise twisted from the norm of English speech. On
the contrary, his orthodox numbers have a silvery smoothness which can only be the result of the most
patient, skilled, and scrupulous workmanship, and the only extraordinary qualities of his language
are its simplicity, directness, and precision. It is probable, Indeed, that his effort to meet the high
standards created by the great tradition of English verse has, by its very difliculty, braced him to greater
coherence and strength, and it may also have helped him to see what is local and temporary in terms of
what is universal and permanent In human experience. At least, this he has done. Subtle, quiet,
profound, uniting the essence of good breeding with the fine fruit of mature reflection, Mr. Robinson
has with steady composure, regardless of merely contemporary valuations, built up in his poems a
picture of life as a spiritual ordeal too searching for nearly all of us, placed as we are In an alien, chaotic
world, attracted as we are, like moths, by the irrelevant, and warped by suffering. But, at the same time,
he has also pictured life as good beneath all its evil, if we have the strength and insight to endure the
accidents of circumstance with quietness and resignation, while we continue to possess our souls, to
possess our faith in and love for justice and goodness and beauty and truth. This is the barest summary
statement, but it may be sufficient to indicate the (piality of Mr. Robinson's achievement — his mature
disenchantment with the world of appearances, ending not in mere petulance and negation and hatred,
but in a conviction, against all appearances, of the high value and destiny of human life.
FLAMMONDEi
The man Flammonde, from God knows
where,
With firm address and foreign air,
With news of nations in his talk
And something royal in his walk,
With glint of iron in his eyes,
But never doubt, nor yet surprise.
Appeared, and stayed, and held his head
As one by kings accredited.
Erect, with his alert repose
About him, and about his clothes.
He pictured all tradition hears
Of what we owe to fifty years.
His cleansing heritage of taste
Paraded neither want nor waste;
And what he needed for his fee
To live, he borrowed graciously.
He never told us what he was,
Or what mischance, or other cause,
Had banished him from better days
To play the Prince of Castaways.
10
20
1 This and the following poems are reprinted, in ac-
cordance with Mr. Robinson's request, from the re-
vised text of his Collected Poems (1921), and they are
arranged in the same order as in that volume. To meet
a requirement of the publishers, however, the volume
in which each poem originally appeared is named in
the footnotes.
Flammonde comes from E. A. Robinson's The Man
Against the Sky, copyrighted in 1916 by the Macmillan
Company. Reprinted by permission. _____
Meanwhile he played surpassing well
A part, for most, unplayable;
In fine, one pauses, half afraid
To say for certain that he played.
For that, one may as well forego
Conviction as to yes or no;
Nor can I say just how intense
Would then have been the difference
To several, who, having striven
In vain to get what he was given,
Would see the stranger taken on
By friends not easy to be won.
30
Moreover, many a malcontent
He soothed and found munificent;
His courtesy beguiled and foiled
Suspicion that his years were soiled;
His mien distinguished any crowd.
His credit strengthened when he bowed;
And women, young and old, were fond
Of looking at the man Flammonde. 40
There was a woman in our town
On whom the fashion was to frown;
But while our talk renewed the tinge
Of a long-faded scarlet fringe.
The man Flammonde saw none of that.
And what he saw we wondered at —
That none of us, in her distress.
Could hide or find our littleness.
CASSANDRA
409
50
There was a boy that all ap;rccd
Had shut within him the rare seed
Of learning. We could understand,
But none of us could lift a hand.
The man Flammonde appraised the youth,
And told a few of us the truth;
And thereby, for a little gold,
A flowered future was unrolled.
There were two citizens who fought
Por years and years, and over nought;
They made life awkward for their friends.
And shortened their own dividends. 60
The man Flammonde said what was wrong
Should be made right; nor was it long
Before they were again in line.
And had each other in to dine.
And these I mention are but four
Of many out of many more.
So much for them. But what of him —
So firm in every look and limb.''
What small satanic sort of kink
Was in his brain.? What broken link 70
Withheld him from the destinies
That came so near to being his?
What was he, when we came to sift
His meaning, and to note the drift
Of incommunicable ways
That make us ponder while we praise .f*
Why was it that his charm revealed
Somehow the surface of a shield.''
What was it that we never caught?
What was he, and what was he not?
How much it was of him we met
We cannot ever know; nor yet
Shall all he gave us quite atone
For what was his, and his alone;
Nor need we now, since he knew best,
Nourish an ethical unrest:
Rarely at once will nature give
The power to be Flammonde and live.
We cannot know how much we learn
From those who never will return,
Until a flash of unforeseen
Remembrance falls on what has been.
We've each a darkening hill to climb;
And this is why, from time to tmie
In Tilbury Town, we look beyond
Horizons for the man Flammonde.
80
90
CASSANDRA ^
I HKARD one who said: "Verily,
What word have I for children here?
Your Dollar is your only Word,
The wrath of it your only fear.
*' You build it altars tall enough
To make you see, but you are blind;
You cannot leave it long enough
lo look before you or behind.
"When Reason beckons you to pause.
You laugh and say that you know best; 10
But what it is you know, you keep
As dark as ingots in a chest.
"You laugh and answer, *We are young;
O leave us now, and let us grow.' —
Not asking how much more of this
Will Time endure or Fate bestow.
" Because a few complacent years
Have made your peril of your pride,
Think you that you are to go on
Forever pampered and untried?
20
30
"What lost eclipse of history,
What bivouac of the marching stars,
Has given the sign for you to see
Millenniums and last great wars?
"What unrecorded overthrow
Of all the world has ever known,
Or ever been, has made itself
So plain to you, and you alone?
"Your Dollar, Dove and Eagle make
A Trinity that even you
Rate higher than you rate yourselves;
It pays, it flatters, and it's new.
"And though your very flesh and blood
Be what your Eagle eats and drinks.
You'll praise him for the best of birds.
Not knowing what the Eagle thinks.
"The power is yours, but not the sight;
You see not upon what you tread;
You have the ages for your guide.
But not the wisdom to be led. 40
1 From E. A. Robinson's The Man Against the S/cy,
copyrighted in iyi6 by the Macniilhin Company.
Reprinted by permission.
4IO
KDVVIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON
"Think you to tread forever clown
1 he niereiless old verities?
And are ywu never to have eyes
To see the world for what it is?
"Are you to pay for what you have
With all you are?" — No other word
We caught, but with a laughing crowd
Moved on. None heeded, and few heard.
OLD KING COLEi
In Tilbury Town did Old King Cole
A wise old age anticipate,
Desiring, with his pipe and bowl.
No Khan's extravagant estate.
No crown annoyed his honest head.
No fiddlers three were called or needed;
For two disastrous heirs instead
Made music more than ever three did.
lO
20
Bereft of her with whom his life
Was harmony without a flaw,
He took no other for a wife.
Nor sighed for any that he saw;
And if he doubted his two sons,
And heirs, Alexis and Evander,
He might have been as doubtful once
Of Robert Burns and Alexander.
Alexis, in his early youth.
Began to steal — from old and young.
Likewise Evander, and the truth
Was like a bad taste on his tongue.
Born thieves and liars, their affair
Seemed only to be tarred with evil —
The most insufferable pair
Of scamps that ever cheered the devil.
The world went on, their fame went on,
And they went on — from bad to worse;
Till, goaded hot with nothing done,
And each accoutered with a curse,
The friends of Old King Cole, by twos,
And fours, and. sevens, and elevens, 30
Pronounced unalterable views
Of doings that were not of heaven's.
1 From E. A. Robinson's The Man Against the Sky,
copyrighted in 191 6 by the Macmillan Company.
Reprinted by permission.
And having learned again whereby
Their baleful zeal had come about.
King Cole met many a wrathful eye
So kindly that its wrath went out —
Or partly out. Say what they would,
He seemed the more to court their candor;
But never told what kind of good
Was in Alexis and Evander. 40
And Old King Cole, with many a puff
That haloed his urbanity.
Would smoke till he had smoked enough.
And listen most attentively.
He beamed as with an inward light
That had the Lord's assurance in it;
And once a man was there all night,
Expecting something every minute.
But whether from too little thought.
Or too much fealty to the bowl, 50
A dim reward was all he got
For sitting up with Old King Cole.
"Though mine," the father mused aloud,
"Are not the sons I would have chosen,
Shall I, less evilly endowed,
By their infirmity be frozen.?
*' They'll have a bad end, I'll agree.
But I was never born to groan;
For I can see what I can see,
And I'm accordingly alone. 60
With open heart and open door,
I love my friends, I like my neighbors;
But if I try to tell you more.
Your doubts will overmatch my labors.
"This pipe would never make me calm,
This bowl my grief would never drown.
For grief like mine there is no balm
In Gilead, or in Tilbury Town.
And if I see what I can see,
I know not any way to blind it; JO
Nor more if any way may be
P or you to grope or fly to find it.
"There may be room for ruin yet.
And ashes for a wasted love;
Or, like One whom you may forget,
I may have meat you know not of.
And if I'd rather live than weep
Meanwhile, do you find that surprising?
Why, bless my soul, the man's asleep!
That's good. The sun will soon be rising."8o
THE MAN AGAINST THE SKY
4n
THE MAN AGAINST THE SKY ^
Betwefn me and the sunset, like a dome
Against the glory of a world on fire,
Now burned a sudden hill,
Bleak, round, and high, by flame-lit height
made higher.
With nothing on it for the flame to kill
Save one who moved and was alone up there
To loom before the chaos and the glare
As if he were the last god going home
Unto his last desire.
Dark, marvelous, and inscrutable he moved
on lo
Till down the fiery distance he was gone.
Like one of those eternal, remote things
That range across a man's imaginings
When a sure music fills him and he knows
What he may say thereafter to few men, —
The touch of ages having wrought
An echo and a glimpse of what he thought
A phantom or a legend until then;
For whether lighted over ways that save,
Or lured from all repose, 20
If he go on too far to find a grave,
Mostly alone he goes.
Even he, who stood where I had found him.
On high with fire all round him.
Who moved along the molten west,
And over the round hill's crest
That seemed half ready with him to go down.
Flame-bitten and flame-cleft,
As if there were to be no last thing left
Of a nameless unimaginable town, — 30
Even he who climbed and vanished may have
taken
Down to the perils of a depth not known.
From death defended though by men for-
saken.
The bread that every man must eat alone;
He may have walked while others hardly
dared
Look on to see him stand where many fell;
And upward out of that, as out of hell.
He may have sung and striven
To mount where more of him shall yet be
given.
Bereft of all retreat,
To sevenfold heat, —
40
1 From E. A. Robinson's The Man Against the Sky,
copyrighted in 1916 by the Macmillan Company.
Reprinted by permission.
As on a day when three in Dura shared
The furnace, and were spared
For glory by that king of Babylon
Who made himself so great that God, who
heard.
Covered him with long feathers, like a bird.
Again, he may have gone down easily.
By comfortable altitudes, and found.
As always, underneath him solid ground
Whereon to be suflicient and to stand 50
Possessed already of the promised land.
Far stretched and fair to see:
A good sight, verily,
And one to make the eyes of her who bore
him
Shine glad with hidden tears.
Why question of his ease of who before him,
In one place or another where they left
Their names as far behind them as their
bones,
And yet by dint of slaughter toil and theft,
And shrewdly sharpened stones, 60
Carved hard the way for his ascendency
Through deserts of lost years.?
Why trouble him now who sees and hears
No more than what his innocence requires.
And therefore to no other height aspires
Than one at which he neither quails nor
tires ?
He may do more by seeing what he sees
Than others eager for iniquities;
He may, by seeing all things for the best.
Incite futurity to do the rest. 70
Or with an even likelihood.
He may have met with atrabilious eyes
The fires of time on equal terms and passed
Indifferently down, until at last
His only kind of grandeur would have been,
Apparently, in being seen.
He may have had for evil or for good
No argument; he may have had no care
For what without himself went anywhere
To failure or to glory, and least of all 80
For such a stale, flamboyant miracle;
He may have been the prophet of an art
Immovable to old idolatries;
He may have been a player without a part,
Annoyed that even the sun should have the
skies
For such a flaming way to advertise;
He may have been a painter sick at heart
With Nature's toiling for a new surprise;
412
EDWIN ARLINGTON RORINSON
lie iiiny have been n cynic, who now, for all
Of anythinj; divine that his eft'ete 90
Nej^ation may have tasted,
Saw truth in his own iniap;e, rather small,
Forbore to fever the ephemeral,
Found any barren height a good retreat
From any swarming street.
And in the sun saw power superbly wasted;
And when the primitive old-fashioned stars
Came out again to shine on joys and wars
More primitive, and all arrayed for doom,
Me may have proved a world a sorry thing
In his imagining, loi
And life a lighted highway to the tomb.
Or, mounting with infirm unsearching tread,
His hopes to chaos led,
He may have stumbled up there from the
past.
And with an aching strangeness viewed the
last
Abysmal conflagration of his dreams, —
A flame where nothing seems
To burn but flame itself, by nothing fed;
And while it all went out, no
Not even the faint anodyne of doubt
May then have eased a painful going down
From pictured heights of power and lost
renown,
Revealed at length to his outlived endeavor
Remote and unapproachable forever;
And at his heart there may have gnawed
Sick memories of a dead faith foiled and
flawed
And long dishonored by the living death
Assigned alike by chance
To brutes and hierophants; 120
And anguish fallen on those he loved around
him,
May once have dealt the last blow to con-
found him,
And so have left him as death leaves a child,
Who sees it all too near;
And he who knows no young way to forget
May struggle to the tomb unreconciled.
Whatever suns may rise or set
There may be nothing kinder for him here
Than shafts and agonies;
And under these 130
He may cry out and stay on horribly;
Or, seeing in death too small a thing to fear.
He may go forward like a stoic Roman
Where pangs and terrors in his pathway
lie, —
Or, seizing the swifr logic of a woman.
Curse God and die.
Or maybe there, like many another one
Who might have stood aloft and looked
ahead,
Black-drawn against wild red.
He may have built, unawed by fiery gules
That in him no commotion stirred, 141
A living reason out of molecules
Wily molecules occurred.
And one for smiling when he might have
sighed
Had he seen far enough.
And in the same inevitable stuff'
Discovered an odd reason too for pride
In being what he must have been by laws
Infrangible and for no kind of cause.
Deterred by no confusion or surprise 150
He may have seen with his mechanic eyes
A world without a meaning, and had room,
Alone amid magnificence and doom,
To build himself an airy monument
That should, or fail him in his vague intent,
Outlast an accidental universe —
To call it nothing worse —
Or, by the burrowing guile
Of Time disintegrated and effaced.
Like once-remembered mighty trees go
down 160
To ruin, of which by man may now be traced
No part sufficient even to be rotten.
And in the book of things that are forgotten
Is entered as a thing not quite v/orth while.
He may have been so great
That satraps would have shivered at his
frown.
And all he prized alive may rule a state
No larger than a grave that holds a clown;
He may have been a master of his fate.
And of his atoms, — ready as another 170
In his emergence to exonerate
His father and his mother;
He may have been a captain of a host.
Self-eloquent and ripe for prodigies.
Doomed here to swell by dangerous degrees,
And then give up the ghost.
Nahum's great grasshoppers were such as
these,
Sun-scattered and soon lost.
Whatever the dark road he may have taken,
1 his man who stood on high •80
And faced alone the sky,
THE MAN AGAINST THE SKY
4U
Whatever drove or lured or guided him, —
A vision answering a faith unshaken,
An easy trust assumed of easy trials,
A sick negation born of weak denials,
A crazed abhorrence of an old condition,
A blind attendance on a brief ambition, —
Whatever stayed him or derided him,
His way was even as ours;
And we, with all our wounds and all our
powers, 190
Must each await alone at his own height
Another darkness or another light;
And there, of our poor self dominion reft.
If inference and reason shun
Hell, Heaven, and Oblivion,
May thwarted will (perforce precarious.
But for our conservation better thus)
Have no misgiving left
Of doing yet what here we leave undone?
Or if unto the last of these we cleave, 200
Believing or protesting we believe
In such an idle and ephemeral
Florescence of the diabolical, —
If, robbed of two fond old enormities.
Our being had no onward auguries.
What then were this great love of ours to say
■'^or launching other lives to voyage again
A little farther into time and pain,
A little faster in a futile chase
for a kingdom and a power and a Race 210
That would have still in sight
A manifest end of ashes and eternal night?
Is this the music of the toys we shake
So loud, — as if there might be no mistake
Somewhere in our indomitable will?
Are we no greater than the noise we make
Along one blind atomic pilgrimage
Whereon by crass chance billeted we go
Because our brains and bones and cartilage
Will have it so? 220
If this we say, then let us all be still
About our share in it, and live and die
More quietly thereby.
Where was he going, this man against the
sky?
You know not, nor do I.
But this we know, if we know anything:
That we may laugh and fight and sing
And of our transience here make offering
To an orient Word that will not be erased.
Or, save in incommunicable gleams 230
Too permanent for dreams.
Be found or known.
No tonic and ambitious irritant
Of increase or of want
lias made an otherwise insensate waste
Of ages overthrown
A ruthless, veiled, implacable foretaste
Of other ages that are still to be
Depleted and rewarded variously
Because a few, by fate's economy, 24O
Shall seem to move the world the way it goes;
No soft evangel of equality,
Safe-cradled in a communal repose
That huddles into death and may at last
Be covered well with equatorial snows —
And all for what, the dev4l only knows — *
Will aggregate an inkling to confirm
The credit of a sage or of a worm,
Or tell us why one man in five
Should have a care to stay alive 250
While in his heart he feels no violence
Laid on his humor and intelligence
When infant Science makes a pleasant face
And waves again that hollow toy, the Race;
No planetary trap where souls are wrought
For nothing but the sake of being caught
And sent again to nothing will attune
Itself to any key of any reason
Why man should hunger through another
season
To find out why 'twere better late than
soon 260
To go away and let the sun and moon
And all the silly stars illuminate
A place for creeping things.
And those that root and trumpet and have
wings,
And herd and ruminate,
Or dive and flash and poise in rivers and seas,
Or by their loyal tails in lofty trees
Hang screeching lewd victorious derision
Of man's immortal vision.
Shall we, because Eternity records 270
Too vast an answer for the time-born words
We spell, whereof so many are dead that once
In our capricious lexicons
Were so alive and final, hear no more
The Word itself, the living word
That none alive has ever heard
Or ever spelt,
And few have ever felt
Without the fears and old surrenderings
And terrors that began 280
When Death let fall a feather from his wings
And humbled the first man?
414
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON
Hccauso the weight of our luiniihty,
\\ herefrom we gain
A httle wisdom and iiuieh pain,
Falls here too sore and there too tedious,
Are we in anguish or complacency,
Not looking far enough ahead
To see by what mad couriers we are led
Along the roads of the ridiculous, 290
To pity ourselves and laugh at faith
And while we curse life bear it?
And if we see the soul's dead end in death,
Are we to fear it?
What folly is here that has not yet a name
l^nless we say outright that we are liars?
What have we seen beyond our sunset fires
That lights again the way by which we came?
Why pay we such a price, and one we give
So clamoringly, for each racked empty
day 300
That leads one more last human hope aw'ay,
As quiet fiends would lead past our crazed
eyes
Our children to an unseen sacrifice?
If after all that we have lived and thought.
All comes to Nought, —
If there be nothing after Now,
And we be nothing anyhow,
And we know that, — why live?
'Twere sure but weaklings* vain distress
To suffer dungeons where so many doors
Will open on the cold eternal shores 311
That look sheer down
To the dark tideless floods of Nothingness
Where all wiio know may drown.
RICHARD CORY^
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he v^^as always quietly arrayed.
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he
walked.
And he was rich — yes, richer than a king —
And admirably schooled in every grace: 10
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
1 From The Children of the Night (1897). Reprinted
with the permission of Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons.
So on we worked, and waited for the light.
And went without the meat, and cursed the
bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his
head.
ISAAC AND ARCHIBALD 2
Isaac and Archibald were two old men.
I knew them, and I may have laughed at
them
A little; but I must have honored them
For they were old, and they were good to me.
I do not think of either of them now,
Without remembering, infallibly,
A journey that I made one afternoon
With Isaac to find out what Archibald
Was doing with his oats. It was high time
Those oats were cut, said Isaac; and he
feared 10
That Archibald — well, he could never feel
Quite sure of Archibald. Accordingly
The good old man invited me — that is.
Permitted me — to go along with him;
And I, with a small boy's adhesiveness
To competent old age, got up and went.
I do not know that I cared overmuch
For Archibald's or anybody's oats.
But Archibald was quite another thing.
And Isaac yet another; and the world 20
Was wide, and there was gladness every-
where.
We walked together down the River Road
With all the warmth and wonder of the land
Around us, and the wayside flash of leaves, —
And Isaac said the day was glorious;
But somewhere at the end of the first mile
I found that I was figuring to find
How long those ancient legs of his would keep
The pace that he had set for them. The sun
Was hot, and I was ready to sweat blood; 30
But Isaac, for aught I could make of him.
Was cool to his hat-band. So I said then
With a dry gasp of aflPable despair.
Something about the scorching days we have
In August without knowing it sometimes;
But Isaac said the day was like a dream.
And praised the Lord, and talked about the
breeze.
2 From E. A. Robinson's Captain Craig, copyrighted
by him in 1902. Copyright owned by the Macmillan
Company. Reprinted by permission.
ISAAC AND ARCHIBALD
41S
I made a fair confession of the breeze,
And crowded casually on his thought
The nearness of a profitable nook 40
That I could see. First I was half inclined
To caution him that he was growing old,
But something that was not compassion soon
Made plain the folly of all subterfuge.
Isaac was old, but not so old as that.
So I proposed, without an overture,
That we be seated in the shade a while.
And Isaac made no murmur. Soon the talk
Was turned on Archibald, and I began
To feel some premonitions of a kind 50
That only childhood knows; for the old man
Had looked at me and clutched me with his
eye.
And asked if I had ever noticed things.
I told him that I could not think of them.
And I knew then, by the frown that left his
face
Unsatisfied, that I had injured him.
**My good young friend," he said, "you can-
not feel
What I have seen so long. You have the
eyes —
Oh, yes — but you have not the other things:
The sight within that never will deceive,
You do not know — you have no right to
know; 61
The twilight warning of experience,
The singular idea of loneliness, —
These are not yours. But they have long
been mine,
And they have shown me now for seven years
That Archibald is changing. It is not
So much that he should come to his last hand,
And leave the game, and go the old way
down;
But I have known him in and out so long,
And I have seen so much of good in him
That other men have shared and have not
seen, 71
And I have gone so far through thick and
thin,
Through cold and fire with him, that now It
brings
To this old heart of mine an ache that you
Have not yet lived enough to know about.
But even unto you, and your boy's faith,
Your freedom, and your untried confidence,
A time will come t® find out what it means
To know that you are losing what was yours,
To know that you are being left behind; 80
And then the long contempt of innocence —
God bless you, boy! — don't think the worse
of it
liecause an old man chatters in the shade —
Will all be like a story you have read
In childhood and remembered for the
pictures.
And when the best friend of your life goes
down.
When first you know in him the slackening
That comes, and coming always tells the
end, —
Now in a common word that would have
passed
Uncaught from any other lips than his, 90
Now in some trivial act of every day,
Done as he might have done it all along
But for a twinging little difference
That nips you like a squirrel's teeth — oh,
• yes,
Then you will understand it well enough.
But oftener it comes in other ways;
It comes without your knowing when it
comes;
You know that he is changing, and you know
That he is going — just as I know now
That Archibald is going, and that I loo
Am staying. . . . Look at me, my boy,
And when the time shall come for you to see
That I must follow after him, try then
To think of me, to bring me back again,
Just as I was to-day. Think of the place
Where we are sitting now, and think of me —
Think of old Isaac as you knew him then,
When you set out with him in August once
To see old Archibald." — The words come
back 109
Almost as Isaac must have uttered them,
And there comes with them a dry memory
Of something in my throat that would not
move.
If you had asked me then to tell just why
I made so much of Isaac and the things
He said, I should have gone far for an
answer;
For I knew it was not sorrow that I felt.
Whatever I may have wished it, or tried
then
To make my self believe. My mouth was
full
Of words, and they would have been com-
forting 119
To Isaac, spite of my twelve years, I think;
4i6
EDWIN ARl.INT.TON ROBINSON
Hut tliort' was not in iiu' tlic willinj^ncss
To speak tliciii out. 1 hcrefore 1 vvatclud
the ground;
And I was wonderinp; what made the Lord
Create a thing so nervous as an ant,
V\ hen Isaac, with commendable unrest,
Ordained that we should take the road
again —
For it was yet three miles to Archibald's,
And one to the first pump. I felt relieved
All over when the old man told me that;
I felt that he had stilled a fear of mine 130
1 hat those extremities of heat and cold
Which he had long gone through with Archi-
bald
Had made the man impervious to both;
Hut Isaac had a desert somewhere in him,
And at the pump he thanked God for all
things
That He had put on earth for men to drink,
And he drank well, — so well that I proposed
That we go slowly lest I learn too soon
The bitterness of being left behind, 139
And all those other things. That was a joke
To Isaac, and it pleased him very much;
And that pleased me — for I was twelve
years old.
At the end of an hour's walking after that
The cottage of old Archibald appeared.
Little and white and high on a smooth round
hill
It stood, with hackmatacks and apple-trees
Before it, and a big barn-roof beyond;
And over the place — trees, house, fields
and all —
Hovered an air of still simplicity
And a fragrance of old summers — the old
style 150
That lives the while it passes. I dare say
That I was lightly conscious of all this
When Isaac, of a sudden, stopped himself,
And for the long first quarter of a minute
Gazed with incredulous eyes, forgetful quite
Of breezes and of me and of all else
Under the scorching sun but a smooth-cut
field,
Faint yellow in the distance, I was young,
Hut there were a few things that I could see.
And this was one of them. — "Well, well!"
said he; 160
And "Archibald will be surprised, I think,'*
Said I. Hut all my childhood subtlety
Was lost on Isaac, for he strode along
Like something out of Homer — powerful
And awful on the wayside, so I thought.
Also I thought how good it was to be
So near the end of my short-legged endeavor
To keep the pace with Isaac for five miles.
Hardly had we turned in from the main road
When Archibald, with one hand on his back
And the other clutching his huge-headed
cane, 171
Came limping down to meet us. — "Well!
well! well!"
Said he; and then he looked at my red face,
All streaked with dust and sweat, and shook
my hand.
And said it must have been a right smart
walk
That we had had that day from Tilbury
Town. —
"Magnificent," said Isaac; and he told
About the beautiful west wind there was
Which cooled and clarified the atmosphere.
"You must have made it with your legs, I
guess," 180
Said Archibald; and Isaac humored him
With one of those infrequent smiles of his
Which he kept in reserve, apparently.
For Archibald alone. "But why," said he,
"Should Providence have cider in the world
If not for such an afternoon as this.?"
And Archibald, with a soft light in his eyes,
Replied that if he chose to go down cellar.
There he would find eight barrels — one of
which
Was newly tapped, he said, and to his taste
An honor to the fruit. Isaac approved 191
Most heartily of that, and guided us
Forthwith, as if his venerable feet
Were measuring the turf in his own door-
yard.
Straight to the open rollway. Down we
went.
Out of the fiery sunshine to the gloom,
Grateful and half sepulchral, where we found
The barrels, like eight potent sentinels.
Close ranged along the wall. From one of
them
A bright pine spile stuck out alluringly, 200
And on the black flat stone, just under it,
Glimmered a late-spilled proof that Archibald
Had spoken from unfeigned experience.
There was a fluted antique water-glass
Close by, and in it, prisoned, or at rest,
There was a cricket, of the brown soft sort
ISAAC AND ARCHIBALD
417
That feeds on darkness. Isaac turned him
out,
And touched hlin with his thumb to mnke
him jump, 208
And then composedly pulled out the plug
With such a practiced hand that scarce a drop
Did even touch his fingers. Then he drank
And smacked his lips with a slow patronage
And looked along the line of barrels there
With a pride that may have been forgetful-
ness
That they were Archibald's and not his own.
*'I never twist a spigot nowadays,"
He said, and raised the glass up to the light,
"But I thank God for orchards." And that
glass 218
Was filled repeatedly for the same hand
Before I thought it worth while to discern
Again that I was young, and that old age,
With all his woes, had some advantages.
"Now, Archibald," said Isaac, when we stood
Outside again, "I have it in my mind
That I shall take a sort of little walk —
To stretch my legs and see what you are
doing.
You stay and rest your back and tell the boy
A story: Tell him all about the time
In Stafford's cabin forty years ago, 229
When four of us were snowed up for ten days
With only one dried haddock. Tell him all
About it, and be wary of your back.
Now I will go along." — I looked up then
At Archibald, and as I looked I saw
Just how his nostrils widened once or twice
And then grew narrow. I can hear to-day
The way the old man chuckled to himself —
Not wholesomely, not wholly to convince
Another of his mirth, — as I can hear
The lonely sigh that followed. — But at
length 240
He said : "The orchard now's the place for us;
We may find something like an apple there,
And we shall have the shade, at any rate."
So there we went and there we laid ourselves
Where the sun could not reach us; and I
champed
A dozen of worm-blighted astrakhans
While Archibald said nothing — merely told
The tale of Stafford's cabin, which was good.
Though "master chilly" — after his own
phrase —
Even for a day like that. But other thoughts
Were moving in his mind, imperative, 251
And writhing to be spoken: I could see
1 he ghmmer of them in a glance or two.
Cautious, or else unconscious, that he gave
Over hrs shoulder: . . . "Stafford and the
rest —
But that's an old song now, and Archibald
And Isaac are old men. Remember, boy.
That we are old. Whatever we have gained,
Or lost, or thrown away, we are old men.
You look before you and we look behind.
And we are playing life out in the shadow —
But that's not all of it. The sunshine lights
A good road yet before us if we look, 263
And we are doing that when least we know it;
For both of us are children of the sun.
Like you, and Hke the weed there at your
feet.
The shadow calls us, and it frightens us —
We think; but there's a light behind the stars
And we old fellows who have dared to live.
We see it — and we see the other things.
The other things. . . Yes, I have seen it
come
These eight years, and these ten years, and I
know 272
Now that it cannot be for very long
That Isaac will be Isaac. You have seen —
Young as you are, you must have seen the
strange
Uncomfortable habit of the man?
He'll take my nerves and tie them in a knot
Sometimes, and that's not Isaac. I know
that —
And I know what it is: I get it here
A little, in my knees, and Isaac — here."
The old man shook his head regretfully
And laid his knuckles three times on his
forehead. 282
"That's what it is: Isaac is not quite right.
You see it, but you don't know what it means:
The thousand little differences — no.
You do not know them, and it's well you
don't;
You'll know them soon enough — God bless
you, boy! —
You'll know them, but not all of them — not
all.
So think of them as little as you can:
There's nothing in them for you, or for me —
But I am old and I must think of them; 291
I'm in the shadow, but I don't forget
The light, my boy, — the light behind the
stars.
Remember that: remember that I said it;
4iR
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROmNSON
And when the time tliat you think far away
Shall come for you to say it — say it, boy;
Let there be no confusion or distrust
In you, no snarhnp; of a hfe half lived.
Nor any cursinu, over broken tilings
That your complaint has been the ruin of.
Live to see clearly and the light will come
To you, and as you need it. — But there,
there, 302
I'm going it again, as Isaac says,
And I'll stop now before you go to sleep. —
Only be sure that you growl cautiously,
And always where the shadow may not reach
you.
Never shall I forget, long as I live.
The quaint thin crack in Archibald's voice,
The lonely twinkle in his little eyes,
Or the way it made me feel to be with him.
I know I lay and looked for a long time
Down through the orchard and across the
road, 312
Across the river and the sun-scorched hills
That ceased in a blue forest, where the world
Ceased with it. Now and then my fancy
caught
A flying glimpse of a good life beyond —
Something of ships and sunlight, streets and
singing,
Troy falling, and the ages coming back.
And ages coming forward: Archibald
And Isaac were good fellows in old clothes,
And Agamemnon was a friend of mine; 321
Ulysses coming home again to shoot
With bows and feathered arrows made
another,
And all was as it should be. I was young.
So I lay dreaming of what things I would.
Calm and incorrigibly satisfied
With apples and romance and ignorance.
And the still smoke from Archibald's clay
pipe.
There was a stillness over everything, 329
As if the spirit of heat had laid its hand
Upon the world and hushed it; and I felt
Within the mightiness of the white sun
That smote the land around us and wrought
out
A fragrance from the trees, a vital warmth
And fullness for the time that was to come,
And a glory for the world beyond the forest.
The present and the future and the past,
Isaac and Archibald, the burning bush,
The Trojans and the walls of Jericho,
Were beautifully fused; and all went well
Till Archibald began to fret for Isaac 341
And said it was a master day for sunstroke.
That was enough to make a mummy smile,
I thought; and I remained hilarious.
In face of all precedence and respect.
Till Isaac (who had come to us unheard)
Found he had no tobacco, looked at me
Peculiarly, and asked of Archibald i
What ailed the boy to make him chirrup so.
From that he told us what a blessed world
The Lord had given us. — "But Archibald,"
He added, with a sweet severity 352
That made me think of peach-skins and
goose-flesh,
"I'm half afraid you cut those oats of
yours
A day or two before they were well set."
"They were set well enough," said Archi-
bald,—
And I remarked the process of his nose
Before the words came out. "But never
mind
Your neighbor's oats: you stay here in the
shade
And rest yourself while I go find the cards.
We'll have a little game of seven-up 361
And let the boy keep count." — "We'll have
the game,
Assuredly," said Isaac; "and I think
That I will have a drop of cider, also."
They marched away together towards the
house
And left me to my childish ruminations
Upon the ways of men. I followed them
Down cellar with my fancy, and then left
them
For a fairer vision of all things at once
That was anon to be destroyed again 370
By the sound of voices and of heavy feet —
One of the sounds of life that I remember.
Though I forget so many that rang first
As if they were thrown down to me from
Sinai.
So I remember, even to this day.
Just how they sounded, how they placed
themselves.
And how the game went on while I made
marks
And crossed them out, and meanwhile made
some Trojans.
MINIVER CHEEVY
419
Likewise I made Ulysses, after Isaac,
And a little after Flaxman. Archibald 380
Was injured when he found himself left out,
But he had no heroics, and I said so:
I told him that his white beard was too long
And too straight down to be like things in
Homer.
"Quite so," said Isaac. — "Low," said
Archibald;
And he threw down a deuce with a deep grin
That showed his yellow teeth and made me
happy.
So they played on till a bell rang from the
door.
And Archibald said, "Supper." — After that
The old men smoked while I sat watching
them 390
And wondered with all comfort what might
come
To me, and what might never come to me;
And when the time came for the long walk
home
With Isaac in the twilight, I could see
The forest and the sunset and the sky-line.
No matter where it was that I was looking:
The flame beyond the boundary, the music.
The foam and the white ships, and two old
men
Were things that would not leave me.-r-And
that night ■ 399
There came to me a dream — a shining one,
With two old angels in it. They had wings,
And they were sitting where a silver light
Suffused them, face to face. The wings of one
Began to palpitate as I approached.
But I was yet unseen when a dry voice
Cried thinly, with unpatronizing triumph,
"I've got you, Isaac; high, low, jack, and
the game."
Isaac and Archibald have gone their way
To the silence of the loved and well-forgotten.
I knew them, and I may have laughed at
them; 410
But there's a laughing that has honor in it.
And I have no regret for light words now.
Rather I think sometimes they may have
made
Their sport of me; — but they would not do
that.
They were too old for that. They were old
men.
And I may laugh at them because I knew
them.
THE GROWTH OF
"LORRAINE"!
While I stood listening, discreetly dumb,
Lorraine was having the last word with me:
"I know," she said, "I know it, but you see
Some creatures are born fortunate, and some
Are born to be found out and overcome, —
Born to be slaves, to let the rest go free;
And if I'm one of them (and I must be)
You may as well forget me and go home.
"You tell me not to say these things, I know.
But I should never try to be content: 10
I've gone too far; the life would be too slow.
Some could have done it — some girls have
the stuff;
But I can't do it: I don't know enough.
I'm going to the devil." — And she went.
II
I did not half believe her when she said
That I should never hear from her again;
Nor when I found- a letter from Lorraine,
Was I surprised or grieved at what I read:
"Dear friend, when you find this, I shall be
dead.
You are too far away to make me stop. 20
They say that one drop — think of it, one
drop! —
Will be enough, — but I'll take five instead.
"You do not frown because I call you friend.
For I would have you glad that I still keep
Your memory, and even at the end —
Impenitent, sick, shattered — cannot curse
The love that flings, for better or for worse,
This worn-out, cast-out flesh of mine to
sleep."
MINIVER CHEEVY 2
Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn.
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born.
And he had reasons.
\ From E. A. Robinson's Captain Crai^, copyrighted
by him in 1902. Copyright owned by the Macmillan
Company. Reprinted by permission.
2 From The Town Down the River (1910). Rejirinted
with the permission of Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons.
420
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON
Miniver lovod tlio dnys of old
\\ hen swords were hri<;lit ;ind steeds were
prnncinu;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.
Miniver sighed for what was not, 9
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam's neighbors.
Miniver mourned the ripe renown
That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.
Miniver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one. 20
Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit wMth loathing;
He missed the medieval grace
Of iron clothing.
Miniver scorned the gold he sought.
But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.
Miniver Cheevy, born too late, 29
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate.
And kept on drinking.
FIRELIGHT '
Ten years together without yet a cloud.
They seek each other's eyes at intervals
Of gratefulness to firelight and four walls
For love's obliteration of the crowd.
Serenely and perennially endowed
And bowered as few may be, their joy recalls
No snake, no sword; and over them there
falls
The blessing of what neither says aloud.
Wiser for silence, they were not so glad
Were she to read the graven tale of lines 10
On the wan face of one somewhere alone;.
1 From E. A. Robinson's The Three Taverns^ copy-
righted in 1920 by the Macmillan Company. Re-
printed by permission.
Nor were they more content could he have
had
Her thoughts a moment since of one who
shines
Apart, and would be hers if he had known.
INFERENTIAL ^
Although I saw before me there the face
Of one whom I had honored among men
The least, and on regarding him agaiH
Would not have had him in another place,
He fitted with an unfamiliar grace
rhe coffin where I could not see him then
As I had seen him and appraised him when
I deemed him unessential to the race.
For there was more of him than what I saw.
And there was on me more than the old
awe 10
That is the common genius of the dead.
I might as well have heard him: "Never
mind;
If some of us were not so far behind.
The rest of us were not so far ahead."
MR. FLOOD'S PARTY^
Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
On earth again of home, paused warily.
The road was his with not a native near;
And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,
For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:
"Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon
Again, and we may not have many more; 10
The bird is on the wing, the poet says, \
And you and I have said it here before.
Drink to the bird." He raised up to the
light
The jug that he had gone so far to fill.
And answered huskily: "Well, Mr. Flood,
Since you propose it, I believe I will.'*
2 From E. A. Robinson's The Three Taverns^ copy-
righted in 1920 by the Macmillan Company. Re-
printed by permission.
3 From E. A. Robinson's Avon's Harvest^ copy
righted in 1921 by the Macmillan Company. Pr»
printed by permissioa
VAIN GRATUITIES
.Ml
Alone, as if enduring to the end
A valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn,
He stood there in the middle of the road
Like Roland's ghost winding a silent horn. 20
Below him, in the town among the trees,
W here friends of other days had honored him,
A phantom salutation of the dead
Rang thinly till old Eben's eyes were dim.
Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child
Down tenderly, fearing it may awake.
He set the jug down slowly at his feet
With trembling care, knowing that most
things break;
And only when assured that on firm earth
It stood, as the uncertain lives of men 30
Assuredly did not, he paced away,
And with his hand extended paused again:
"Well, Mr. Flood, w^e have not met like this
In a long time; and many a change has come
To both of us, I fear, since last it was
We had a drop together. Welcome home!"
Convivially returning with himself.
Again he raised the jug up to the light;
And with an acquiescent quaver said:
"Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might. 40
"Only a very little, Mr. Flood —
For auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will
do."
So, for the time, apparently it did.
And Eben evidently thought so too;
For soon amid the silver loneliness
Of night he lifted up his voice and sang.
Secure, with only two moons listenmg.
Until the whole harmonious landscape rang —
"For auld lang syne." The weary throat
gave out,
The last word wavered; and the song being
done, 50
He raised again the jug regretfully
And shook his head, and was again alone.
I here was not much that was ahead of him,
And there was nothing in the town below —
Where strangers would have shut the many
doors
That many friends had opened long ago.
VAIN GRATUITIES 1
Never was there a man much uglier
In eyes of other women, or more grim:
"The Lord has filled her chalice to the brim.
So let us pray she's a philosopher,"
They said; and there was more they said of
her —
Deeming it, after twenty years with him,
No wonder that she kept her figure slim
And always made you think of lavender.
But she, demure as ever, and as fair.
Almost, as they remembered her before 10
She found him, would have laughed had she
been there;
And all they said would have been heard no
more
Than foam that washes on an island shore
Where there are none to listen or to care.
1 From E. A. Robinson's /ivous Harvest, copyrighted
in 1 92 1 by the Macmillan Company. Reprinted by
permission.
JOHN JAY CHAPMAN (1862- )
Mr. Chapman was born and l)r()iiglit up in New York. He entered Harvard College In 1880,
nnd was graduated in 1884. He remained in Cambridge another year to take a master's degree, after
which he spent three years in study of the law. He was admitted to the bar in 1888, and practiced
law until 1S98. Since then he has devoted himself to literary work. His earliest volumes of essays
were published in 1898, Emerson and Other Essays and Causes and Consequences. Practical Agitation
followed in 1900. Later volumes of essays and notes have been Learning and Other Essays (1910),
Memories and Milestones (1915), Notes on Religion (1915), The Greek Genius and Other Essays (1915),
A Glance toward Shakespeare (1922), and Letters and Religion (1924). He has also written a notable
volume, really a series of essays, concerning William Lloyd Garrison (1913; revised and enlarged edition,
1921). In addition, he has published several plays in verse, including Benedict Arnold, A Play for a
Greek Theater (191 1), a rendering in verse of two Homeric Scenes (1914), and Songs and Poems (1919).
It is as a critic that Mr. Chapman has won for himself a place in American letters. He began as
a literary critic, and his essay on Emerson remains probably his most remarkable piece of work. Pot"
tions of it are likely to provoke disagreement, but it is full of power and insight, and is itself literature
of a high order. All in all, this appears to be our best commentary on Emerson, and it is likely long to
keep its place among the best criticism we have produced. Mr. Chapman, however, has not confined
his criticism to literature. He has always been rather a critic of life itself, and has concerned himself
with problems of education, of politics and government, and of religion, as well as with literature. His
work is markedly uneven; he seems to see things by sudden flashes, and is likely at one moment to be
central and profound, and the next moment astonishingly casual and superficial. But, where he doet>
see, as was just said, he sc^cs far and deeply, and his writing is powerful, arresting, and honest. William
James wrote: "He just looks at things, and tells the truth about them — a strange thing even to try to
do, and he doesn't always succeed." No, but the effort must always be made; and when it is made
honestly, by a man of positive and courageous character and of genuine insight, it deserves the best
welcome we can give it. And in Mr. Chapman's case this effort is the more important and significant
because his convictions tally with the central tradition of American thought. This appears clearly
in his essay on Emerson. It appears with equal clearness in his latest book: "We must remain detached,
alone, fluid, or we are lost." "Those who pursue their own loved studies quietly rule the tastes of the
next generation. One man collects old Chinese bronzes; another studies the coloration of animals, or
the heritable variations of plants; another, Persian vases; and their tastes turn insensibly into depart-
ments in colleges and new wings to museums. The direction of the world's education depends on the
hobbies of amateurs." "It is personal temperament that gives institutions their value. At best they
are makeshifts, and most of the conscious effort of the world is spent in boosting some makeshift. This
cannot be avoided; but it can be remembered, and the thought emancipates us." {Letters and Religion,
86, 104, 105.)
EMERSON 1
I
"Leave this hypocritical prating about the
masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade,
pernicious in their demands and influence, and
need not to be flattered, but to be schooled.
I wish not to concede anything to them, but
to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and
draw individuals out of them. The worst of
charity is that the lives you are asked to pre-
" Reprinted from Emerson and Other Essays (1898)
with the permission of Mr. John Jay Chapman.
serve are not worth preserving. Masses!
The calamity is the masses. I do not wish
any mass at all, but honest men only, lovely,
sweet, accomplished women only, and no
shovel-handed, narrow-brained, gin-drinking
million stockingers or lazzaroni at all. If
government knew how, I should like to see
it check, not multiply the population.
When it reaches its true law of action, every
man that is born will be hailed as essential.
Away with this hurrah of masses, and let us
have the considerate vote of single men spoken
on their honor and their conscience.'*
422
EMERSON
423
This extract from The Conduct of Life
^ives fairly enough the leading thought of
Emerson's life. The unending warfare be-
tween the individual and society shows us in
each generation a poet or two, a dramatist or
a musician who exalts and deifies the indi-
vidual, and leads us back again to the only
object which is really worthy of enthusiasm
or which can permanently excite it, — the
character of a man. It is surprising to
find this identity of content in all great
deliverances. The only thing we really ad-
mire is personal liberty. Those who fought
for it and those who enjoyed it are our
heroes.
But the hero may enslave his race by bring-
ing in a system of tyranny; the battle-cry of
freedom may become a dogma which crushes
the soul; one good custom may corrupt the
world. And so the inspiration of one age
becomes the damnation of the next. This
crystallizing of life into death has occurred so
often that it may almost be regarded as one
of the laws of progress.
Ernerson represents a protest against the
tyranny of democracy. He is the most
recent example of elemental hero-worship.
His opinions are absolutely unqualified ex-
cept by his temperament. He expresses
a form of belief in the importance of the
individual which is independent of any per-
sonal relations he has with the world. It
is as if a man had been withdrawn from the
earth and dedicated to condensing and em-
bodying this eternal idea — the value of the
individual soul — so vividly, so vitally, that
his words could not die, yet in such illusive
and abstract forms that by no chance and by
no power could his creed be used for pur-
poses of tyranny. Dogma cannot be ex-
tracted from it. Schools cannot be built on
it. It either lives as the spirit lives, or else it
evaporates and leaves nothing. Emerson was
so afraid of the letter that killeth that he
would hardly trust his words to print. He
was assured there was no such thing as literal
truth, but only literal falsehood. He there-
fore resorted metaphors which could by
no chance be taken literally. And he has
probably succeeded in leaving a body of
work which cannot be made to operate to
any other end than that for which he de-
signed it. If this be true, he has ac-
compJished the inconceivable feat of eluding
misconception. If it be true, he stands
alone in the history of teachers; he has cir-
cumvented fate, he has left an unmixed
blessing behind him.
The signs of those times which brought
forth Emerson are not wholly undecipherable.
They are the same times which gave rise to
every character of significance during the
period before the war. Emerson is indeed
the easiest to understand of all the men of his
time, because his life is freest from the tangles
and qualifications of circumstance. He is a
sheer and pure type and creature of destiny,
and the unconsciousness that marks his
development allies him to the deepest
phenomena. It is convenient, in describing
him, to use language which implies conscious-
ness on his part, but he himself had no
purpose, no theory of himself; he was a
product.
The years between 1820 and 1830 were the
most pitiable through which this country has
ever passed. The conscience of the North
was pledged to the Missouri Compromise,
and that Compromise neither slumbered nor
slept. In New England, where the old
theocratical oligarchy of the colonies had
survived the Revolution and kept under its
own water-locks the new flood of trade, the
conservatism of politics reinforced the con-
servatism of religion; and as if these two
inquisitions were not enough to stifle the soul
of man, the conservatism of business self-
interest was superimposed. The history of
the conflicts which followed has been written
by the radicals, who negligently charge up to
self-interest all the resistance which establish-
ments offer to change. But it was not solely
self-interest, it was conscience that backed
the Missouri Compromise, nowhere else,
naturally, so strongly as in New England. It
was conscience that made cowards of us all.
The white-lipped generation of Edward
Everett were victims, one might even say
martyrs, to conscience. They suff'ered the
most terrible martyrdom that can fall to man,
a martyrdom which injured their immortal
volition and dried up the springs of life. If
it were not that our poets have too seldom
deigned to dip into real life, I do not know
what more awful subject for a poem could
have been found than that of the New
England judge enforcing the Fugitive Slave
Law. For lack of such a poem the heroism
424
JOHN }\y CHAPMAN
of tlu'sr nun li;is hi-iii forgotten, tlio losini:;
heroism of constTN atisni. It was this
spintiKil powiT of a comniittt'tl conscience
winch met the new forces as they arose, and it
deserves a better name than these new forces
nfterwnrd gave it. In 1830 tlie social fruits
of these heavy conditions could be seen in the
life of the people. Free speech was lost.
"I know no country," says 1 ocqueville,
who was here in 183 1, "in which there is
so little independence of mind and freedom
of discussion as in America." I oc(|ueville
recurs to the point a^ain and a^ain. He can-
not dispuise his surpri.se at it, and it tinp;ed
his whole philosophy and his book. The
timidity of the Americans of this era was a
thing which intelligent foreigners could not
understand. Miss Martineau wrote in her
Autobiography: "It was not till months
afterwards that I was told that there were
two reasons why I was not invited there
[Chelsea] as elsewhere. One reason was that
I had avowed, in reply to urgent questions,
that I was disappointed in an oration of Mr.
Everett's; and another was that I had pub-
licly condemned the institution of slavery. I
hope the Boston people have outgrown the
childishness of sulking at opinions not in
either case volunteered, but obtained by
pressure. But really, the subservience to
opinion at that time seemed a sort of mania."
The mania was by no means confined to
Boston, but qualified this period of our
history throughout the Northern States.
There was no literature. "If great writers
have not at present existed in America, the
reason is very simply given in the fact that
there can be no literary genius without
freedom of opinion, and freedom of opinion
does not exist in America," wrote Tocqueville.
There were no amusements, neither music nor
sport nor pastime, indoors or out of doors.
1 he whole life of the community was a life
of the intelligence, and upon the intelligence
lay the weight of intellectual tyranny. The
pressure kept on increasing, and the sup-
pressed forces kept on increasing, till at last,
as if to show what gigantic power was
needed to keep conservatism dominant, the
Merchant Province put forward Daniel
Webster.
The worst period of panic seems to have
preceded the anti-slavery agitations of 1831,
because these agitations soon demonstrated
that the sky did not fall nor the earth yawn
and swallow Massiichusetts because of Mr.
Ciarrison's opinions, as most people had sin-
cerely believed would be the case. Soma
semblance of free speech was therefore grad-
ually regained.
Let us remember the world upon which the
young Emerson's e3'es opened. The South
was a plantation. The North crooked the
hinges of the knee where thrift might follow
fawning. It was the era of Martin Chuzzlewit,
a malicious caricature, — founded on fact.
This time of humiliation, when there was no
free speech, no literature, little manliness, no
reality, no simplicity, no accomplishment,
was the era of American brag. We flattered
the foreigner and we boasted of ourselves.
We were over-sensitive, insolent, and cring-
ing. As late as 1845, G. P. Putnam, a most
sensible and modest man, published a book
to show what the country had done in the
field of culture. The book is a monument
of the age. With all its good sense and good
humor, it justifies foreign contempt because
it is explanatory. Underneath everything
lay a feeling of unrest, an instinct, — "this
country cannot permanently endure half
slave and half free," — which was the truth,
but which could not be uttered.
So long as there is any subject which men
may not freely discuss, they are timid upon
all subjects. They wear an iron crown and
talk in whispers. Such social conditions
crush and maim the individual, and through-
out New England, as throughout the whole
North, the individual was crushed and
maimed.
\ he generous youths who came to man-
hood between 1820 and 1830, while this
deadly era w^as maturing, seem to have under-
gone a revulsion against the world almost
before touching it; at least two of them
suffered, revolted, and condemned, while still
boys sitting; on benches in school, and came
forth advancing upon this old society like
gladiators. The activity of William Lloyd
Garrison, the man of action, preceded by
several years that of Emerson, who is his
prophet. Both of them were parts of one
revolution. One of Emerson's articles of
faith was that a man's thoughts spring from
his actions rather than his actions from his
thoughts, and possibly the same thing holds
good for society at large. Perhaps all truths.
EMERSON
42s
whether moral or econorr/j, must be worked
out in real life before they are discovered by
the student, and it was therefore necessary
that Garrison should be evolved earlier than
Emerson
The silent years of early manhood, during
which Emerson passed through the Divinity
School and to his ministry, known by few,
understood b}^ none, least of all by himself,
were years in which the revolting spirit of an
archangel thought out his creed. He came
forth perfect, with that serenity of which we
have scarce another example in history, —
that union of the man himself, his beliefs, and
his vehicle of expression that makes men
great because it makes them comprehensible.
The philosophy into which he had already
transmuted all his earlier theology at the
time w^e first meet him consisted of a very
simple drawing together of a few ideas, all of
which had long been familiar to the world.
It is the wonderful use he made of these ideas,
the closeness with which they fitted his soul,
the tact with which he took what he needed,
like a bird building its nest, that make the
originality, the man.
The conclusion of Berkeley, that the ex-
ternal world is known to us only through our
impressions, and that therefore, for aught we
know, the whole universe exists only in our
own consciousness, cannot be disproved. It
is so simple a conception that a child may
understand it; and it has probably been
passed before the attention of every thinking
man since Plato's time. The notion is in it-
self a mere philosophical catch or crux to
which there is no answer. It may be true.
The mystics made this doctrine useful.
They were not content to doubt the inde-
pendent existence of the external world.
They imagined that this external world, the
earth, the planets, the phenomena of nature,
bore some relation to the emotions and
destiny of the soul. The soul and the
cosmos were somehow related, and related so
intimately that the cosmos might be regarded
as a sort of projection or diagram of the soul.
Plato was the first man who perceived that
this idea could be made to provide the philos-
opher with a vehicle of expression more
powerful than any other. If a man will once
plant himself firmly on the proposition that
he is the universe, that every emotion or
expression of his mind is correlated in some
way to phenomena in the external world, and
that he shall say how correlated, he is in a
position where the power of speech is at a
maximum. His figures of speech, his tropes,
his witticisms, take rank with the law of grav-
ity and the precession of the equinoxes.
Philosophical exaltation of the individual
cannot go beyond this point. It is the
climax.
This is the school of thought to which
Emerson belonged. The sun and moon, the
planets, are mere symbols. They signify
whatever the poet chooses. The planets for
the most part stay in conjunction just long
enough to flash his thought through their
symbolism, and no permanent relation is
established between the soul and the zodiac.
There is, however, one link of correlation be-
tween the external and internal worlds which
Emerson considered established, and in which
he believed almost literally, namely, the
moral law. This idea he drev/ from Kant
through Coleridge and Wordsworth, and it is
so familiar to us all that it hardly needs
stating. The fancy that the good, the true,
the beautiful, — all things of which we in-
stinctively approve, — are somehow con-
nected together and are really one thing;
that our appreciation of them is in its essence
the recognition of a law; that this law, in
fact all law and the very idea of law, is a
mere subjective experience; and that hence
any external sequence which we coordinate
and name, like the law of gravity, is really
intimately connected with our moral nature,
— this fancy has probably some basis of
truth. Emerson adopted it as a corner-stone
of his thought.
Such are the ideas at the basis of Emerson's
philosophy, and it is fair to speak of them in
this place because they antedate everything
else which we know of him. They had been
for years in his mind before he spoke at all.
It was in the armor of this invulnerable ideal-
ism and with weapons like shafts of light that
he came forth to fight.
In 1836, at the age of thirty-three, Emerson
published the little pamphlet called Nature^
which was an attempt to state his creed. Al-
though still young, he was not without ex-
perience of life. He had been assistant
minister to the Rev. Dr. Ware from 1829
to 1832, when he resigned his ministry on
account of his views regarding the Lord's
426
JOHN JA^• CHAPMAN
Siipprr. He h.ul nKuru'il ;uul losr Ins first
wife in the same interval. He liad been
abroad and had visited Carlyle in 1S33. He
had returned and settled in Concord, and had
taken up the profession of lectuVinp;, upon
which he in part supported himself ever after.
It is unnecessary to review these early lec-
tures. "Large portions of them," says Mr.
Cabot, his biographer, "appeared afterwards
m the Essays, especially those of the first
series." Suffice it that through them
Emerson had become so well known that
although Xature was published anonymously,
he was recognized as the author. Many
people had heard of him at the time he re-
signed his charge, and the story went abroad
that the young minister of the Second Church
had gone mad. The lectures had not dis-
credited the story, and Mature seemed to
corroborate it. Such was the impression
which the book made upon Boston in 1836.
As we read it to-day, we are struck by its
extraordinary beauty of language. It is a
supersensuous, lyrical, and sincere rhapsody,
written evidently by a man of genius. It
reveals a nature compelling respect, — a
Shelle}', and yet a sort of Yankee Shelley,
who is mad only when the wind is nor'-
nor'west; a mature nature which must have
been nourished for years upon its own
thoughts, to speak this new language so
eloquently, to stand so calmly on its feet.
The deliverance of his thought is so perfect
that this work adapts itself to our mood and
has the quality of poetry. This fluency
Emerson soon lost; it is the quality missing
in his poetry. It is the efflorescence of youth.
"In good health, the air is a cordial of
incredible virtue. Crossing a bane common,
in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded
sky, without having in my thoughts any
occurrence of special good fortune, I have
enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to
the brink of fear. In the woods, too, a man
casts off his years, as the snake his slough,
and at what period soever of life is always a
child. In the woods is perpetual youth.
Within these plantations of God, a decorum
and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is
dressed, and the guest sees not how he
should tire of them in a thousand years. . . .
It is the uniform effect of culture on the
human mind, not to shake our faith in the
Stability of particular phenomena, as heat,
water, azote; but to lead us to regard nature
as phenomenon, not a substance; to attribute
necessary existence to spirit; to esteem na-
ture as an accident and an eflpect."
Perhaps these quotations from the pam-
phlet called Nature are enough to show the
clouds of speculation in which Emerson had
been walking. With what lightning they
were charged was soon seen.
In 1837 he was asked to deliver the Phi
Beta Kappa oration at Cambridge. This was
the opportunity for which he had been wait-
ing. The mystic and eccentric young poet-
preacher now speaks his mind, and he turns
out to be a man exclusively interested in real
life. This recluse, too tender for contact with
the rough facts of the world, whose con-
science has retired him to rural Concord,
pours out a vial of wrath. This cub puts
forth the paw of a full-grown lion.
Emerson has left behind him nothing
stronger than this address, The American
Scholar. It was the first application of his
views to the events of his day, written and
delivered in the heat of early manhood while
his extraordinary powers were at their height.
It moves with a logical progression of which
he soon lost the habit. The subject of it,
the scholar's relation to the world, was the
passion of his life. The body of his belief is
to be found in this address, and in any ade-
quate account of him the whole address ought
to be given.
"Thus far," he said, "our holiday has been
simply a friendly sign of the survival of the
love of letters amongst a people too busy to
give to letters any more. As such it is pre-
cious as the sign of an indestructible instinct.
Perhaps the time is already come when it
ought to be, and will be, something else;
when the sluggard intellect of this continent
will look from under its iron lids and fill the
postponed expectation of the world with some-
thing better than the exertions of mechanical
skill. . . . The theory of books is noble.
The scholar of the first age received into him
the world around; brooded thereon; gave it
the new arrangement of his own mind, and
uttered it again. It came into him life; it
went out from him truth. . . . Yet hence
arises a grave mischief. The sacredness
which attaches to the act of creation, the act
of thought, is transferred to the record. The
poet chanting was felt to be a divine man:
EMERSON
427
henceforth the chant is divine, also. The
writer was a just and wise spirit: hence-
forward it is settled the book is perfect; as
love of the hero corrupts into worship of his
statue. Instantly the book becomes noxious:
the guide is a tyrant. . . . Books are the
best of things, well used; abused, among
the worst. What is the right use.'' What
is the one end which all means go to effect.'*
They are for nothing but to inspire. . . .
The one thing in the world, of value, is the
active soul. This every man is entitled to;
this every man contains within him, although
in almost all men obstructed, and as yet un-
born. The soul active sees absolute truth
and utters truth, or creates. In this action
it is genius; not the privilege of here and
there a favorite, but the sound estate of
every man. . . . Genius is always suffi-
ciently the enemy of genius by over-influ-
ence. The literature of every nation bears
me witness. The English dramatic poets
have Shakespearized now for two hundred
years. . . . These being his functions, it
becomes him to feel all confidence in him-
self, and to defer never to the popular cry.
He, and he only, knows the world. The
world of any moment is the merest appear-
ance. Some great decorum, some fetish of a
government, some ephemeral trade, or war,
or man, is cried up by half mankind and
cried down by the other half, as if all de-
pended on this particular up or down. The
odds are that the whole question is not worth
the poorest thought which the scholar has
lost in listening to the controversy. Let
him not quit his belief that a popgun is a
popgun, though the ancient and honorable
of the earth affirm it to be the crack of
doom."
Dr. Holmes called this speech of Emer-
son's our "intellectual Declaration of Inde-
pendence," and indeed it was. "The Phi
Beta Kappa speech," says Mr. Lowell, "was
an event without any former parallel in our
literary annals, — a scene always to be
treasured in the memory for its picturesque-
ness and its inspiration. What crov^ded and
breathless aisles, what windows clustering
with eager heads, what enthusiasm of ap-
proval, what grim silence of foregone
dissent!"
The authorities of the Divinity School can
hardly have been very careful readers of
Nature and The American Scholar, or they
would not have invited Emerson, in 1838, to
deliver the address to the graduating class.
This was Emerson's second opportunity to
apply his beliefs directly to society. A few
lines out of the famous address are enough
to show that he saw in the church of his day
signs of the same decadence that he saw in
the letters: "7 he prayers and even the dog-
mas of our church are like the zodiac of
Denderah and the astronomical monuments
of the Hindoos, wholly insulated from any-
thing now extant in the life and business of
the people. They mark the height to which
the waters once rose. ... It is the office of
a true teacher to show us that God is, not
was; that he speaketh, not spake. The true
Christianity — a faith like Christ's ih the in-
finitude of man — is lost. None believeth in
the soul of man, but only in some man or
person old and departed. Ah me! no man
goeth alone. All men go in flocks to this
saint or that poet, avoiding the God who
seeth in secret. They cannot see in secret;
they love to be blind in public. They think
society wiser than their soul, and know not
that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than
the whole world."
It is almost misleading to speak of the lofty
utterances of these early addresses as attacks
upon society, but their reception explains
them. The element of absolute courage is
the same in all natures. Emerson himself
was not unconscious of what function he was
performing.
The "storm in our wash-bowl" which fol-
lowed this Divinity School address, the
letters of remonstrance from friends, tha
advertisements by the Divinity School of
"no complicity," must have been cheering to
Emerson. His unseen yet dominating
ambition is shown throughout the address,
and in this note in his diary of the following
year:
*^ August 5 J. Yesterday at the Phi Beta
Kappa anniversary. Steady, steady. I am
convinced that if a man will be a true
scholar he shall have perfect freedom. The
young people and the mature hint at odium
and the aversion of forces to be presently
encountered in society. I say No; I fear
it not."
Ihe lectures and addresses which form the
latter half of the first volume in the collected
42S
JOHN JAV CHAPMAN
tnlition show tin- early Kimrson in the ripe-
ness of his powers. These writiiiRS have a
lyrical sweep ami a beauty which the later
works often lack. Passages in them reniind
us of 1 lam let:
"How silent, how spacious, what room for
all, vet without space to insert an atom; —
in graceful succession, in equal fullness, in
balanced beauty, the dance of the hours goes
forward still. Like an odor of incense, like a
strain of music, like a sleep, it is inexact and
boundless. It will not be dissected, nor un-
raveled, nor shown. . . . I he great I\in of
old, wlio was clothed in a leopard skin to
signify the beautiful variety of things and the
firmament, his coat of stars, — was but the
representative of thee, O rich and various
man! thou palace of sight and sound, carry-
ing in thy senses the morning and the night
and the unfathomable galaxy; in thy brain,
the geometry of the City of God; in thy
heart, the bower of love and the realms of
right and wrong. . . . Every star in heaven
is discontent and insatiable. Gravitation
and chemistry cannot content them. Ever
they woo and court the eye of the beholder.
Every man who comes into the world they
seek to fascinate and possess, to pass into his
mind, for they desire to republish themselves
in a more delicate world than that they oc-
cupy. ... So it is wMth all immaterial ob-
jects. These beautiful basilisks set their
brute glorious eyes on the eye of every child,
and, if they can, cause their nature to pass
through his wondering eyes mto him, and so
all things are mixed."
Emerson is never far from his main
thought:
( **The universe does not attract us till it is
housed in an individual." "A man, a per-
sonal ascendency, is the only great pheno-
menon."
"I cannot find language of sufficient
energy to convey my sense of the sacredness
of private integrity."
On the other hand, he is never far from his
great fear: "But 1 ruth is such a fly-away,
such a sly-boots, so untransportable and un-
barrelable a commodity, that it is as bad to
catch as light." "Let him beware of propos-
ing to himself any end. ... I say to you
plainly, there is no end so sacred or so large
that if pursued for itself will not become car-
rion and an offense to the nostril."
There can be nothing finer than Emerson's
knowledge of the world, his sympathy with
young men and with the practical difficulties
of applying his teachings. We can see in his
early lectures before students and mechanics
how much he had learned about the structure
of society from his own short contact with
the organized church.
"Each finds a tender and very intelligent
conscience a disqualification for success.
Each requires of the practitioner a certain
shutting of the eyes, a certain dapperness
and compliance, an acceptance of customs, a
sequestration from the sentiments of generos-
ity and love, a compromise of private opinion
and lofty integrity. . . . The fact that a new
thought and hope have dawned in your
breast, should apprise you that in the same
hour a new light broke in upon a thousand
private hearts. . . . And further I will not
dissemble my hope that each person whom I
address has felt his own call to cast aside all
evil customs, timidity, and limitations, and
to be in his place a free and helpful man, a
reformer, a benefactor, not content to slip
along through the world like a footman or a
spy, escaping by his nimbleness and apologies
as many knocks as he can, but a brave and
upright man who must find or cut a straight
road to everything excellent in the earth,
and not only go honorably himself, but make
it easier for all who follow him to go in honor
and with benefit. . . ."
Beneath all lay a greater matter, — Emer^
son's grasp of the forms and conditions of
progress, his reach of intellect, which coulc^
afford fair play to every one.
His lecture on The Conservative is not a
puzzling jeu d' esprit, like Bishop Blougrarns
Apology, but an honest attempt to set up the
opposing chessmen of conservatism and re-
form so as to represent real life. Hardly can
such a brilliant statement of the case be
found elsewhere in literature. It is not neces-
sary to quote here the reformer's side of the
question, for Emerson's whole life was de-
voted to it. The conservatives' attitude he
gives wixh such accuracy and such justice
that the very bankers of State Street seem
to be speaking:
"The order of things is as good as the
character of the population permits. Con-
sider it as the work of a great and beneficent
and progressive necessity, which, from the
EMERSON
429
first pulsation in the first animal life up to tlie
present high culture of the best nations, has
advanced thus far. . . .
"The conservative party in the universe
concedes that the radical would talk suffi-
ciently to the purpose if we were still in the
garden of Eden; he legislates for man as he
ought to be; his theory is right, but he
makes no allowance for friction, and this
omission makes his whole doctrine false.
The idealist retorts that the conservative
falls into a far more noxious error in the other
extreme. The conservative assumes sickness
as a necessity, and his social frame is a hos-
pital, his total legislation is for the present
distress, a universe in slippers and flannels,
with bib and pap-spoon, swallowing pills and
herb tea. Sickness gets organized as well as
health, the vice as well as the virtue."
It is unnecessary to go, one by one,
through the familiar essays and lectures
which Emerson published between 1838 and
1875. They are in everybody's hands and in
everybody's thoughts. In 1840 he wrote in
his diary: "In all my lectures I have taught
one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the
private man. This the people accept readily
enough, and even with commendation, as long
as I call the lecture Art or Politics, or Litera-
ture or the Household; but the moment I call
it Religion they are shocked, though it be only
the application of the same truth which they
receive elsewhere to a new class of facts."
To the platform he returned, and left it only
once or twice during the remainder of his
life.
His writings vary in coherence. In his
early occasional pieces, like the Phi Beta
Kappa address, coherence is at a maximum.
They were written for a purpose, and were
perhaps struck off all at once. But he earned
his living by lecturing, and a lecturer is
always recasting his work and using it in dif-
ferent forms. A lecturer has no prejudice
against repetition. It is noticeable that in
some of Emerson's important lectures the
logical scheme is more perfect than in his
essays. The truth seems to be that m the
process of working up and perfecting his
writings, in revising and fihng his sentences,
the logical scheme became more and more
obliterated. Another circumstance helped
make his style fragmentary. He was by
nature a man of inspirations and exalted
moods. He was subject to ecstasies, during
which his mind worked with phenomenal
brilliancy. Throughout his works and in his
diary we find constant reference to these
moods, and to his own inability to control or
recover them. "But what we want is con-
secutiveness. 'Tis with us a flash of light,
then a long darkness, then a flash again. Ah!
could we turn these fugitive sparkles into an
astronomy of Copernican worlds!"
In order to take advantage of these periods
of divination, he used to write down the
thoughts that came to him at such times.
From boyhood onward he kept journals and
commonplace books, and in the course of his
reading and meditation he collected innumer-
able notes and quotations which he indexed
for ready use. In these mines he "quarried,"
as Mr. Cabot says, for his lectures and essays.
When he needed a lecture he went to the
repository, threw together what seemed to
have a bearing on some subject, and gave it a
title. If any other man should adopt this
method of composition, the result would be
incomprehensible chaos; because most men
have many interests, many moods, many and
conflicting ideas. But with Emerson it was
otherwise. There was only one thought
which could set him aflame, and that was the
thought of the unfathomed might of man.
This thought was his religion, his politics, his
ethics, his philosophy. One moment of in-
spiration was in him own brother to the next
moment of inspiration, although they might
be separated by six weeks. When he came
to put together his star-born ideas, they
fitted well, no matter in what order he placed
them, because they were all part of the same
idea.
His works are all one single attack on the
vice of the age, moral cowardice. He assails
it not by railings and scorn, but by positive
and stimulating suggestion. The imagina-
tion of the reader is touched by every device
which can awake the admiration for heroism,
the consciousness of moral courage. Wit,
quotation, anecdote, eloquence, exhortation,
rhetoric, sarcasm, and very rarely denuncia-
tion, are launched at the reader, till he feels
little lambent flames beginning to kmdle in
him. He is perhaps unable to see the exact
logical connection between two paragraphs
of an essay, yet he feels they are germane.
He takes up Emerson tired and apathetic,
430
JOHN JAY CHAPMAN
hut pri'scntly In- feels li i in stlf crowing lu-ady
and truculent, strcnjitliciud in liis most in-
ward vitality, surprised to hnd liiniself a^ain
master in liis own house.
riie ilirterence hetwit-n I'^merson and the
other moralists is that ail these stimulatmp;
pictures and su^jiestions are not given by
him in illustration of a general proposition.
They have never been through the mill of
generalization in his own mind. He himself
could not have told you their logical bearing
on one another. They have all the vividness
of disconnected fragments of life, and yet
they all throw light on one another, like the
facets of a jewel. But w hatever cause it was
that led him to adopt his method of writing,
it is certain that he succeeded in delivering
himself of his thought with an initial velocity
and carrying power such as few men ever
attained. He has the force at his command
of the thrower of the discus.
His style is American, and beats with the
pulse of the climate. He is the only writer
fv^e have had who writes as he speaks, who
makes no literary parade, has no pretensions
Df any sort. He is the only writer we have
had who has wholly subdued his vehicle to
his temperament. It is impossible to name
his style without naming his character: they
are one thing.
Both in language and in elocution Emerson
was a practiced and consummate artist, who
knew how both to command his effects and to
conceal his means. The casual, practical,
disarming directness with which he writes
puts any honest man at his mercy. " What
difference does it make whether a man who
can talk like this is following an argument or
not: You cannot always see Emerson
clearly; he is hidden by a high wall; but
you always know exactly on what spot he is
standing. You judge it by the flight of the
objects he throws over the wall, — a bootjack,
an apple, a crown, a razor, a volume of verse.
With one or other of these missiles, all de-
livered with a very tolerable aim, he is pretty
sure to hit you. These catchwords stick in
the mind. People are not in general influ-
enced by long books or discourses, but by
odd fragments of observation which they
overhear, sentences or head-lines which they
read while turning over a book at random or
while waiting for dinner to be announced.
These are the oracles and orphic words that
get lodged in the mind and bend a man's
most stubborn will. Emerson called them
the Police of the Universe. His works are a
treasury of such things. They sparkle in the
mine, or you may carry them off in your
pocket. 1 hey get driven into your mind like
nails, and on them catch and hang your own
experiences, till what was once his thought
has become your character.
"God offers to every mind its choice be-
tween truth and repose. Take which you
please; you can never have both." "Dis-
content is want of self-reliance; it is infirmity
of will." "It is impossible for a man to be
cheated by any one but himself."
The orchestration with which Emerson in-
troduces and sustains these notes from the
spheres is as remarkable as the winged things
themselves. Open his works at a hazard.
You hear a man talking.
"A garden is like those pernicious machin-
eries we read of every month in the news-
papers, which catch a man's coat-skirt or his
hand, and draw in his arm, his leg, and his
whole body to irresistible destruction. In an
evil hour he pulled down his wall and added
a field to his homestead. No land is bad, but
land is worse. If a man own land, the land
owns him. Now let him leave home if he
dare. Every tree and graft, every hill of
melons, row of corn, or quickset hedge, all he
has done and all he means to do, stand in his
way like duns, when he would go out of his
gate.
Your attention is arrested by the reality of
this gentleman in his garden, by the first-
hand quality of his mind. It matters not on
what subject he talks. While you are mus-
ing, still pleased and patronizing, he has
picked up the bow of Ulysses, bent it with the
ease of Ulysses, and sent a shaft clear through
the twelve axes, nor missed one of them.
But this, it seems, was mere byplay and
marksmanship; for before you have done
wondering, Ulysses rises to his feet in anger,
and pours flight after flight, arrow after
arrow, from the great bow. The shafts sing
and strike, the suitors fall in heaps. The
brow of Ulysses shines with unearthly splen-
dor. The air is filled with lightning. After
a little, without shock or transition, without
apparent change of tone, Mr. Emerson is
ofPering you a biscuit before you leave, and
bidding you mind the last step at the garden
EMERSON
431
end. If the man who can do these things be
not an artist, then must we have a new
vocabulary and rename the professions.
There is, in all this effectiveness of Emer-
son, no pose, no literary art; nothing that
corresponds even remotely to the pretended
modesty and ignorance with which Socrates
lays pitfalls for our admiration in Plato's
dialogues.
It was the platform which determined Em-
erson's style. He was not a writer, but a
speaker. On the platform his manner of
speech was a living part of his words. The
pauses and hesitation, the abstraction, the
searching, the balancing, the turning forward
and back of the leaves of his lecture, and then
the discovery, the illumination, the gleam of
lightning which you saw before your eyes de-
scend into a man of genius, — all this was
Emerson. He invented this style of speak-
ing, and made it express the supersensuous,
the incommunicable. Lowell wrote, while
still under the spell of the magician: "Em-
erson's oration was more disjointed than
usual, even with him. It began nowh^£, and
ended everywhere, and yet, as always with
that divine man, it left you feeling that some-
thing beautiful had passed that way, some-
thing more beautiful than anything else, like
the rising and setting of stars. Every pos-
sible criticism might have been made on it
but one, — that it was not noble. There was
a tone in it that awakened all elevating asso-
ciations. He boggled, he lost his place, he
had to put on his glasses; but it w^as as if a
creature from some fairer world had lost his
way in our fogs, and it was our fault, not his.
It was chaotic, but it was all such stuff as
stars are made of, and you couldn't help feel-
ing that, if you waited awhile, all that was
nebulous would be whirled into planets, and
would assume the mathematical gravity of
system. All through it I felt something in
me that cried, 'Ha! ha!' to the sound of the
trumpets."
It is nothing for any man sitting in his
chair to be overcome with the sense of the
immediacy of life, to feel the spur of courage,
the victory of good over evil, the value, now
and forever, of all great-hearted endeavor.
Such moments come to us all. But for a man
to sit in his chair and write what shall call up
these forces in the bosoms of others — that is
desert, that is greatness. To do this was the
gift of Emerson. The whole earth is enriched
by every moment of converse with him. Ihe
shows ajid shams of life become transparent,
the lost kingdoms are brought back, the shut-
ters of the spirit are opened, and provinces
and realms of our own existence lie gleaming
before us.
It has been necessary to reduce the living
soul of Emerson to mere dead attributes like
"moral courage" in order that we might talk
about him at all. His effectiveness comes
from his character; not from his philosophy,
nor from his rhetoric nor his wit, nor from
any of the accidents of his education. He
might never have heard of Berkeley or Plato.
A slightly different education might have led
him to throw his teaching into the form of
historical essays or of stump speeches. He
might, perhaps, have been bred a stone-
mason, and have done his work in the world
by traveling with a panorama. But he would
always have been Emerson. His weight and
his power would always have been the
same. It is solely as character that he
is important. He discovered nothing; he
bears no relation whatever to the history of
philosophy. We must regard him and deal
with him simply as a man.
Strangely enough, the world has aKvays
insisted upon accepting him as a thinker:
and hence a great coil of misunderstanding.
As a thinker, Emerson is difficult to classify.
Before you begin to assign him a place, you
must clear the ground by a disquisition as to
what is meant by "a thinker," and how
Emerson differs from other thinkers. As a
man, Emerson is as plain as Ben Franklin.
People have accused him of inconsistency;
they say that he teaches one thing one day,
and another the next day. But from the
point of view of Emerson there is no such
thing as inconsistency. Every man is each
day a new man. Let him be to-day what he
is to-day. It is immaterial and waste of
time to consider what he once was or what
he may be.
His picturesque speech delights in fact and
anecdote and a public which is used to trea-
tises and deduction cares always to be told
the moral. It wants everything reduced to
a generalization. All generalizations are
partial truths, but we are used to them, and
we ourselves mentally make the proper allow-
ance. Emerson's method is, not to give a
M-
JOHN JA^' CHAIRMAN
jirruTiili/ntion ;invl trust to our ninkinu; the
nllowanci-, but to f;ive two conflicting statc-
nu-nts anil leave the balance of truth to he
struck in our own minds on the facts. Fhere
is no inconsistency in this. It is a vivid and
very lesjitimate method of procedure. But
he is much more tlian a theorist: he is a
practitioner. He does not merely state a
theory of aj^itation: he proceeds to a.2;itate.
** Do not," he says, "set the least value on
what I do, or the least discredit on what I do
not, as if I pretended to settle anything as
false or true. 1 unsettle all things. No facts
are to me sacred, none are profane. I simply
experiment, an endless seeker with no past at
my back." He was not engaged in teaching
many things, but one thing, — Courage.
Sometimes he inspires it by pointing to great
characters, — Fox, Milton, Alcibiades; some-
times he inspires it by bidding us beware of
imitating such men, and, in the ardor of his
rhetoric, even seems to regard them as hin-
drances and dangers to our development.
There is no inconsistency here. Emerson
might logically have gone one step further
and raised inconsistency into a jewel. For
what is so useful, so educational, so inspir-
ing, to a timid and conservative man, as to
do something inconsistent and regrettable?
It lends character to him at once. He
breathes freer and is stronger for the experi-
ence.
Emerson is no cosmopolitan. He is a
patriot. He is not like Goethe, whose sym-
pathies did not run on national lines. Emer-
son has America in his mind's eye all the
time. There is to be a new religion, and it is
to come from America; a new and better type
of man, and he is to be an American. He
not only cared little or nothing for Europe,
but he cared not much for the world at large.
His thought was for the future of this
country. You cannot get into any chamber
in his mind which is below this chamber of
patriotism. He loves the valor of Alexander
and the grace of the Oxford athlete; but he
loves them not for themselves. He has a use
for them. They are grist to his mill and
powder to his gun. His admiration of them
he subordinates to his main purpose, — they
are his blackboard and diagrams. His
patriotism is the backbone of his significance.
He came to his countr\mien at a time when
they lacked, not thoughts, but manliness.
I he needs of his own particular public are
always before him.
" It is odd that our people should have, not
water on the brain, but a little gas there. A
shrewd foreigner said of the Americans that
'whatever they say has a little the air of a
hi >»
"I shall not need to go into an enumera-
tion of our national defects and vices which
require this Order of Censors in the State.
. . . The timidity of our public opinion is
our disease, or, shall I say, the publicness of
opinion, the absence of private opinion."
"Our measure of success is the moderation
and low level of an individual's judgment.
Dr. Channing's piety and wisdom had such
weight in Boston that the popular idea of
religion w^as whatever this eminent divine
held."
"Let us affront and reprimand the smooth
mediocrity, the squalid contentment of the
times."
The politicians he scores constantly.
"Who that sees the meanness of our
politics^ut congratulates Washington that
he is long already wrapped in his shroud and
forever safe." The following is his descrip-
tion of the social world of his day: "If any
man consider the present aspects of what is
called by distinction society^ he will see the
need of these ethics. The sinew and heart
of man seem to be drawn out, and we are
become timorous, desponding whimperers."
It is the same wherever we open his books.
He must spur on, feed up, bring forward the
dormant character of his countrymen. When
he goes to England, he sees in English life
nothing except those elements which are de-
ficient in American life. If you wnsh a cata-
logue of what America has not, read English
Traits. Emerson's patriotism had the effect
of expanding his philosophy. To-day we
know the value of physique, for science has
taught it, but it was hardly discovered in his
da}^ and his philosophy affords no basis for
it. Emerson in this matter transcends his
philosophy. When in England, he was
fairly made drunk with the physical life he
found there. He is like Casper Hauser gaz-
ing for the first time on green fields. English
Traits is the ruddiest book he ever wrote. It
is a hymn to force, honesty, and physical
well-being, and ends with the dominant note
of his belief: "By this general activity and
EMERSON
433
by this sacredness of individuals, they [the
English] have in seven hundred years evolved
the principles of freedom. It is the land of
patriots, martyrs, sages, and bards, and if the
ocean out of which it emerged should wash
it away, it will be remembered as an island
famous for immortal laws, for the announce-
ments of original right which make the stone
tables of liberty." He had found in England
free speech, personal courage, and reverence
for the individual.
No convulsion could shake Emerson or
make his view unsteady even for an instant.
What no one else saw, he saw, and he saw
nothing else. Not a boy in the land wel-
comed the outbreak of the war so fiercely as
did this shy village philosopher, then at the
age of fifty-eight. He saw that war was the
cure for cowardice, moral as well as physical.
It was not the cause of the slave that moved
him; it was not the cause of the Union for
which he cared a farthing. It was something
deeper than either of these things for which
he had been battling all his life. It was the
cause of character against convention.
Whatever else the war might bring, it was
sure to bring in character, to leave behind it
a file of heroes; if not heroes, then villains,
but in any case strong men. On the 9th of
April, 1861, three days before Fort Sumter
was bombarded, he had spoken with equani-
mity of "the downfall of our character-
destroying civilization. . . . We find that
civilization crowed too soon, that our tri-
umphs were treacheries; we had opened the
wrong door and let the enemy into the
castle."
"Ah," he said, when the firing began,
"sometimes gunpowder smells good." Soon
after the attack on Sumter he said in a public
address, "We have been very homeless for
some years past, say since 1850; but now we
have a country again. . . . The war was an
eye-opener, and showed men of all parties
and opinions the value of those primary
forces that lie beneath all political action."
And it was almost a personal pledge when
he said at the Harvard Commemoration in
1865, "We shall not again disparage Amer-
ica, now that we have seen what men it will
bear."
The place which Emerson forever occupies
as a great critic is defined by the same sharp
outlines that mark his work, in whatever
light and from whatever side we approach it.
A critic in the modern sense he was not, for
his point of view is fixed, and he reviews the
world like a search-light placed on the top of
a tall tower. He lived too early and at too
great a distance from the forum of European
thought to absorb the ideas of evolution and
give place to them in his philosophy. Evolu-
tion does not graft well upon the Platonic
Idealism, nor are physiology and the kindred
sciences sympathetic. Nothing aroused Em-
erson's indignation more than the attempts of
the medical faculty and of phrenologists to
classify, and therefore limit individuals.
" The grossest ignorance does not disgust me
like this ignorant knowingness."
We miss in Emerson the underlying con-
ception of growth, of development, so charac-
teristic of the thought of our own day, and
which, for instance, is found everywhere
latent in Browning's poetry. Browning re-
gards character as the result of experience
and as an ever-changing growth. To Emer-
son, character is rather an entity complete
and eternal from the beginning. He is prob-
ably the last great writer to look at life from
a stationary standpoint. There is a certain
lack of the historic sense in all he has written.
The ethical assumption that all men are
exactly alike permeates his work. In his
mind, Socrates, Marco Polo, and General
Jackson stand surrounded by the same
atmosphere, or rather stand as mere naked
characters surrounded by no atmosphere at
all. He is probably the last great writer who
will fling about classic anecdotes as if they
were club gossip. In the discussion of morals,
this assumption does little harm. The stories
and proverbs which illustrate the thought of
the moralist generally concern only those
simple relations of life which are common to
all ages. There is charm in this familiar
dealing with antiquity. The classics are thus
domesticated and made real to us. What
matter if .E^sop appear a little too much like
an American citizen, so long as his points
tell.?
It is in Emerson's treatment of the fine
arts that we begin to notice his want of his-
toric sense. Art endeavors to express subtle
and ever-changing feelings by means of con-
ventions which are as protean as the forms
of a cloud; and the man who in speaking on
the plastic arts makes the assumption that
4.U
JOHN JA^' CHAPMAN
all men are alike will revial luforc lie has
uttered three sentences that he does not
know what art is, that he has never experi-
enced any form of sensation from it. Emer-
son hved in a time and cHme where there
was no plastic art, and he was obliged to
arrive at his ideas about art by means of a
highly complex process of reasoning. He
dwelt constantly in a spiritual place which
was the very focus of high moral fervor.
This was his enthusiasm, this was his revela-
tion, and from it he reasoned out the prob-
able meaning of the fine arts. " 1 his,"
tl^Kight Emerson, his eye rolling in a fine
frenzy of moral feeling, "this must be what
Apelles experienced, this fervor is the passion
of Hramante. I understand the Parthenon."
And so he projected his feelings about
morality into the field of the plastic arts.
He deals very freely and rather indiscrimi-
nately with the names of artists, — Phidias,
Raphael, Salvator Rosa, — and he speaks
always in such a way that it is impossible to
connect what he says with any impression we
have ever received from the works of those
masters.
In fact, Emerson has never in his life felt
the normal appeal of any painting, or any
sculpture, or any architecture, or any music.
These thmgs, of which he does not know the
meaning in real life, he yet uses, and uses
constantly, as symbols to convey ethical
truths. The result is that his books are full
of blind places, like the notes which will not
strike on a sick piano.
It is interesting to find that the one art of
which Emerson did have a direct understand-
ing, the art of poetry, gave him some insight
into the relation of the artist to his vehicle.
In his essay on Shakespeare there is a full
recognition of the debt of Shakespeare to his
times. This essay is filled with the historic
sense. We ought not to accuse Emerson
because he lacked appreciation of the fine
arts, but rather admire the truly Goethean
spirit in which he insisted upon the reality of
arts of which he had no understanding. This
is the same spirit which led him to insist
on the value of the Eastern poets. Perhaps
there exist a few scholars who can tell us how
far Emerson understood or misunderstood
Saadi and Firdusi and the Koran. But we
need not be disturbed for his learning. It is
enough that he makes us recognize that these
men were men too, and that their writings
mean something not unknowable to us. The
East added nothmg to Emerson, but gave
him a few trappings of speech. The whole of
his mysticism is to be found in Nature^ writ-
ten before he knew the sages of the Orient,
and it is not improbable that there is some
real connection between his own mysticism
and the mysticism of the Eastern poets.
Emerson's criticism on men and books is
like the test of a great chemist who seeks one
or two elements. He burns a bit of the stuff
in his incandescent light, shows the lines of it
in his spectrum, and there an end.
It was a thought of genius that led him
to write Representative Men. The scheme
of this book gave play to every illumination
of his mind, and it pinned him down to the
objective, to the field of vision under his
microscope. The table of contents of Repre-
sentative Men is the dial of his education. It
is as follows: Uses of Great Men; Plato, or
The Philosopher; Plato, New Readings;
Swedenborg, or The Mystic; Montaigne,
or The Skeptic; Shakespeare, or The Poet;
Napoleon, or The Man of the World; Goethe,
or The Writer. The predominance of the
writers over all other types of men is not cited
to show Emerson's interest in The Writer, for
we know his interest centered in the practical
man, — even his ideal scholar is a practical
man, — but to show the sources of his illus-
tration. Emerson's library was the old-
fashioned gentleman's library. His mines of
thought were the world's classics. This is
one reason why he so quickly gained an in-
ternational currency. His very subjects in
Representative Men are of universal interest,
and he is limited only by certain inevitable
local conditions. Representative Men is
thought by many persons to be his best
book. It is certainly filled with the strokes
of a master. There exists no more profound
criticism than Emerson's analysis of Goethe
and of Napoleon, by both of whom he was
at once fascinated and repelled.
II
The attitude of Emerson's mind toward re-
formers results so logically from his philos-
ophy that it is easily understood. He saw
in them people who sought something as a
panacea or as an end in itself. To speak
EMERSON
435
strictly and not irreverently, he liad his own
panacea, — the development of each individ-
ual; and he was impatient of any other.
He did not believe m association. The very
idea of it involved a surrender by the individ-
ual of some portion of his identity, and of
course all the reformers worked throup;h their
associations. With their general aims he
sympathized. "These reforms," he wrote,
"are our contemporaries; they are ourselves,
our own light and sight and conscience; they
only name the relation which subsists be-
tween us and the vicious institutions which
they go to rectify." But with the methods of
the reformers he had no sympathy: "He
who aims at progress should aim at an infi-
nite, not at a special benefit. The reforms
whose fame now fills the land with temper-
ance, anti-slavery, non-resistance, no-govern-
ment, equal labor, fair and generous as each
appears, are poor bitter things when prose-
cuted for themselves as an end." Again:
"The young men who have been vexing
society for these last years with regenerative
methods seem to have made this mistake:
they all exaggerated some special means, and
all failed to see that the reform of reforms
must be accomplished without means."
Emerson did not at first discriminate be-
tween the movement of the Abolitionists and
the hundred and one other reform move-
ments of the period; and in this lack of dis-
crimination lies a point of extraordinary
interest. The Abolitionists, as it afterwards
turned out, had in fact got hold of the issue
which was to control the fortunes of the re-
public for thirty years. The difference be-
tween them and the other reformers was
this: that the Abolitionists were men set in
motion by the primary and unreasoning
passion of pity. Theory played small part
in the movement. It grew by the excite-
ment which exhibitions of cruelty will arouse
in the minds of sensitive people.
It is not to be denied that the social con-
ditions in Boston in 1831 foreboded an
outbreak in some form. If the abolition
excitement had not drafted off the rising
forces, there might have been a Merry
Mount, an epidemic of crime or insanity, or
a mob of some sort. The abolition move-
ment afforded the purest form of an indul-
gence in human feeling that was ever offered
to men. It was intoxicating. It made the
agitators perfectly happy. They sang at
their work and bubbled over with exhilara-
tion. They were the only people in the
United States, at this time, who were enjoy-
ing an exalted, glorifying, practical activity.
But Emerson at first lacked the touch-
stone, whether of intellect or of heart, to see
the difference between this particular move-
ment and the other movements then in
progress. Indeed, in so far as he sees any
difference between the Abolitionists and the
rest, it is that the Abolitionists were more
objectionable and distasteful to him.
"Those," he said, "who are urging with
most ardor what are called the greatest bene-
fits to mankind are narrow, conceited, self-
pleasing men, and affect us as the insane
do." And again: "By the side of these men
[the idealists] the hot agitators have a certain
cheap and ridiculous air; they even look
smaller than others. Of the two, I own I
like the speculators the best. They have
some piety which looks with faith to a fair
future unprofaned by rash and unequal
attempts to realize it." He was drawn
into the abolition cause by having the truth
brought home to him that these people were
fighting for the Moral Law. He was slow in
seeing this, because in their methods they
represented everything he most condemned.
As soon, however, as he was convinced, he
was ready to lecture for them and to give
them the weight of his approval. In 1844
he was already practically an Abolitionist,
and his feelings upon the matter deepened
steadily in intensity ever after. •
The most interesting page of Emerson's
published journal is the following, written at
some time previous to 1844; the exact date
is not given. A like page, whether WTitten
or unwritten, may be read into the private
annals of every man who lived before the
war. Emerson has, with unconscious mas-
tery, photographed the half-specter that
stalked in the minds of all. He wrote: "I
had occasion to say the other day to Eliza-
beth Hoar that I like best the strong and
worthy persons, like her father, who support
the social order without hesitation or misgiv-
ing. I like these; they never incommode
us by exciting grief, pity, or perturbation of
any sort. But the professed philanthropists,
it is strange and horrible to say, are an alto-
gether odious set of people, whom one would
43^^
JOHN JA^' CHAPMAN
slum as the worst ofhoivs and canters, lint
niv conscience, my unhappy conscience re-
spects that hapless class who see the faults
ami stains of our social order, and who pray
and strive incessantly to right the wrong;
this annoying class of men and women,
though they commonly find the work alto-
gether beyond their faculty, and their results
are, for the present, distressing. They are
partial, and apt to magnify their own. Yes,
and the prostrate penitent, also, — he is not
comprehensive, he is not philosophical in
those tears and groans. Yet I feel that under
him and his j^artiality and exclusiveness is
the earth and the sea and all that in them is,
and the axis around which the universe re-
volves passes through his body where he
stands."
It was the defection of Daniel Webster
that completed the conversion of Emerson
and turned him from an adherent into a
propagandist of abolition. Not pity for the
slave, but indignation at the violation of
the Moral Law by Daniel Webster, was at
the bottom of Emerson's anger. His abolition-
ism was secondary to his main mission, his
main enthusiasm. It is for this reason that
he stands on a plane of intellect where he
might, under other circumstances, have met
and defeated Webster. After the 7th of
March, 1850, he recognized in Webster the
embodiment of all that he hated. In his
attacks on Webster, Emerson trembles to
his inmost fiber with antagonism. He is
savage, destructive, personal, bent on death.
This exhibition of Emerson as a fighting
animal is magnificent, and explains his life.
There is no other instance of his ferocity.
No other nature but Webster's ever so moved
him; but it was time to be moved, and
Webster was a man of his size. Had these
two great men of New England been matched
in training as they were matched in en-
dowment, and had they then faced each
other in debate, they would not have been
found to differ so greatly in power. Their
natures were electrically repellent, but from
which did the greater force radiate? Their
education differed so radically that it is im-
possible to compare them, but if you trans-
late the Phi Beta Kappa address into politics,
you have something stronger than Webster,
— something that recalls Chatham; and
Emerson would have had this advantage, —
that he was not afraid. As it was, he left his
library and took the stump. Mr. Cabot has
given us extracts from his speeches:
"The tameness is indeed complete; all are
in\()Ked in one hot haste of terror, — presi-
dents of colleges and professors, saints and
brokers, lawyers and manufacturers; not a
liberal recollection, not so much as a snatch
of an old song for freedom, dares intrude on
their passive obedience. . . . Mr. Webster,
perhaps, is only followMng the laws of his
blood and constitution. I suppose his
pledges were not quite natural to him. He
is a man who lives by his memory; a man
of the past, not a man of faith and of hope.
All the drops of his blood have eyes that
look downward, and his finely developed
understanding only works truly and with all
its force when it stands for animal good; that
is, for property. He looks at the Union as
an estate, a large farm, and is excellent in the
completeness of his defense of it so far.
What he finds already written he will defend.
Lucky that so much had got well written
when he came, for he has no faith in the
power of self-government. Not the smallest
municipal provision, if it w^ere new, would
receive his sanction. In Massachusetts, in
1776, he would, beyond all question, have
been a refugee. He praises Adams and Jef-
ferson, but it is a past Adams and Jefferson.
A present Adams or Jefferson he would de-
nounce. . . . But one thing appears certain
to me: that the Union is at an end as soon as
an immoral law is enacted. He who writes a
crime into the statute book digs under the
foundations of the Capitol. . . . The words
of John Randolph, wiser than he knew, have
been ringing ominously in all echoes for
thirty years: *We do not govern the people
of the North by our black slaves, but by
their own white slaves.' . . . They come
down now like the cry of fate, in the moment
when they are fulfilled."
The exasperation of Emerson did not sub-
side, but went on increasing during the next
four years, and on March 7, 1854, he read his
lecture on the Fugitive Slave Law at the New
York Tabernacle: "I have lived all my life
without suffering any inconvenience from
American Slavery. I never saw it; I never
heard the whip; I never felt the check on my
free speech and action, until the other day,
when Mr. Webster, by his personal influence,
EMERSON
437
brought the Fugitive Slave Law on the coun-
try. I say Mr. Webster, for though the bill
was not his, it is yet notorious that he was the
life and soul of it, that he gave it all he had.
It cost him his life, and under the shadow of
his great name inferior men sheltered them-
selves, threw their ballots for it, and made
the law. . . . Nobody doubts that Daniel
Webster could make a good speech. No-
body doubts that there were good and plau-
sible things to be said on the part of the
South. But this is not a question of ingenu-
ity, not a question of syllogisms, but of sides.
Hozu came he there? . . . But the question
which history will ask is broader. In the
final hour when he was forced by the per-
emptory necessity of the closing armies to
take a side, — did he take the part of great
principles, the side of humanity and justice,
or the side of abuse, and oppression and
chaos.'* . . . He did as immoral men usually
do, — made very low bows to the Christian
Church and went through all the Sunday
decorums, but when allusion was made to the
question of duty and the sanctions of moral-
ity, he very frankly said, at Albany, 'Some
higher law, something existing somewhere be-
tween here and the heaven — I do not know
where.' And if the reporters say true, this
wretched atheism found some laughter in the
company."
It was too late for Emerson to shine as a
political debater. On May 14, 1857, Long-
fellow wrote in his diary, "It is rather painful
to see Emerson in the arena of politics, hissed
and hooted at by young law students."
Emerson records a similar experience at a
later date: "If I were dumb, yet would I
have gone and mowed and muttered or made
signs. The mob roared whenever I at-
tempted to speak, and after several begin-
nings I withdrew." There is nothing "pain-
ful" here: it lo the sublime exhibition of a
great soul in bondage to circumstance.
The thing to be noted is that this is the
same man, in the same state of excitement
about the same idea, who years before spoke
out in The American Scholar^ in the Essays^
and in the Lectures.
What was it that had aroused in Emerson
such Promethean antagonism in 1837 but
those same forces which in 1850 came to
their culmination and assumed visible shape
in the person of Daniel Webster.'' The formal
victory of Webster drew Emerson into the
arena, and made a dramatic episode in his
life. But his battle with those forces had
begun thirteen years earlier, when he threw
down the gauntlet to them in his Phi Beta
Kappa oration. Emerson by his writings
did more than any other man to rescue
the youth of the next generation and fit
them for the fierce times to follow. It will
not be denied that he sent ten thousand
sons to the war.
In speaking of Emerson's attitude toward
the anti-slavery cause, it has been possible to
dispense with any survey of that movement,
because the movement was simple and spe-
cific and is well remembered. But when we
come to analyze the relations he bore to some
of the local agitations of his day, it becomes
necessary to weave in with the matter a dis-
cussion of certain tendencies deeply im-
bedded in the life of his times, and of which
he himself was in a sense an outcome. In
speaking of the Transcendentalists, who were
essentially the children of the Puritans, we
must begin with some study of the chief
traits of Puritanism.
What parts the factors of climate, circum-
stance, and religion have respectively played
in the development of the New England char-
acter no analysis can determine. We may
trace the imaginary influence of a harsh creed
in the fines of the face. We may sometimes
follow from generation to generation the
course of a truth which at first sustained the
spirit of man, till we see it petrify into a
dogma which now kills the spirits of men.
Conscience may destroy the character. The
tragedy of the New England judge enforcing
the Fugitive Slave Law was no new spectacle
in New England. A dogmatic crucifixion of
the natural instincts had been in progress
there for two hundred years. Emerson, who
is more free from dogma than any other
teacher that can be named, yet comes very
near being dogmatic in his reiteration of the
Moral Law.
Whatever volume of Emerson we take up,
the Moral Law holds the same place in his
thoughts. It is the one statable revelation of
truth which he is ready to stake his all upon.
" Ihe illusion that strikes me as the master-
piece in that ring of illusions which our life is,
is the timidity with which we assert our
moral sentiment. We are made of it, the
4.1S
JOHN JAY CHAPMAN
world Is hnilt by It, tliinus endure as tlity
share it; all beauty, all health, all intelli-
gence exist by it; yet we shrink to speak of
it or ran^e ourselves by its side. Nay, we
presume strength of him or them who deny
it. Cities go against it, the college goes
against it, the courts snatch any precedent
at any vicious form of law to rule it out;
legislatures listen with appetite to declama-
tions against it and vote it down.
With this very beautiful and striking pas-
sage no one will quarrel, nor will any one
misunderstand it.
The following passage has the same sort
of poetical truth. "Things are saturated
with the moral law. There is no escape from
it. Violets and grass preach it; rain and
snow, wind and tides, every change, every
cause in Nature is nothing but a disguised
missionary. . . ."
But F^merson is not satisfied with meta-
phor. "We affirm that in all men is this
majestic perception and command; that it
is the presence of the eternal in each perish-
ing man; that it distances and degrades all
statements of whatever saints, heroes, poets,
as obscure and confused stammerings before
its silent revelation. They report the truth.
// is the truth." In this last extract we have
Emerson actually affirming that his dogma
of the Moral Law is Absolute Truth. He
thinks it not merely a form of truth, like the
old theologies, but very distinguishable from
all other forms in the past.
Curiously enough, his statement of the law
grows dogmatic and incisive in proportion as
he approaches the borderland between his
law and the natural instincts: "The last reve-
lation of intellect and of sentiment is that
in a manner it severs the man from all other
men; makes known to him that the spiritual
powers are sufficient to him if no other being
existed; that he is to deal absolutely in the
world, as if he alone v.ere a system and a
state, and though all should perish could
make all anew." Here we have the dogma
applied, and we see in it only a new form of
old Calvinism as cruel as Calvinism, and not
much different from its original. The italics
are not Emerson's, but are inserted to bring
out an idea which is everywhere prevalent
in his teaching.
In this final form, the Moral Law, by in-
sisting that sheer conscience can slake the
thirst that rises in the soul, is convicted of
falsehood; and this heartless falsehood is the
same falsehood that has been put into the
porridge of every Puritan child for six genera-
tions. A grown man can digest doctrine and
sleep at night. But a young person of high
purpose and strong will, who takes such a lie
as this half-truth and feeds on it as on the
bread of life, will suffer. It will injure the
action of his heart. Truly the fathers have
eaten sour grapes, therefore the children's
teeth are set on edge.
To understand the civilization of cities, we
must look at the rural population from which
they draw their life. We have recently had
our attention called to the last remnants of
that village life so reverently gathered up by
Miss Wilkins, and of which Miss Emily Dick-
inson was the last authentic voice. The spirit
of this age has examined with an almost
pathological interest this rescued society.
We must go to it if we would understand
Emerson, who is the blossoming of its culture.
We must study it if we would arrive at any
intelligent and general view of that mis-
cellaneous crop of individuals who have been
called the Transcendentalists.
Between 1830 and 1840 there were already
signs in New England that the nutritive and
reproductive forces of society were not quite
wholesome, not exactly well adjusted. Self-
repression was the religion which had been
inherited. "Distrust Nature" was the
motto written upon the front of the temple.
What would have happened to that society
if left to itself for another hundred years no
man can guess. It was rescued by the two
great regenerators of mankind, new land and
war. The dispersion came, as Emerson said
of the barbarian conquests of Rome, not a
day too soon. It happened that the country
at large stood in need of New England as
much as New England stood in need of the
country. This congested virtue, in order to
be saved, must be scattered. This ferment,
in order to be kept wholesome, must be used
as leaven to leaven the whole lump. "As
you know," says Emerson in his Eulogy on
Boston, "New England supplies annually
a large detachment of preachers and school-
masters and private tutors to the interior
of the South and West. . . . We are willing
to see our sons emigrate, as to see our hives
EMERSON
439
swarm. That is what they were made to do,
and what the land wants and invites/*
I For purposes of yeast, there was never such
leaven as the Puritan stock. How little the
natural force of the race had really abated
became apparent when it was placed under
healthy conditions, given land to till, foes to
fight, the chance to renew its youth like the
eagle. But during this period the relief had
not yet come. The terrible pressure of Puri-
tanism and conservatism in New England
was causing a revolt not only of the Aboli-
tionists, but of another class of people of a
type not so virile as they. The times have
been smartly described by Lowell in his essay
on Thoreau:
"Every possible form of intellectual and
physical dyspepsia brought forth its gospel.
Bran had its prophets. . . . Everybody had
a Mission (with a capital M) to attend to
everybody else's business. No brain but had
its private maggot, which must have found
pitiably short commons sometimes. Not a
few impecunious zealots abjured the use of
money (unless earned by other people), pro-
fessing to live on the internal revenues of the
spirit. Some had an assurance of instant
millennium so soon as hooks and eyes should
be substituted for buttons. Communities
were established where everything was to be
common but common sense. . . . Conven-
tions were held for every hitherto inconceiv-
able purpose."
Whatever may be said of the Transcenden-
talists, it must not be forgotten that they
represented an elevation of feeling, which
through them qualified the next generation,
and can be traced in the life of New England
to-day. The strong intrinsic character
lodged in these recusants was later made
manifest; for many of them became the best
citizens of the commonwealth, — statesmen,
merchants, soldiers, men and women of
affairs. They retained their idealism while
becoming practical men. There is hardly
an example of what we should have thought
would be common in their later lives, namely,
a reaction from so much ideal effort, and a
plunge into cynicism and malice, scoundrel-
ism and the flesh-pots. In their early life
they resembled the Abolitionists in their
devotion to an idea; but with the Transcen-
dentalists self-culture and the aesthetic and
sentimental education took the place of more
public aims. They seem also to have been
persons of greater social refinement than the
Abolitionists,
The Franscendentalists were sure of only
one thing, — that society as constituted was
all wrong. In this their main belief they
were right. They were men and women
whose fundamental need was activity, con-
tact with real life, and the opportunity for
social expansion; and they keenly felt the
chill and fictitious character of the reigning
conventionalities. The rigidity of behavior
which at this time characterized the Bos-
tonians seemed sometimes ludicrous and
sometimes disagreeable to the foreign visitor.
There was great gravity, together with a
certain pomp and dumbness, and these things
were supposed to be natural to the inhabi-
tants and to give them joy. People are apt
to forget that such masks are never worn
with ease. They result from the application
of an inflexible will, and always inflict dis-
comfort. The Transcendentalisrs found
themselves all but stifled in a society as arti-
ficial in its decorum as the court of France
during the last years of Louis XIV.
Emerson was in no way responsible for the
movement, although he got the credit of hav-
ing evoked it by his teaching. He was elder
brother to it, and was generated by its pa-
rental forces; but even if Emerson had never
lived, the Transcendentalists would have ap-
peared. He was their victim rather than
their cause. He was always tolerant of them
and sometimes amused at them, and dis-
posed to treat them lightly. It is impossible
to analyze their case with more astutenes
than he did in an editorial letter in The Dial.
The letter is cold, but is a masterpiece of
good sense. He had, he says, received fifteen
letters on the Prospects of Culture. " Excel-
lent reasons have been shown us why the
writers, obviously persons of sincerity and
elegance, should be dissatisfied with the life
they lead, and with their company. . . .
They want a friend to whom they can speak
and from whom they may hear now and then
a reasonable word." After discussing one
or two of their proposals, — one of which was
that the tiresome *' uncles and aunts** of the
enthusiasts should be placed by themselves
in one delightful village, the dough, as
Emerson says, be placed in one pan and the
leaven in another3 — he continues: "Biit it
440
JOHN JAY CHAPMAN
would he unjust not to remind our younger
friends that whilst this aspiration has always
ninde its mark in the lives of men of thought,
ir vigorous individuals it does not remam a
detached object, but is satisfied along with
the satisfaction of other aims." ^'oung
Americans "are educated above the work of
their times and country, and disdain it.
Many of the more acute minds pass into a
lofty criticism . . . which only embitters
their sensibility to the evil, and widens the
feeling of hostility between them and the
citizens at large. . . . We should not know
where to find in literature any record of so
much unbalanced intellectuality, such un-
deniable apprehension without talent, so
much power without equal applicability, as
our young men pretend to. . . . The balance
of mind and body will redress itself fast
enough. Superficialness is the real distem-
per. ... It is certain that speculation is no
succedaneum for life." He then turns to
find the cure for these distempers in the
farm lands of Illinois, at that time already
being fenced in "almost like New England
itself," and closes with a suggestion that so
long as there is a woodpile in the yard, and
the "wrongs of the Indian, of the Negro, of
the emigrant, remain unmitigated," relief
might be found even nearer home.
In his lecture on the Transcendentalists he
says: ". . . But their solitary and fastidious
manners not only withdraw them from the
conversation, but from the labors of the
world: they are not good citizens, not good
members of society; unwillingly they bear
their part of the public and private burdens;
they do not willingly share in the public
charities, in the public religious rites, in the
enterprises of education, of missions foreign
and domestic, in the abolition of the slave-
trade, or in the temperance society. They
do not even like to vote." A less sympa-
thetic observer, Harriet Martineau, wrote
of them: "While Margaret Fuller and her
adult pupils sat 'gorgeously dressed,' talking
about Mars and Venus, Plato and Goethe,
and fancying themselves the elect of the
earth in intellect and refinement, the liberties
of the republic were running out as fast as
they could go at a breach which another sort
of elect persons were devoting themselves to
repair; and my complaint against the
'gorgeous' pedants was that they regarded
their preservers as hewers of wood and
drawers of water, and their work as a less
vital one than the pedantic orations which
were spoiling a set of well-meaning women
in a pitiable way." Harriet Martineau,
whose whole work was practical, and who
wrote her journal in 1855 and in the light of
history, was hardly able to do justice to
these unpractical but sincere spirits.
Emerson was divided from the Transcen-
dentalists by his common sense. His shrewd
business intellect made short work of their
schemes. Each one of their social projects
contained some covert economic weakness,
which always turned out to lie in an attack
upon the integrity of the individual, and
which Emerson of all men could be counted
on to detect. He was divided from them also
by the fact that he was a man of genius, who
had sought out and fought out his means of
expression. He was a great artist, and as
such he was a complete being. No one could
give to him nor take from him. His yearn-
ings found fruition in expression. He was
sure of his place and of his use in this world.
But the Transcendentalists were neither
geniuses nor artists nor complete beings.
Nor had they found their places or uses as
yet. They were men and women seeking
light. They walked in dry places, seeking
rest and finding none. The Transcenden-
talists are not collectively important because
their Sturm und Drang was intellectual and
bloodless. Though Emerson admonish and
Harriet Martineau condemn, yet from the
memorials that survive, one is more im-
pressed with the suflFerings than with the
ludicrousness of these persons. There is
something distressing about their letters,
their talk, their memoirs, their interminable
diaries. They worry and contort and intro-
spect. They rave and dream. They peep
and theorize. They cut open the bellows of
life to see where the wind comes from.
Margaret Fuller analyzes Emerson, and
Emerson Margaret Fuller. It is not a whole-
some ebullition of vitality. It is a night-
mare, in which the emotions, the terror,
the agony, the rapture, are all unreal, and
have no vital content, no consequence in the
world outside. It is positively wonderful
that so much excitement and so much suffer-
ing should have left behind nothing in the
field of art which is valuable. All that intel-
EMERSON
441
licence could do toward solvina: problems for
his friends Emerson did. But there are situ-
ations in life in which the intelligence is help-
less, and in which something else, something
perhaps possessed by a ploughboy, is more
divine than Plato.
If it were not pathetic, there would be
something cruel — indeed there is somethmg
cruel — m Emerson's incapacity to deal with
Margaret Fuller. He wrote to her on Octo-
ber 24, 1840: "My dear Margaret, I have
your frank and noble and affecting letter,
and yet I think I could wish it unwritten. I
ought never to have suffered you to lead me
into any conversation or writing on our
relation, a topic from which with all persons
my Genius warns me away."
The letter proceeds with unimpeachable
emptiness and integrity in the same strain.
In 1841 he writes in his diary: "Strange,
cold-warm, attractive-repelling conversation
with Margaret, whom I always admire, most
revere when I nearest see, and sometimes
love; yet whom I freeze and who freezes
me to silence when we promise to come
nearest.*'
Human sentiment was known to Emerson
mainly in the form of pain. His nature
shunned it; he cast it off as quickly as pos-
sible. There is a word or two in the essay on
Love which seems to show that the inner and
diaphanous core of this seraph had once, but
not for long, been shot with blood: he recalls
only the pain of it. His relations with Mar-
garet Fuller seem never normal, though they
lasted for years. This brilliant woman was in
distress. She was asking for bread, and he
was giving her a stone, and neither of them
was conscious of what was passing. This is
pitiful. It makes us clutch about us to catch
hold, if we somehow may, of the hand of a
man.
There was manliness in Horace Greeley,
under whom Miss Fuller worked on the New
York Tribune not many years afterward. She
wrote: "Mr. Greeley I like, — nay, more,
love. He is in his habit a plebeian, in his
heart a nobleman. His abilities in his own
way are great. He believes in mine to a sur-
prising degree. We are true friends."
This anaemic incompleteness of Emerson's
character can be traced to the philosophy of
his race; at least it can be followed in that
philosophy. There is an implication of a
fundamental falsehood in every bit of Tran-
scendentalism, including Emerson. That
falsehood consists in the theory of the self-
sufficiency of each individual, men and
women alike. Margaret Fuller is a good ex-
ample of the effect of this philosophy, be-
cause her history afterward showed that she
was constituted like other human beings,
was dependent upon human relationship,
and was not only a very noble, but also a
very womanly creature. Her marriage, her
Italian life, and her tragic death light up
with the splendor of reality the earlier and
unhappy period of her life. This woman had
been driven into her vagaries by the lack of
something which she did not know existed,
and which she sought blindly in metaphysics.
Harriet Martineau writes of her: "It is the
most grievous loss I have almost ever known
in private history, the deferring of Margaret
Fuller's married life so long. That noble
last period of her life is happily on record as
well as the earlier." The hardy English-
woman has here laid a kind human hand on
the weakness of New England, and seems
to be unconscious that she is making a reve-
lation as to the whole Transcendental
movement. But the point is this: there was
no one within reach of Margaret Fuller, in
her early days, w^ho knew what was her need.
One offered her Kant, one Comte, one
Fourier, one Swedenborg, one the Moral
Law. You cannot feed the heart on these
things.
Yet there is a bright side to this New Eng-
land spirit, which seems, if we look only to
the graver emotions, so dry, dismal, and de-
ficient. A bright and cheery courage appears
in certain natures of which the sun has made
conquest, that almost reconciles us to all loss,
so splendid is the outcome. The practical,
dominant, insuppressible active tempera-
ments who have a word for every emergency,
and who carry the controlled force often men
at their disposal, are the fruits of this same
spirit. Emerson knew not tears, but he and
the hundred other beaming and competent
characters which New England has produced
make us almost envy their state. They give
us again the old Stoics at their best.
Very closely connected with this subject — •
the crisp and cheery New England tempera-
ment— lies another which any discussion of
Emerson must bring up, — namely, Asceti-
44^
JOHN JAY CHAPMAN
cism. It is proliablc that in dealing with
KnuTson's fcehn^s about the plastic arts we
ha\e to ilo with what is really the inside, or
nuta physical side, of the same phenomena
which present themselves on the outside, or
physical side, in the shape of asceticism.
Emerson's natural asceticism is revealed to
us in almost every form in which history can
record a man. It is in his philosophy, in his
style, in his conduct, and in his appearance.
It was, however, not in his voice. Mr. Cabot,
with that reverence for which every one must
feel personally grateful to him, has preserved
a description of Emerson by the New York
journalist, N. P. Willis: "It is a voice with
shoulders in it, which he has not; with lungs
in it far Iari;er than his; with a walk which
the public never see; with a fist in it which
his own hand never gave him the model
for; and with a gentleman in it which his
parochial and ' bare-necessaries-of-life' sort of
exterior gives no other betrayal of. We can
imagine nothing in nature (which seems too
to have a type for everything) like the want
of correspondence between the Emerson that
goes in at the eye and the Emerson that goes
m at the ear. A heavy and vase-like blossom
of a magnolia, with fragrance enough to
perfume a whole wilderness, which should be
lifted by a whirlwind and dropped into a
branch of aspen, would not seem more as if
it could never have grown there than Emer-
son's voice seems inspired and foreign to his
visible and natural body." Emerson's ever
exquisite and wonderful good taste seems
closely connected with this asceticism, and
it is probable that his taste influenced his
views and conduct to some small extent.
The anti-slavery people were not always
refined. They were constantly doing things
which were tactically very effective, but were
not calculated to attract the over-sensitive.
Garrison's rampant and impersonal egotism
was good politics, but bad taste. Wendell
Phillips did not hesitate upon occasion to
deal in personalities of an exasperating kind.
One sees a certain shrinking in Emerson from
the taste of the Abolitionists. It was not
merely their doctrines or their methods which
offended him. He at one time refused to
give Wendell Phillips his hand because of
Phillips's treatment of his friend. Judge Hoar.
One hardly knows whether to be pleased at
Emerson for showing a human weakness, or
annoyed at him for not being more of a man.
The anecdote is valuable in both lights. It is
like a tiny speck on the crystal of his charac-
ter which shows us the exact location of the
orb, and it is the best illustration of the
feeling of the times which has come down
to us.
If by "asceticism" we mean an experiment
in starving the senses, there is little harm in
it. Nature will soon reassert her dominion,
and very likely our perceptions will, be sharp-
ened by the trial. But "natural asceticism"
is a thing hardly to be distinguished from
functional weakness. What is natural asceti-
cism but a lack of vigor.? Does it not tend
to close the avenues between the soul and the
universe.? "Is it not so much death.?" The
accounts of Emerson show him to have been
a man in whom there was almost a hiatus
between the senses and the most inward
spirit of life. The lower register of sensations
and emotions which domesticate a man into
fellowship with common life was weak.
Genial familiarity was to him impossible;
laughter was almost a pain. "It is not the
sea and poverty and pursuit that separate
us. Here is Alcott by my door, — yet is the
union more profound? No! the sea, vocation,
poverty, are seeming fences, but man is
insular and cannot be touched. Every man
is an infinitely repellent orb, and holds his
individual being on that condition. . . .
Most of the persons whom I see in my own
house I see across a gulf; I cannot go to them
nor they come to me."
This aloofness of Emerson must be remem-
bered only as blended with his benignity.
"His friends were all that knew him," and, as
Dr. Holmes said, "his smile was the well-
remembered line of Terence written out in
living features." Emerson's journals show
the difficulty of his intercourse even with
himself. He could not reach himself at will,
nor could another reach him. The sensuous
and ready contact with nature which more
carnal people enjoy was unknown to him.
He had eyes for the New England landscape,
but for no other scenery. If there is one
supreme sensation reserved for man, it is the
vision of Venice seen from the water. This
sight greeted Emerson at the age of thirty.
The famous city, as he approached it by boat,
"looked for some time like nothing but New
York. It is a great oddity, a city for beavers.
EMERSON
4t3
but to my thought a most disagreeable resi-
dence. You feel always in prison and soli-
tary. It is as if you were always at sea. I
soon had enough of it."
Emerson's contempt for travel and for the
** rococo toy," Italy, is too well known to
need citation. It proceeds from the same
deficiency of sensation. His eyes saw noth-
ing; his ears heard nothing. He believed
that men traveled for distraction and to kill
time. The most vulgar plutocrat could not
be blinder to beauty nor bring home less from
Athens than this cultivated saint. Every-
thing in the world which must be felt with a
glow in the breast, in order to be understood,
was to him dead-letter. Art was a name to
him; music was a name to him; love was a
name to him. His essay on Love is a nice
compilation of compliments and elegant
phrases ending up with some icy morality. It
seems very well fitted for a gift-book or an
old-fashioned lady's annual.
*'The lovers delight in endearments, in
avowals of love, in comparisons of their re-
gards. . . . The soul which is in the soul of
each, craving a perfect beatitude, detects
incongruities, defects, and disproportion in
the behavior of the other. Hence arise
surprise, expostulation, and pain. Yet that
which drew them to each other was signs of
loveliness, signs of virtue; and these virtues
are there, however eclipsed. They appear
and reappear and continue to attract; but
the regard changes, quits the sign and at-
taches to the substance. This repairs the
wounded affection. Meantime, as life wears
on, it proves a game of permutation and com-
bination of all possible positions of the par-
ties, to employ all the resources of each, and
acquaint each with the weakness of the
other. ... At last they discover that all
which at first drew them together — those
once sacred features, that magical play of
charms — was deciduous, had a prospective
end like the scaffolding by which the house
was built, and the purification of the intellect
and the heart from year to year is the real
marriage, foreseen and prepared from the
first, and wholly above their conscious-
ness. . . . Thus are we put in training for a
love which knows not sex nor person nor
partiality, but which seeks wisdom and
virtue everywhere, to the end of increasing
virtue and wisdom. . . . There are moments
when the affections rule and absorb the man,
and make his happiness dependent on a
person or persons. But in health the mind
is presently seen again," etc.
All this is not love, but the merest literary
coquetry. Love is different from this. Lady
Burton, when a very young girl, and six
years before her engagement, met Burton at
Boulogne. They met in the street, but did
not speak. A few days later they were for-
mally introduced at a dance. Of this she
writes: "That was a night of nights. He
waltzed with me once, and spoke to me
several times. I kept the sash where he put
his arm around me and my gloves, and never
wore them again."
A glance at what Emerson says about
marriage shows that he suspected that insti-
tution. He can hardly speak of it without
some sort of caveat or precaution. "Though
the stuff of tragedy and of romances is in a
moral union of two superior persons whose
confidence in each other for long years, out
of sight and in sight, and against all appear-
ances, is at last justified by victorious proof
of probity to gods and men, causing joyful
emotions, tears, and glory, — though there be
for heroes this moral unioUy yet they too are
as far as ever from an intellectual union,
and the moral is for low and external pur-
poses, like the corporation of a ship's com-
pany or of a fire club.'* In speaking of
modern novels, he says: "There is no new
element, no power, no furtherance. *Tis
only confectionery, not the raising of new
corn. Great is the poverty of their inven-
tions. She was beautiful^ and he fell in love.
. . . Happy will that house be in which the
relations are formed by character; after the
highest and not after the lowest; the house
in which character marries and not confusion
and a miscellany of unavowable motives.
. . . To each occurs soon after puberty,
some event, or society or way of living, which
becomes the crisis of life and the chief fact in
their history. In women it is love and mar-
riage (which is more reasonable), and yet it is
pitiful to date and measure all the facts and
sequel of an unfolding life from such a youth-
ful and generally inconsiderate period as the
age of courtship and marriage. . . . Women
more than all are the element and kingdom
of illusion. Being fascinated they fascinate.
They see through Claude Lorraines. And
444
JOHN J\^' CHAPMAN
how claro any (^ne, if he could, phick away
thf couhsses, stape fffVcts and ceremonies hy
which they hve? Too pathetic, too pitiable,
is the region of affection, and its atmosphere
always liable to mirao;e."
We are all so concerned that a man who
writes about love shall tell the truth that if he
chance to start from premises which are false
or mistaken, his conclusions will appear not
merely false, but offensive. It makes no
matter how exalted the personal character of
the writer may be. Neither sanctity nor
intellect nor moral enthusiasm, though they
be intensified to the point of incandescence,
can make up for a want of nature.
This perpetual splitting up of love into two
species, one of which is condemned, but
admitted to be useful — is it not degrading?
There is in Emerson's theory of the relation
between the sexes neither good sense, nor
manly feeling, nor sound psychology. It is
founded on none of these things. It is a pure
piece of dogmatism, and reminds us that he
was bred to the priesthood. We are not to
imagine that there was in this doctrine any-
thing peculiar to Emerson. But we are sur-
prised to find the pessimism inherent in the
doctrine overcome Emerson, to whom pessi-
mism is foreign. Both doctrine and pessi-
mism are a part of the Puritanism of the
times. They show a society in which the in-
tellect had long been used to analyze the
affections, in which the head had become dis-
located from the body. To this disintegra-
tion of the simple passion of love may be
traced the lack of maternal tenderness
characteristic of the New England nature.
The relation betw^een the blood and the brain
was not quite normal in this civilization, nor
in Emerson, who is its most remarkable
representative.
If we take two steps backward from the
canvas of this mortal life and glance at it im-
partially, we shall see that these matters of
love and marriage pass like a pivot through
the lives of almost every individual, and are,
sociologically speaking, the primum mobile of
the world. The books of any philosopher
who slurs them or distorts them will hold up
a false mirror to life. If an inhabitant of
another planet should visit the earth, he
would receive, on the whole, a truer notion
of human life by attending an Italian opera
than he would by reading Emerson's
volumes. He would learn from the Italian
opera that there were two sexes; and this,
after all, is probably the fact with which
the education of such a stranger ought to
begm.
In a review of Emerson's personal charac-
ter and opinions, we are thus led to see that
his philosophy, which finds no room for the
emotions, is a faithful exponent of his own
and of the New England temperament,
which distrusts and dreads the emotions.
Regarded as a sole guide to life for a young
person of strong conscience and undeveloped
affections, his works might conceivably be
even harmful because of their unexampled
power of purely intellectual stimulation.
Emerson's poetry has giv^en rise to much
heart-burning and disagreement. Some peo-
ple do not like it. They fail to find the fire
in the ice. On the other hand, his poems
appeal not only to a large number of pro-
fessed lovers of poetry, but also to a class of
readers who find in Emerson an element for
which they search the rest of poesy in vain.
It is the irony of fate that his admirers
should be more than usually sensitive about
his fame. This prophet who desired not to
have followers, lest he too should become a
cult and a convention, and whose main thesis
throughout life was that piety is a crime, has
been calmly canonized and embalmed in am-
ber by the very forces he braved. He is
become a tradition and a sacred relic. You
must speak of him under your breath, and
you may not laugh near his shrine.
Emerson's passion for nature was not like
the passion of Keats or of Burns, of Coleridge
or of Robert Browning; compared with these
men he is cold. His temperature is below
blood-heat, and his volume of poems stands
on the shelf of English poets like the icy fish
which in Caliban upon Setebos is described as
finding himself thrust into the warm ooze of
an ocean not his own.
But Emerson is a poet, nevertheless, a very
extraordinary and rare man of genius, whose
verses carry a world of their own within
them. They are overshadowed by the great-
ness of his prose, but they are authentic. He
is the chief poet of that school of which
Emily Dickinson is a minor poet. His poetry
is a successful spiritual deliverance of great
interest. His worship of the New England
EMERSON
445
landscape amounts to a relijrion. His poems
do that most wonderful thing, make us feel
that we are alone in the fields and with the
trees, — not English fields nor French lanes,
but New England meadows and uplands.
There is no human creature in sight, not
even Emerson is there, but the wind and the
flowers, the wild birds, the fences, the tran-
sparent atmosphere, the breath of nature.
There is a deep and true relation between the
intellectual and almost dry brilliancy of
Emerson's feelings and the landscape itself.
Here is no defective English poet, no
Shelley without the charm, but an American
poet, a New England poet with two hundred
years of New England culture and New Eng-
land landscape in him.
People are forever speculating upon what
will last, what posterity will approve, and
some people believe that Emerson's poetry
will outlive his prose. The question is idle.
The poems are alive now, and they may or
may not survive the race whose spirit they
embody; but one thing is plain: they have
qualities which have preserved poetry in the
past. They are utterly indigenous and sin-
cere. They are short. They represent a
civilization and a climate.
His verse divides itself into several classes.
We have the single lyrics, written somewhat
in the style of the later seventeenth century.
Of these The Humble Bee is the most ex-
quisite, and although its tone and imagery
can be traced to various well-know^n and
dainty bits of poetry, it is by no means an
imitation, but a masterpiece of fine taste.
The Rhodora and Terminus and perhaps a
few others belong to that class of poetry
which, like Abo^l Ben Jdhem, is poetry be-
cause it is the perfection of statement. The
Boston Hymn, the Concord Ode, and the
other occasional pieces fall in another class,
and do not seem to be important. The first
two lines of the Ode,
O tenderly the haughty day
Fills his blue urn with fire,
are for their extraordinary beauty worthy of
some mythical Greek, some Simonides, some
Sappho, but the rest of the lines are com-
monplace. Throughout his poems there are
good bits, happy and golden lines, snatches
of grace. He himself knew the quality of his
poetry, and wrote of it.
All were sifted through and through, ,
Five lines lasted sound and true.
He is never merely conventional, and his
poetry, like his prose, is homespun and sound.
But his ear was defective: his rhymes are
crude, and his verse is often lame and un-
musical, a fault which can be countervailed
by nothing but force, and force he lacks. To
say that his ear was defective is hardly strong
enough. Passages are not uncommon which
hurt the reader and unfit him to proceed; as,
for example:
Thorough a thousand voices
Spoke the universal dame:
"Who telleth one of my meanings
Is master of all I am."
He himself has very well described the im-
pression his verse is apt to make on a new
reader when he says,
Poetry must not freeze, but flow.
The lovers of Emerson's poems freely
acknowledge all these defects, but find in
them another element, very subtle and rare,
very refined and elusive, if not altogether
unique. This is the mystical element or strain
which qualifies many of his poems, and to
which some of them are wholly devoted.
There has been so much discussion as to
Emerson's relation to the mystics that it is
well here to turn aside for a moment and
consider the matter by itself. The elusive-
ness of ** mysticism" arises out of the fact
that it is not a creed, but a state of mind. It
is formulated into no dogmas, but, in so far
as it is communicable, it is conveyed, or
sought to be conveyed, by symbols. These
symbols to a skeptical or an unsympathetic
person will say nothing, but the presumption
among those who are inclined toward the
cult is that if these symbols convey anything
at all, that thing is mysticism. The mystics
are right. The familiar phrases, terms, and
symbols of mysticism are not meaningless,
and a glance at them shows that they do tend
to express and evoke a somewhat definite
psychic condition.
There is a certain mood of mind experi-
enced by most of us in which we feel the
mystery of existence; in which our conscious-
ness seems to become suddenly separated
from our thoughts, and we find ourselves
asking, "Who am I.'' What are these
446
JOHN J\^■ CHAPMAN
tlmiiuhts:" riic inooil is very apt to over-
take us while en^a^ed in the commonest acts.
In health it is always momentary, and seems
to coincide with the instant of the transition
and shift of our attention from one tliina; to
another. It is probably connected with the
transfer of energy from one set of faculties to
another set, which occurs, for instance, on
our waking from sleep, on our hearing a bell
at night, on our observing any common ob-
ject, a chair or a pitcher, at a time when our
mind is or has just been thoroughly pre-
otcupied with something else. This dis-
placement of the attention occurs in its most
notable form when we walk from the study
into the open fields. Nature then attacks us
on all sides at once, overwhelms, drowns, and
destroys our old thoughts, stimulates vaguely
and all at once a thousand new ideas, dissi-
pates all focus of thought and dissolves our
attention. If we happen to be mentally
fatigued, and we take a walk in the countr}^
a sense of immense relief, of rest and joy,
which nothing else on earth can give, accom-
panies this distraction of the mind from its
problems. The reaction fills us with a sense
of mystery and expansion. It brings us to
the threshold of those spiritual experiences
which are the obscure core and reality of our
existence, ever alive within us, but generally
veiled and sub-conscious. It brings us, as it
were, into the ante-chamber of art, poetry,
and music. The condition is one of excita-
tion and receptiveness, where art may speak
and we shall understand. On the other hand,
the condition shows a certain dethronement
of the will and attention which may ally it to
the hypnotic state.
Certain kinds of poetry imitate this
method of nature by calling on us with a
thousand voices at once. Poetry deals often
with vague or contradictory statements,
with a jumble of images, a throng of im-
pressions. But in true poetry the psychology
of real life is closely followed. The mysti-
cism is momentary. We are not kept sus-
pended in a limbo, "trembling like a guilty
thing surprised," but are ushered into
another world of thought and feeling. On
the other hand, a mere statement of incon-
ceivable things is the reductio ad absurdum of
poetry, because such a statement puzzles the
mind, scatters the attention, and does to a
certain extent superinduce the "blank mis-
givings" of mysticism. It does this, how-
ever, zuithout going further and filling the
mmd with new life. If I bid a man follow
my reasoning closely, and then say, " I am
the slayer and the slain, I am the doubter
and the doubt," I puzzle his mind, and may
succeed in reawakening in him the sense he
has often had come over him that we are
ignorant of our own destinies and cannot
grasp the meaning of life. If I do this, noth-
ing can be a more legitimate opening for a
poem, for it is an opening of the reader's
mind. Emerson, like many other highly or-
ganized persons, was acquainted with the
mystic mood. It was not momentary with
him. It haunted him, and he seems to have
believed that the w-hole of poetry and religion
was contained in the mood. And no one can
gainsay that this mental condition is inti-
mately connected with our highest feelings
and leads directly into them.
The fault with Emerson is that he stops in
the ante-chamber of poetry. He is content
if he has brought us to the hypnotic point.
His prologue and overture are excellent, but
where is the argument .f* Where is the sub-
stantial artistic content that shall feed our
sou Is .^
The Sphinx is a fair example of an Emer-
son poem. The opening verses are musical,
though they are handicapped by a reminis-
cence of the German way of writing. In the
succeeding verses we are lapped into a charm-
ing reverie, and then at the end suddenly
jolted by the question, "What is it all
about .^" In this poem we see expanded
into four or five pages of verse an experience
which in real life endures an eighth of a sec-
ond, and when we come to the end of the
mood we are at the end of the poem.
There is no question that the power to
thrown your sitter into a receptive mood by a
pass or two which shall give you his virgin
attention is necessary to any artist. Nobody
has the knack of this more strongly than
Emerson in his prose writings. By a phrase
or a common remark he creates an ideal at-
mosphere in which his thought has the direct-
ness of great poetry. But he cannot do it
m verse. He seeks in his verse to do the
very thing which he avoids doing in his prose:
follow a logical method. He seems to know
too much what he is about, and to be content
with doing too little. His mystical poems,
EMERSON
447
from the point of view of such criticism as
this, are all alike in that they all seek to do
the same thing. Nor does he always succeed.
How does he sometimes fail in verse to say
what he conveys with such everlasting happi-
ness m prose
I am owner of the sphere,
Of the seven stars and the solar year,
Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain,
Of Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's strain.
In these lines we have the same thought
which appears a few pages later in prose:
"All that Shakespeare says of the king,
yonder slip of a boy that reads in the
corner feels to be true of himself." He has
failed in the verse because he has thrown a
mystical gloss over a thought which was
stronger in its simplicity; because in the
verse he states an abstraction instead of giv-
ing an instance. The same failure follows
him sometimes in prose when he is too con-
scious of his machinery.
Emerson knew that the sense of mystery
accompanies the shift of an absorbed atten-
tion to some object which brings the mind
back to the present. "There are times when
the cawing of a crow, a weed, a snowflake, a
boy's willow whistle, or a farmer planting in
his field is more suggestive to the mind than
the Yosemite gorge or the Vatican would be
in another hour. In like mood, an old verse,
or certain words, gleam with rare signifi-
cance." At the close of his essay on History
he is trying to make us feel that all history,
in so far as we can know it, is within our-
selves, and is in a certain sense autobio-
graphy. He is speaking of the Romans, and
he suddenly pretends to see a lizard on the
wall, and proceeds to wonder what the lizard
has to do with the Romans. For this he has
been quite properly laughed at by Dr.
Holmes, because he has resorted to an arti-
fice and has failed to create an illusion. In-
deed, Dr. Holmes is somewhere so irreverent
as to remark that a gill of alcohol will bring
on a psychical state very similar to that sug-
gested by Emerson; and Dr. Holmes is
accurately happy in his jest, because alcohol
does dislocate the attention in a thoroughly
mystical manner.
There is throughout Emerson's poetry, as
throughout all of the New England poetry,
too much thought, too much argument.
Some of his verse gives the reader a very
curious and subtle impression that the lines
are a translation. This is because he is
closely following a thesis. Indeed, the lines
are a translation. They were thought first,
and poetry afterwards. Read off his poetry,
and you see through the scheme of it at once.
Read his prose, and you will be put to it to
make out the connection of ideas. The
reason is that in the poetry the sequence is
intellectual, in the prose the sequence is emo-
tional. It is no mere epigram to saythat his
poetry is governed by the ordinary laws of
prose writing, and his prose by the laws of
poetry.
The lines entitled Days have a dramatic
vigor, a mystery, and a music all their own:
Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them
all.
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late.
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.
The prose version of these Knes, which in
this case is inferior, is to be found in JVorks
and Days: "He only is rich who owns the
day. . . . They come and go like muffled
and veiled figures, sent from a distant
friendly party; but they say nothing, and
if we do not use the gifts they bring, they
carry them as silently away."
That Emerson had within him the soul of
a poet no one will question, but his poems
are expressed in prose forms. There are
passages in his early addresses which can be
matched in English only by bits from Sir
Thomas Browne or Milton, or from the great
poets. Heine might have written the follow-
ing parable into verse, but it could not have
been finer. It comes from the very bottom
of Emerson's nature. It is his uttermost.
Infancy and manhood and old age, the first
and the last of him, speak in it.
"Every god is there sitting in his sphere.
The young mortal enters the hall of the
firmament; there is he alone with them alone,
they pouring on him benedictions and gifts,
and beckoning him up to their thrones. On
44
S
JOHN JAY CHAPMAN
the instant, and incessantly, fall snowstorms
of illusions. He fancies himself in a vast
crowd which sways this way and that, and
whose movements and doings he must obey;
he fancies himself poor, orphaned, insignifi-
cant. The mad crowd drives hither and
thither, now furiously commandmg this
thing to be done, now that. What is he that
he should resist their will, and think or act
for himself? Every moment new changes
and new showers of deceptions to baffle and
distract him. And when, by and by, for an
instant, the air clears and the cloud lifts a
little, there are the gods still sitting around
him on their thrones, — they alone with him
I "
alone.
With the war closes the colonial period of
our history, and with the end of the war
begins our national life. Before that time it
was not possible for any man to speak for the
nation, however much he might long to, for
there was no nation; there were only discord-
ant provinces held together by the exercise
on the part of each of a strong and conscien-
tious will. It is too much to expect that
national character shall be expressed before
it is developed, or that the arts shall flourish
during a period when everybody is preoccu-
pied with the fear of revolution. The provin-
cial note which runs through all our literature
down to the war resulted in one sense from
our dependence upon Europe. "All Ameri-
can manners, language, and writings," says
Emerson, "are derivative. We do not write
from facts, but we wish to state the facts after
'.he English manner. It is the tax we pay for
the splendid inheritance of English Litera-
ture." But in a deeper sense this very
dependence upon Europe was due to our dis-
union among ourselves. The equivocal and
unhappy self-assertive patriotism to which
we were consigned by fate, and which made
us perceive and resent the condescension of
foreigners, was the logical outcome of our
political situation.
The literature of the Northern States be-
fore the war, although full of talent, lacks
body, lacks courage. It has not a full na-
tional tone. The South is not in it. New
England's share in this literature is so large
that small injustice will be done if we give
her credit for all of it. She was the Academy
of the land, and ^»ei scholars were our
authors. The country at large has some-
times been annoyed at the self-conscious-
ness of New England, at the atmosphere of
clique, of mutual admiration, ' of isolation,
in which all her scholars, except Emerson,
have lived, and which notably enveloped the
last little distinguished group of them. The
circumstances which led to the isolation of
Lowell, Holmes, Longfellow, and the Satur-
day Club fraternity are instructive. The
ravages of the war carried off the poets,
scholars, and philosophers of the generation
which immediately followed these men, and
by destroying their natural successors left
them standing magnified beyond their
natural size, like a grove of trees left by a fire.
The war did more than kill off^ a generation
of scholars who would have succeeded these
older scholars. It emptied the universities
by calling all the survivors into the field of
practical life; and after the war ensued a
period during which all the learning of the
land was lodged in the heads of these older
worthies who had made their mark long be-
fore. A certain complacency which piqued
the country at large was seen in these men.
An ante-bellum colonial posing, inevitable in
their own day, survived with them. W hen
Jared Sparks put Washington in the proper
attitude for greatness by correcting his spell-
ing, Sparks was in cue with the times. It
was thought that a great man must have his
hat handed to him by his biographer, and be
ushered on with decency toward posterity.
In the lives and letters of some of our re-
cent public men there has been a reminis-
cence of this posing, which we condemn as
absurd because we forget it is merely archaic.
Provincial manners are always a little formal,
and the pomposity of the colonial governor
was never quite worked out of our literary
men. ^
Let us not disparage the past. We are all
grateful for the New England culture, and
especially for the little group of men in Cam-
bridge and Boston who did their best accord-
ing to the light of their day. Their purpose
and taste did all that high ideals and good
taste can do, and no more eminent literati
have lived during this century. They gave
the country songs, narrative poems, odes,
epigrams, essays, novels. They chose their
models well, and drew their materials from
decent and likely sources. They lived stain-
EMERSON
449
less lives, and died in tlieir professors' chairs
honored by all men. For achievements of
this sort we need hardly use as strong lan-
guage as Emerson does in describing con-
temporary literature: "It exhibits a vast
carcass of tradition every year with as much
solemnity as a new revelation."
The mass and volume of literature must
always be traditional, and the secondary
wTiters of the world do nevertheless perform
a function of infinite consequence in the
spread of thought. A very large amount of
first-hand thinking is not comprehensible to
the average man until it has been distilled
and is fifty years old. The men who wel-
come new learning as it arrives are the
picked men, the minor poets of the next age.
To their own times these secondary men
often seem great because they are recognized
and understood at once. We know the dis-
advantage under which these Humanists of
ours worked. The shadow of the time in
which they wrote hangs over us still. The
conservatism and timidity of our politics
and of our literature to-day are due in part
to that fearful pressure which for sixty years
was never lifted from the souls of Americans.
That conservatism and timidity may be seen
in all our past. They are in the rhetoric of
Webster and in the style of Hawthorne.
They killed Poe. They created Bryant.
Since the close of our most blessed war,
we have been left to face the problems
of democracy, unhampered by the terrible
complications of sectional strife. It has
happened, however, that some of the ten-
dencies of our commercial civilization go
toward strengthening and riveting upon us
the very traits encouraged by provincial
disunion. Wendell Phillips, with a cool
grasp of understanding for which he is not
generally given credit, states the case as
follows :
"The general judgment is that the freest
possible government produces the freest pos-
sible men and women, the most individual,
the least servile to the judgment of others.
But a moment's reflection will show any man
that this is an unreasonable expectation, and
that, on the contrary, entire equality and
freedom in political forms almost invariably
tend to make the individual subside into the
mass and lose his identity in the general
whole. Suppose we stood in England to-
night. There is the nobility, and here is the
church. There is the trading class, and here
is the literary. A broad gulf separates the
four; and provided a member of either can
conciliate his own section, he can afford in a
very large measure to despise the opinions of
the other three. He has to some extent a
refuge and a breakwater against the tyranny
of what we call public opinion. But in a
country like ours, of absolute democratic
equality, public opinion is not only omnipo-
tent, it is omnipresent. There is no refuge
from its tyranny, there is no hiding from its
reach; and the result is that if you take the
old Greek lantern and go about to seek
among a hundred, you will find not one single
American who has not, or who does not
fancy at least that he has, something to gain
or lose in his ambition, his social life, or his
business, from the good opinion and the
votes of those around him. And the conse-
quence is that instead of being a mass of
individuals, each one fearlessly blurting out
his own convictions, as a nation, compared
to other nations, we are a mass of cowards.
More than all other people, we are afraid of
each other."
If we take a bird's-eye view of our history,
we shall find that this constant element of
democratic pressure has always been so
strong a factor in molding the character of
our citizens, that there is less difference than
we could wish to see between the types of
citizenship produced before the war and after
the war.
Charles FoUen, that excellent and worthy
German who came to this country while still
a young man and who lived in the midst of
the social and intellectual life of Boston, felt
the want of intellectual freedom in the people
about him. If one were obliged to describe
the America of to-day in a single sentence,
one could hardly do it better than by a sen-
tence from a letter of Follen to Harriet Mar-
tineau written in 1837, after the appearance
of one of her books: "You have pointed
out the two most striking national charac-
teristics, 'Deficiency of individual moral in-
dependence and extraordinary mutual re-
spect and kindness.'"
Much of what Emerson wrote about the
United States in 1850 is true of the United
States to-day. It would be hard to find a
civilized people who are more timid, more
450
JOHN JAY CHAPMAN
cowed in spirit, more illiberal, than we. It
is easy to-day for the educated man who
has read liryce and Tocqueville to account
for the mediocrity of American literature.
The merit of Emerson was that he felt the
atmospheric pressure without knowinp; its
reason. He felt he was a cabined, cribbed,
confined creature, although every man about
him was celebrating Liberty and Democracy,
and every day was FOurth of July. He taxes
language to its limits in order to express his
revolt. He says that no man should write
except what he has discovered in the process
of satisfying his own curiosity, and that every
man will write well in proportion as he has
contempt for the public.
Emerson seems really to have believed that
if any man would only resolutely be himself,
he would turn out to be as great as Shake-
speare. He will not have it that anything of
value can be monopolized. His review of the
world, whether under the title of Manners,
Self-Reliance, Fate, Experience, or what-not,
leads him to the same thought. His conclu-
sion is always the finding of eloquence,
courage, art, intellect, in the breast of the
humblest reader. He knows that we are full
of genius and surrounded by genius, and that
we have only to throw something off, not to
ac(juire any new thing, in order to be bards,
prophets, Napoleons, and Goethes. This
belief is the secret of his stimulating power.
It is this which gives his writings a radiance
like that which shone from his personality.
The deep truth shadowed forth by Emer-
son when he said that "all the American
geniuses lacked nerve and dagger" was illus-
trated by our best scholar. Lowell had the
soul of the Yankee, but in his habits of writ-
ing he continued English tradition. His
literary essays are full of charm. The Com-
memoration Ode is the high-water mark of
the attempt to do the impossible. It is a fine
thing, but It is imitative and secondary. It
has paid the inheritance tax. Twice, how-
ever, at a crisis of pressure, Lowell assumed
his real self under the guise of a pseudonym;
and with his own hand he rescued a language,
a type, a whole era of civilization from
oblivion. Here gleams the dagger and here
is Lowell revealed. His limitations as a poet,
his too much wit, his too much morality, his
mixture of shrewdness and religion, are seen
to be the very elements of power. The
novelty of the Biglozv Papers is as wonderful
as their world-old naturalness. They take
rank with greatness, and they were the
strongest political tracts of their time. They
imitate nothing; they are real.
Emerson himself was the only man of his
times who consistently and utterly expressed
himself, never measuring himself for a mo-
ment with the ideals of others, never
troubling himself for a moment with what
literature was or how literature should be
created. The other men of his epoch, and
among whom he lived, believed that litera-
ture was a very desirable article, a thing you
could create if you were only smart enough.
But Emerson had no literary ambition. He
cared nothing for belles-lettres. The conse-
quence is that he stands above his age like a
colossus. While he lived his figure could be
seen from Europe towering like Atlas over
the culture of the United States.
Great men are not always like wax which
their age imprints. They are often the mere
negation and opposite of their age. They
give it the lie. They become by revolt the
very essence of all the age is not, and that
part of the spirit which is suppressed in ten
thousand breasts gets lodged, isolated, and
breaks into utterance in one. Through
Emerson spoke the fractional spirits of a
multitude. He had not time, he had not
energy left over to understand himself; he
was a mouthpiece.
If a soul be taken and crushed by democ-
racy till it utter a cry, that cry will be Emer-
son. The region of thought he lived in, the
figures of speech he uses, are of an intellectual
plane so high that the circumstances which
produced them may be forgotten; they arc
indiflferent. The Consitution, Slavery, the
War itself, are seen as mere circumstances.
They did not confuse him while he lived;
they are not necessary to support his work
now that it is finished. Hence comes it that
Emerson is one of the world's voices. He
was heard afar off. His foreign influence
might deserve a chapter by itself. Conser-
vatism is not confined to this country. It is
the very basis of all government. The bolts
Emerson forged, his thought, his wit, his per-
ception, are not provincial. They were found
to carry inspiration to England and Ger-
many. Many of the important men of the
last half-century owe him a debt. It is not
EMERSON
451
yet possible to give any account of his influ-
ence abroad, because the memoirs which will
show it are only beginning to be published.
We shall have them in due time; for Emer-
son was an outcome of the world's progress.
His appearance marks the turning-point in
the history of that enthusiasm for pure
democracy which has tin:!;ed the political
thought of the world for the past one hun-
dred and fifty years. The youths of England
and Germany may have been surprised at
hearing from America a piercing voice of
protest against the very influences which
were crushing them at home. They could
not realize that the chief difference between
Europe and America is a difference in the
rate of speed with which revolutions in
thought are worked out.
While the radicals of Europe were revolt-
ing in 1848 against the abuses of a tyranny
whose roots were in feudalism, Emerson, the
great radical of America, the arch-radical of
the world, was revolting against the evils
whose roots were in universal suflfrage. By
showing the identity in essence of all
tyranny, and by bringing back the attention
of political thinkers to its starting-point,
the value of human character, he has ad-
vanced the political thought of the world by
one step. He has pointed out for us in this
country to what end our eflforts must be
bent.
GEORGE SANTAYANA (1863- )
Mr. Santayana was born of Spanish parents at Madrid on i6 December, 1863. His earliest years
were passed in Spain, but he came to America in 1872, and carried on his education here. He was
graduated from Harvard College in 1886. The next two years were spent in study at Berlin, and in
1889 he received the doctorate of philosophy from Harvard. He was at once appointed an instructor
in the department of philosophy there and remained a member of that department until 1912, being
promoted to an assistant professorship in 1898, and to a professorship in 1907. The academic year
1896-1897 he spent in study at King's College, Cambridge University. During the winter of 1905-
1906 he was Hyde Lecturer at the Sorbonne, in Paris. In 191 2 Mr. Santayana retired from his post at
Harvard, and also retired from the United States. At the outbreak of the Great War, in 1914, he
was in England, and he remained there until after its conclusion. Since then he has lived in Paris and
elsewhere in Europe. In the fall of 1923 he delivered the Herbert Spencer Lecture at Oxford University.
He has been a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
Mr. Santayana began his distinguished literary career as a poet, publishing a volume entitled
Sonnets and Other Verses in 1894, a "theological tragedy" entitled Lucifer, or the Heavenly Truce in
1898, and A Hermit of Carmel and Other Poems in 1901. But before 1898 he had turned to prose, which
was to be the medium of practically all of his later writing, and had published ^n aesthetic treatise,
The Sense of Beauty (1896), and was at work upon his first volume of critical essays, Interpretations of
Poetry and Religion (1900). There followed several years later his series of philosophical studies. The
Life of Reason (5 vols., 1905-1906), in 1910 a volume of essays on Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe {Three
Philosophical Poets), in 1913 another volume of essays, Winds of Doctrine, in 1916 Egotism in German
Philosophy, in 1920 Character and Opinion in the United States, with Reminiscences of William James
and Josiah Royce and Academic Life in America, in 1922 Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies,
in 1923 Skepticism and Animal Faith (an "introduction to a system of philosophy"), and in 1925
Dialogues in Limbo.
In a recent volume of selections from his poems (1923) Mr. Santayana confesses that his "best
critics and friends" have warned him that he is no poet, and he adds that in the sense in which they
mean the word he agrees with them: "Of impassioned tenderness or Dionysiac frenzy I have nothing,
nor even of that magic and pregnancy of phrase — really the creation of a fresh idiom — which marks
the high liuhts of poetry. Even if my temperament had been naturally warmer, the fact that the
English language (and I can write no other with assurance) was not my mother-tongue would of itself
preclude any inspired use of it on my part; its roots do not quite reach to my center." But he also says
that what he has written in verse he could have written in no other way, and this we may believe. For
the truth is that Mr. Santayana is a reflective poet of a high order, with a delicate and sensitive imagina-
tion, whose verse is the product of fine and scrupulous workmanship. Its appeal is of course limited,
but it is none the less memorable for that, and it has the added interest for some of exhibiting his
philosophy in the making. This, moreover, is a matter of no little importance to the student of Mr.
Santayana's work. For it helps to show that, if he has written the poetry of a philosopher, he has also
worked out the philosophy of a poet — a poet, however, of a particular kind, one who somehow combines
in his person a real and deep Platonic feeling for spiritual values with the prejudices of a thorough
materialistic naturalism.
As a materiahstic naturalist he conceives the sum of existence to be comprised in a flux of substance,
and ourselves to be as it were temporary little eddies in this flux wherein matter has become, for the
moment, conscious of its aspiration to realize in its existence ideal values. These spiritual or immaterial
values have no existence anywhere, and no home save in matter which has become, through natural
evolution, self-conscious, so that their very appearance on the horizon depends upon those precarious
combinations of substance which form sentient and dreaming creatures, and so that even their appear-
ance must cease with our own extinction. Nevertheless, such is the character of our substance that
only in the attempt to realize spiritual values do we find the aim and crown of our existence, and this
452
SONNET XLII
453
attempt can be made only through rational activity. "The life of reason ... is simply the dreaming
mind becoming coherent, devising symbols and methods, such as languages, by which it may fitly
survey its own career, and the forces of nature on which that career depends. Reason thereby raises
our vegetative dieam into a poetic revelation and transcript of the truth." Reason, by selection and
organization, reduces the chaotic mass of our impressions and dreams to order and relevancy, and so
forms ideal patterns, or norms, for our contemplation. Thus rational activity is " the purpose and stand-
ard of all life," and progress, when it occurs— for there is nothing to make it inevitable — consists in
extending and consolidating the work of reason. In this way we raise ourselves above the unmeaning
flux of substance and come to live in an ideal, non-existent world of timeless perfection which is our
true home and which it is our true happiness to contemplate. Obviously all experience is grist for
our mill, but our business with it is not mere brutish pleasure in immediate enjoyment of it, nor mere
brutish suffering from untoward accident; — our business is its rational evaluation. Increasing knowl-
edge of the world should make us increasingly unworldly. We are the spectators of an existence which
we ourselves make dramatic by our intellectual activity, and which we judge by standards of our own
creation. For us religion is one of the kinds of poetry, and the function of the imagination is the expres-
sion of our ideals through a splendid imagery, or allegory. "The dignity of religion, like that of poetry
and of every moral ideal, lies precisely in its ideal adequacy, in its fit rendering of the meanings and
values of life, in its anticipation of perfection; so that the excellence of religion is due to an idealization
of experience which, while making religion noble if treated as poetry, makes it necessarily false if treated
as science. Its function is rather to draw from reality materials for an image of that ideal to which
reality ought to conform, and to make us citizens, by anticipation, in the world we crave." Further,
"as religion is deflected from its course when it is confused with a record of facts or of natural laws, so
poetry is arrested in its development if it remains an unmeaning play of fancy without relevance to the
ideals and purposes of life. In that relevance lies its highest power. As its elementary pleasantness
comes from its response to the demands of the ear, so its deepest beauty comes from its response to the
ultimate demands of the soul."
Mr. Santayana's conception of life, then, is that it should consist in the attempt by judicious con-
templation to create and inhabit a world of non-existent values. As a philosophy this would appear to
be extraordinarily jejune, but, curiously enough, the attitude towards life which it engenders is one which
has helped Mr. Santayana to become a flexible, appreciative, and shrewd critic of humanity and of
the imaginative expression of life in literature. Here his catholic receptivity serves him excellently,
while his application of his criterion — rational activity in the interest of the realization of spiritual ideals
— everywhere renders his criticism significant and valuable. His mind and taste, moreover, are en-
riched by a thorough culture, and his thought is expressed in a singularly lucid and beautiful and finely
imaginative English. He is, in short, whatever we are to think of his empty philosophy of unworldly
worldliness, a memorable, talented, and significant critic.
SONNET Iin
O World, thou choosest not the better part!
It is not wisdom to be only wise,
And on the inward vision close the eyes,
But it is wisdom to believe the heart.
Columbus found a world, and had no chart,
Save one that faith deciphered in the skies;
To trust the soul's invincible surmise
Was all his science and his only art.
Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine
That lights the pathway but one step
ahead lo
Across a void of mystery and dread.
Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine
By which alone the mortal heart is led
Unto the thinking of the thought divine.
1 This and the two following poems are reprinted
from Poems (1923) with the permission of Messrs.
Charles Scribner's Sons.
SONNET XLII
As when the scepter dangles from the hand
Of some king doting, faction runneth wild,
Thieves shake their chains and traitors,
long exiled,
Hover about the confines of the land,
Till the young Prince, anointed, takes
command,
Full of high purpose, simple, trustful, mild,
And, smitten by his radiance undefiled,
The ruffians are abashed, the cowards
stand: —
So in my kindgom riot and despair
Lived by thy lack, and called' for thy
control, 10
But at thy coming all the world grew fair;
Away before thy face the villains stole.
And panoplied I rose to do and bear.
When love his clarion sounded in my soul.
454
GKORGK SANTAYANA
ODE II
My heart rilxls niiainst my jicneratlon,
That talks of freedom and is slave to riches,
And, toihnj: 'neath each day's ignoble
burden,
Boasts of the morrow.
No space for noonday rest or midnight
watches,
No purest joy of breathing under heaven!
Wretched themselves, they heap, to make
them happy.
Many possessions.
But thou, O silent Mother, wise, immortal,
To whom our toil is laughter, — take, divine
one, 10
This vanity away, and to thy lover
Give what is needful: —
A stanch heart, nobly calm, averse to evil,
The windy sky for breath, the sea, the
mountam,
A well-born, gentle friend, his spirit's
brother,
Ever beside him.
What would you gain, ye seekers, with your
striving.
Or what vast Babel raise you on your
shoulders?
You multiply distresses, and your children
Surely will curse you. 20
O leave them rather friendlier gods, and
fairer
Orchards and temples, and a freer bosom!
What better comfort have we, or what other
Profit in living,
Than to feed, sobered by the truth of Nature,
Awhile upon her bounty and her beauty.
And hand her torch of gladness to the ages
Following after?
She hath not made us, like her other children.
Merely for peopling of her spacious king-
doms, 30
Beasts of the wild, or insects of the summer,
.Breeding and dying,
But also that we might, half knowing,
worship
The deathless beauty of her guiding vision.
And learn to love, in all things mortal, only
What is eternal.
THE POETRY OF BARBARISM '
I
It is an observation at first sight mel-
ancholy but in the end, perhaps, enlightening,
that the earliest poets are the most ideal, and
that primitive ages furnish the most heroic
characters and have the clearest vision of a
perfect life. The Homeric times must have
been full of ignorance and suffering. In those
little barbaric towns, in those camps and
farms, in those shipyards, there must have
been much insecurity and superstition. That
age was singularly poor in all that concerns
the convenience of life and the entertain-
ment of the mind with arts and sciences.
Yet it had a sense for civilization. That
machinery of life which men were beginning
to devise appealed to them as poetical; they
knew its ultimate justification and studied
its incipient processes with delight. The
poetry of that simple and ignorant age was,
accordingly, the sweetest and sanest that
the world has known; the most faultless in
taste, and the most even and lofty in inspira-
tion. Without lacking variety and homeli-
ness, it bathed all things human in the golden
light of morning; it clothed sorrow in a kind
of majesty, instinct with both self-control
and heroic frankness. Nowhere else can
we find so noble a rendering of human nature,
so spontaneous a delight in life, so uncom-
promising a dedication to beauty, and such
a gift of seeing beauty in everything. Homer,
the first of poets, was also the best and the
most poetical.
From this beginning, if we look down the
history of Occidental literature, we see
the power of idealization steadily decline.
For while it finds here and there, as in Dante,
a more spiritual theme and a subtler and
riper intellect, it pays for that advantage by
a more than equivalent loss in breadth,
sanity, and happy vigor. And if ever imag-
ination bursts out with a greater potency,
as in Shakespeare (who excels the patriarch
of poetry in depth of passion and vividness
of characterization, and in those exquisite
bubbling of poetry and humor in which
English genius is at its best), yet Shakespeare
also pays the price by a notable loss in taste,
1 Reprinted from Interpretations of Poetry and Re-
ligion (1900) with the permission of Messrs. Charles
Scribner's Sons.
THE POETRY OF BARI5ARISM
455
in sustained inspiration, in consecration, and
in rationality. There is more or less rubbish
in his greatest works. When we come down
to our own day we find poets of hardly less
natural endowment (for in endowment all
ages are perhaps alike) and with vastly
richer sources of inspiration; for they have
many arts and literatures behind them,
with the spectacle of a varied and agitated
"society, a world which is the living microcosm
of its own history and presents in one picture
many races, arts, and religions. Our poets
have more wonderful tragedies of the im-
agination to depict than had Homer, whose
world was innocent of any essential defeat, or
Dante, who believed in the world's definitive
redemption. Or, if perhaps their inspiration
is comic, they have the pageant of medieval
manners, with its picturesque artifices and
passionate fancies, and the long comedy of
modern social revolutions, so illusory in their
aims and so productive in their aimlessness.
They have, moreover, the new and marvelous
conception which natural science has given
us of the world and of the conditions of
human progress.
With all these lessons of experience
behind them, however, we find our contem-
porary poets incapable of any high wisdom,
incapable of any imaginative rendering of
human life and its meaning. Our poets are
things of shreds and patches; they give us
episodes and studies, a sketch of this curiosity,
a glimpse of that romance; they have no
total vision, no grasp of the whole reality,
and consequently no capacity for a sane and
steady idealization. The comparatively
barbarous ages had a poetry of the ideal;
they had visions of beauty, order, and per-
fection. This age of material elaboration has
no sense for those things. Its fancy is retro-
spective, whimsical, and flickering; its ideals,
when it has any, are negative and partial;
its moral strength is a blind and miscella-
neous vehemence. Its poetry, in a word, is
the poetry of barbarism.
This poetry should be viewed in relation
to the general moral crisis and imaginative
disintegration of which it gives a verbal
echo; then we shall avoid the injustice of
passing it over as insignificant, no less than
the imbecility of hailing it as essentially
glorious and successful. We must remember
that the imagination of our race has been
subject to a double discipline. It has been
formed partly in the school of classic litera-
ture and polity, and partly in the school of
Christian piety. This duality of inspiration,
this contradiction between the two accepted
methods of rationalizing the world, has been
a chief source of that incoherence, that
romantic indistinctness and imperfection,
which largely characterize the products of
the modern arts. A man cannot serve two
masters; yet the conditions have not been
such as to allow him wholly to despise the
one or wholly to obey the other. To be
wholly Pagan is impossible after the dissolu-
tion of that civilization which had seemed
universal, and that empire which had be-
lieved itself eternal. To be wholly Christian
is impossible for a similar reason, now that
the illusion and cohesion of Christian ages is
lost, and for the further reason that Chris-
tianity was itself fundamentally eclectic.
Before it could succeed and dominate men
even for a time, it was obliged to adjust itself
to reality, to incorporate many elements of
Pagan wisdom, and to accommodate itself
to many habits and passions at variance with
its own ideal.
In these latter times, with the prodigious
growth of material life in elaboration and of
mental life in diffusion, there has supervened
upon this old dualism a new faith in man's
absolute power, a kind of return to the inex-
perience and self-assurance of youth. This
new inspiration has made many minds indif-
ferent to the two traditional disciplines;
neither is seriously accepted by them, for
the reason, excellent from their own point of
view, that no discipline whatever is needed.
The memory of ancient disillusions has
faded with time. Ignorance of the past has
bred contempt for the lessons which the past
might teach. Men prefer to repeat the old
experiment without knowing that they
repeat it.
I say advisedly ignorance of the past, in
spite of the unprecedented historical erudi-
tion of our time; for life is an art not to be
learned by observation, and the most minute
and comprehensive studies do not teach us
what the spirit of man should have learned
by its long living. We study the past as a
dead object, as a ruin, not as an authority
and as an experiment. One reason why
history was less interesting to former ages
456
GEORCE SANTAYANA
\v:is that tiny were less conscious of separa-
tion from tin- past. I lie perspective of time
was less clear because the synthesis of
experience was more complete. The mind
does not easil}'- discriminate the successive
phases of an action in which it is still en«;aged;
it does not arrange in a temporal series the
elements of a single perception, but posits
them all together as constituting a permanent
and real object. Human nature and the
life of the world were real and stable objects
to the apprehension of our forefathers; the
actors changed, but not the characters or the
play. Men were then less studious of deriva-
tions because they were more conscious of
identities. They thought of all reality as in a
sense contemporary, and in considering the
maxims of a philosopher or the style of a
poet, they were not primarily concerned with
settling his date and describing his environ-
ment. The standard by which they judged
was eternal; the environment in which man
found himself did not seem to them subject of
any essential change.
To us the picturesque element in history is
more striking because we feel ourselves the
children of our own age only, an age which
btting itself singular and revolutionary, tends
to read its own character into the past, and
to regard all other periods as no less frag-
mentary^ and effervescent than itself. The
changing and the permanent elements are,
indeed, everywhere present, and the bias of
the observer may emphasize the one or the
other as it will: the only question is whether
we find the significance of things in their
variations or in their similarities.
Now the habit of regarding the past as
effete and as merely a stepping-stone to
something present or future, is unfavorable
to any true apprehension of that element in
the past which was vital and which remains
eternal. It is a habit of thought that destroys
the sense of the moral identity of all ages, by
virtue of its very insistence on the mechan-
ical derivation of one age from another.
Existences that cause one another exclude
one another; each is alien to the rest inas-
much as it is the product of new and different
conditions. Ideas that cause nothing unite
all things by giving them a common point of
reference and a single standard of value.
The classic and the Christian systems were
both systems of ide^S;, attempts to seize the
eternal morphology of reality and describe
its unchanging constitution. The imagina-
tion was summoned thereby to contemplate
the highest objects, and the essence of things
being thus described, their insignificant
variations could retain little importance and
the study of these variations might well seem
superficial. Mechanical science, the science
of causes, was accordingly neglected, while
the science of values, with the arts that
express these values, was exclusively pursued.
The reverse has now occurred and the spirit
of life, innocent of any rationalizing dis-
cipline and deprived of an authoritative and
adequate method of expression, has relapsed
into miscellaneous and shallow exuberance.
Religion and art have become short-winded.
They have forgotten the old maxim that
we should copy in order to be copied and
remember in order to be remembered. It is
true that the multiplicity of these incom-
petent efforts seems to many a compensation
for their ill success, or even a ground for
asserting their absolute superiority. Incom-
petence, when it flatters the passions, can
always find a greater incompetence to
approve of it. Indeed, some people would
have regarded the Tower of Babel as the
best academy of eloquence on account of the
variety of oratorical methods prevailing
there.
It is thus that the imagination of our time
has relapsed into barbarism. But discipline
of the heart and fancy is always so rare a
thing that the neglect of it need not be
supposed to involve any very terrible or
obvious loss. The triumphs of reason have
been few and partial at any time, and
perfect works of art are almost unknown.
The failure of art and reason, because
their principle is ignored, is therefore hardly
more conspicuous than it was when their
principle, although perhaps acknowledged,
was misunderstood or disobeyed. Indeed,
to one who fixes his eye on the ideal goal, the
greatest art often seems the greatest failure,
because it alone reminds him of what it
should have been. Trivial stimulations
coming from vulgar objects, on the con-
trary, by making us forget altogether the
possibility of a deep satisfaction, often
succeed in interesting and in winning applause.
The pleasure they give us is so brief and
superficial that the wave of essential dis-
THE POETRY OE BARBARISM
457
appointment which would ultimately drown
it has not time to rise from the heart.
The poetry of barbarism is not without its
charm. It can play with sense and passion
the more readily and freely in that it does
not aspire to subordinate them to a clear
thought or a tenable attitude of the will.
It can impart the transitive emotions which
it expresses; it can find many partial har-
monies of mood and fancy; it can, by virtue
of its red-hot irrationality, utter wilder
cries, surrender itself and us to more absolute
passion, and heap up a more indiscriminate
wealth of images than belong to poets of
seasoned experience or of heavenly inspira-
tion. Irrational stimulation may tire us in
the end, but it excites us in the beginning;
and how many conventional poets, tender
and prolix, have there not been, who tire
us now without ever having excited anybody ?
The power to stimulate is the beginning of
greatness, and when the barbarous poet has
genius, as he well may have, he stimul;ites all
the more powerfully on account of the crudity
of his methods and the recklessness of his
emotions. The defects of such art — lack of
distinction, absence of beauty, confusion of
ideas, incapacity permanently to please —
will hardly be felt by the contemporary
public, if once its attention is arrested; for
no poet is so undisciplined that he will not
find many readers, if he finds readers at all,
less disciplined than himself.
These considerations may perhaps be
best enforced by applying them to two
writers of great influence over the present
generation who seem to illustrate them on
different planes — Robert Browning and
Walt Whitman. They are both analytic
poets — poets who seek to reveal and express
the elemental as opposed to the conven-
tional; but the dissolution has progressed
much farther in Whitman than in Browning,
doubtless • because Whitman began at a
much lower stage of moral and intellectual
organization; for the good will to be radical
was present in both. The elements to which
Browning reduces experience are still pas-
sions, characters, persons; Whitman carries
the disintegration further and knows nothing
but moods and particular images. The
world of Browning is a world of history with
civilization for its setting and with the con-
ventional passions for its motive forces.
The world of Whitman is innocent of these
things and contains only far simpler and
more chaotic elements. In him the barbarism
is much more pronounced; it is, indeed,
avowed, and the "barbaric yawp" is sent
"over the roofs of the world" in full con-
sciousness of its inarticulate character; but
in Browning the barbarism is no less real
though disguised by a literary and scientific
language, since the passions of civilized life
with which he deals are treated as so many
"barbaric yawps," complex indeed in their
conditions, puffings of an intricate engine, but
aimless in their vehemence and mere ebulli-
tions of lustiness in adventurous and pro-
foundly ungoverned souls.
Irrationality on this level is viewed by
Browning with the same satisfaction with
which, on a lower level, it is viewed by
Whitman; and the admirers of each hail it
as the secret of a new poetry which pierces
to the quick and awakens the imagination
to a new and genuine vitality. It is in the
rebellion against discipline, in the abandon-
ment of the ideals of classic and Christian
tradition, that this rejuvenation is found.
Both poets represent, therefore, and are
admired for representing, what may be called
the poetry of barbarism in the most accurate
and descriptive sense of this word. For the
barbarian is the man who regards his passions
as their own excuse for being; who does not
domesticate them either by understanding
their cause or by conceiving their ideal goal.
He is the man who does not know his deri-
vations nor perceive his tendencies, but who
merely feels and acts, valuing in his life its
force and its filling, but being careless of its
purpose and its form. His delight is in
abundance and vehemence; his art, like his
life, shows an exclusive respect for quantity
and splendor of materials. His scorn for
what is poorer and weaker than himself is
only surpassed by his ignorance of what is
higher.
II
WALT WHITMAN
The works of Walt Whitman offer an
extreme illustration of this phase of genius,
both by their form and by their substance.
It was the singularity of his literary form —
the challenge it threw to the conventions of
458
CKORCIK SANTA^'ANA
verse and (if l.inpunge — that first nd life as they really are, rather than as they
may appear to the ignorant and passionate
participant in them, lie beyond his range.
Even in his best dramas, like A Blot in the
'Scutcheon or Colombe's Birthday, the interest
remains in the experience of the several
persons as they explain it to us. The same is
the case in The Ring and the Book, the con-
ception of which, in twelve monstrous
soliloquies, is a striking evidence of the
poet's predilection for this form.
I he method is, to penetrate by sympathy
rather than to portray by intelligence. The
most authoritative insight is not the poet's or
the spectator's, aroused and enlightened by
the spectacle, but the various heroes' own,
in their moment of intensest passion. We
therefore miss the tragic relief and exaltation,
and come away instead with the uncom-
fortable feeling that an obstinate folly is
apparently the most glorious and choice-
worthy thing in the world. This is evidently
the poet's own illusion, and those who do
not happen to share it must feel that if life
were really as irrational as he thinks it, it
would be not only profoundly discouraging,
which it often is, but profoundly disgusting,
which it surely is not; for at least it reveals
the ideal which it fails to attain.
This ideal Browning never disentangles.
For him the crude experience is the only end,
the endless struggle the only ideal, and the
perturbed "Soul" the only organon of truth.
The arrest of his intelligence at this point,
before it has envisaged any rational object,
explains the arrest of his dramatic art at
soliloquy. His immersion in the forms of
self-consciousness prevents him from dram-
atizing the real relations of men and their
thinkings to one another, to Nature, and to
destiny. For in order to do so he would
have had to view his characters from above
(as Cervantes did, for instance), and to see
them not merely as they appeared to them-
selves, but as they appear to reason. This
higher attitude, however, was not only
beyond Browning's scope, it was positively
contrary to his inspiration. Had he reached
it, he would no longer have seen the universe
through the "Soul," but through the intellect,
and he would not have been able to cry,
"How the world is made for each one of us!"
On the contrary, the "Soul" would have
figured only in its true conditions, in all its
ignorance and dependence, and also in its
essential teachableness, a point against which
Browning's barbaric willfulness particularly
rebelled. Rooted in his persuasion that the
soul is essentially omnipotent and that to live
hard can never be to live wrong, he remained
fascinated by the march and method of self-
consciousness, and never allowed himself to
be weaned from that romantic fatuity by the
energy ofrational imagination, which prompts
us not to regard our ideas as mere filling of a
dream, but rather to build on them the
conception of permanent objects and over-
ruling principles, such as Nature, society, and
the other ideals of reason. A full-grown
imagination deals with these things, which
do not obey the laws of psychological pro-
gression, and cannot be described by the
methods of soliloquy.
We thus see that Browning's sphere,
though more subtle and complex than
Whitman's, was still elementary. It lay
far below the spheres of social and historical
reality in which Shakespeare moved; far
below the comprehensive and cosmic sphere
of every great epic poet. Browning did
not even reach the intellectual plane of such
THE POETRY OE BARBARLSM
469
contemporary poets as Tennyson and
Matthew Arnold, who, whatever may be
thought of their powers, did not study
consciousness for itself, but for the sake of
its meaning and of the objects which it
revealed. The best things that come into a
man's consciousness are the things that
take him out of it — the rational things that
are independent of his personal perception
and of his personal existence. These he
approaches with his reason, and they, in the
same measure, endow him with their immor-
tality. But precisely these things — the
objects of science and of the constructive
imagination — Browning always saw askance,
in the outskirts of his field of vision, for his
eye was fixed and riveted on the soliloquizing
Soul. And this Soul being, to his apprehen-
sion, irrational, did not give itself over to
those permanent objects which might other-
wise have occupied it, but ruminated on its
own accidental emotions, on its love-affairs,
and on its hopes of going on so ruminating
for ever.
The pathology of the human mind — for
the normal, too, is pathological when it is not
referred to the ideal — the pathology of the
human mind is a very interesting subject,
demanding great gifts and great ingenuity in
its treatment. Browning ministers to this
interest, and possesses this ingenuity and
these gifts. More than any other poet he
keeps a kind of speculation alive in the
now large body of sentimental, eager-minded
people, who no longer can find in a definite
religion a form and language for their im-
aginative life. That this service is greatly
appreciated speaks well for the ineradicable
tendency in man to study himself and his
destiny. We do not deny the achievement
when we point out its nature and limitations.
It does not cease to be something because it is
taken to be more than it is.
In every imaginative sphere the nineteenth
century has been an era of chaos, as it has
been an era of order and growing organization
in the spheres of science and of industry. An
ancient doctrine of the philosophers asserts
that to chaos the world must ultimately
return. And what is perhaps true of the
cycles of cosmic change is certainly true of
the revolutions of culture. Nothing lasts for
ever: languages, arts, and religions disin-
tegrate with time. Yet the perfecting of such
forms is the only criterion of progress; the
destruction of them the chief evidence of
decay. Perhaps fate intends that we should
have, in our imaginative decadence, the
consolation of fancying that we are still
progressing, and that the disintegration of
religion and the arts is bringing us nearer to
the protoplasm of sensation and passion.
If energy and actuality are all that we care
for, chaos is as good as order, and barbarism
as good as discipline — better, perhaps, since
impulse is not then restrained within any
bounds of reason or beauty. But if the
powers of the human mind are at any time
adequate to the task of digesting experience,
clearness and order inevitably supervene.
The molds of thought are imposed upoi
Nature, and the conviction of a definite
truth arises together with the vision of a
supreme perfection. It is only at such
periods that the human animal vindicates his
title of rational. If such an epoch should
return, people will no doubt retrace our
present gropings with interest and see in
them gradual approaches to their own
achievement. Whitman and Browning might
well figure then as representatives of our
time. For the merit of being representative
cannot be denied them. The mind of our
age, like theirs, is choked with materials,
emotional, and inconclusive. They merely
aggravate our characteristics, and their
success with us is due partly to their own
absolute strength and partly to our common
weakness. If once, however, this imagi-
native weakness could be overcome, and a
form found for the crude matter of experience,
men might look back from the height of a
new religion and a new poetry upon the
present troubles of the spirit; and perhaps
even these things might then be pleasant to
remember.
PAUL ELMER MORE (1864- )
Mr. More was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on 12 December, 1864. He was graduated from Wash-
ington University in 1887. P'ive years later he received a master's degree from that institution, and in
1893 he received the same degree from Harvard University, after a period of advanced study there.
He did not proceed to take a doctorate of philosophy, because, as he has said, he wished to learn as
much as possible during his period of study. (He has since received several honorary doctoral degrees,
and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.) In 1894-1895 he taught Sanskrit at
Harvard, and during the two following academic years taught both Sanskrit and Greek at Bryn Mawr
College. But, though he had become an oriental and classical philologer, he had pursued his studies
not as ends in themselves, but as means to a disciplined and full understanding of life, and he was
not content to pass his days in college class-rooms as the painstaking slave of indifferent youth. He
had already, in fact, determined upon a literary career, and had, in 1890, published a slender volume
of poems, the result of unsatisfying experiments with that medium of expression, and also, in 1894,
another small experimental volume, The Great Refusal, in which meditative verse and prose were com-
bined under the form of a series of letters addressed to a lady by "a dreamer in Gotham." He now,
in 1897, abandoned teaching and spent the following two years in retirement from the world, living in
a modest hermitage near Shelburne, New Hampshire. He withdrew from society because, "having
found it impossible to educe any meaning from the tangled habits of mankind while he himself was
whirled about in the imbroglio, he had determined to try the efficacy of undisturbed meditation at a
distance. . . . He had been deafened by the 'indistinguishable roar' of the streets, and could make no
sense of the noisy jargon of the market place." He later confessed that "he returned to civilization
as ignorant of its meaning as when he left it," but his object also was to increase his self-knowledge,
and in this he was probably more successful, while, in addition, he determined that his work was to be
that of a critic of life and letters. During this period he published his third volume, A Century of
Indian Epigrams (1898), verse-translations "chiefly from the Sanskrit of Bhartrihari," a delightful
little book, the product not only of an accomplished scholar, but also of one who had now attained a
command of his delicate medium well-nigh perfect for the purpose in hand.
In 1899 Mr. More left Shelburne. In 1901 he became the literary editor of The Independent, in
1903 literary editor of the New York Evening Post, and in 1909 editor of The Nation. The first volume
of his essays in criticism appeared in 1904, over the title Shelburne Essays — a title which has been kept
for succeeding volumes, of which ten have been published at intervals since 1904, so that at present the
essays fill eleven volumes. They form a body of criticism which is unrivaled in America not merely
because of its quantity, but because of its remarkable quality — its informed maturity, urbanity, and
scrupulousness, its capable and often felicitous style, and its depth of philosophic background which
has insured steadily sober and weighty judgments and a criticism not narrowly literary, but one embrac-
ing and illuminating life as well.
In 1914 Mr. More resigned his editorship of The Nation, and since then has lived in Princeton, New
Jersey, where he has in recent years given an annual course of lectures in the University. His chief
work during these years, however, has been the composition of a series of volumes (still in progress)
entitled The Greek Tradition. In his student days he became a lover and follower of Plato as well as
of the wisdom of Indian sages, and the Platonic element in his criticism has been one of its notable
and strengthening characteristics. Years of study and reflection bred in him the conviction that the
Platonic conception of human nature as dual and related in one of its branches to a realm of immaterial
reality, to which we may attain by the purgation and discipline of the soul, was one which "lies behind
all our Western philosophy and religion," and one without which we should have remained barbarians.
He concluded, at the same time, that this Platonic realization of an immaterial life had been corrupted
and perverted during recent centuries, and is now, with the disappearing authority of Christian dogma,
in danger of being lost to us, opening us to the peril of a relapse to barbarism. Hence he determined
upon the composition of a series of studies, setting forth what he regards as the central and fruitful
elements in Platonism, tracing their fortunes through the later philosophical schools of Greece, examin-
ing their fusion with early Christianity, and perhaps treating of certain modern attempts at securing
and continuing the tradition. An introductory volume, Platonism, was published in 1917, and there
have since followed The Religion of Plato (1921), Hellenistic Philosophies (1923), and The Christ of the
470
LAFCADIO HEARN
471
Nezv Testament (1924). These volumes constitute a memorable achievement not only because of the
importance of the effort to rescue and illumine afresh that spiritual conception of life which lies at the
base of our civilization, but also because in an age of blind specialism they are the work of a man who,
not merely a competent classical scholar, is a man of letters as well, with an easy command of a fine
and beautiful style. In both form and content, indeed, Mr. More's essays and his later volumes are
wisely calculated for a long life of steady influence in the direction of sanity, sobriety, and the profound
illumination alike of the central nature and of the higher possibilities of our distinctively human lives.
LAFCADIO HEARN 1
There was something almost as romantic
in Mr. Hearn's life as in his books. He w^as,
I believe, the child of an Irish father and a
woman of the Greek islands; his early man-
hood he passed in this country, and then
converted himself into a subject of the
Mikado, taking a Japanese wife and adopt-
ing the customs and religion of the land. On
his death this winter (1904) he was buried
with full Buddhist rites, being the first
foreigner so distinguished in Japan; and
almost his last act was to pass by cablegram
on the final proofs of his most serious attempt
to transfer the illusive mystery of the Orient
into Western speech. His Japan, an Inter-
pretation thus rounded out what must be
deemed one of the most extraordinary
artistic achievements of modern days. For
it is as an art of strange subtlety that we
should regard his Hterary work, an art that,
like some sympathetic menstruum, has fused
into one compound three elements never
before brought together.
In the mere outward manner of this art
there is, to be sure, nothing mysterious.
One recognizes immediately throughout his
writing that sense of restraint joined with a
power of after-suggestion, which he has de-
scribed as appertaining to Japanese poetry,
but which is no less his own by native right.
There is a term, ittakkiri, it seems, meaning
"all gone," or ''entirely vanished," which
is applied contemptuously by the Japanese
» This and the two following essays are here reprinted
by permission of, and by arrangement with, Houghton
Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers. The
present essay comes from Shelburne Essays, Second
Series (1905). It was originally published, in slightly
different form, in The Atlantic Monthly (February,
1903) before Hearn's death. Hearn was not on good
terms with the house which then published the Atlantic,
and which had formerly published several of his books,
but was so highly pleased with this essay when he saw
it that he forgot his resentment and not only wrote to
the editor (Bliss Perry) to tell of his pleasure, but also
sent him a story for the Atlantic, which he said he
hoped he would accept, with or without payment.
to verse that tells all and trusts nothing
to the reader's imagination. Their praise
they reserve for compositions that leave in
the mind the thrilling of a something unsaid.
"Like the single stroke of a bell, the perfect
poem should set murmuring and undulating,
in the mind of the hearer, many a ghostly
aftertone of long duration." Now these
ghostly reverberations are precisely the
eflPect of the simplest of Mr. Hearn's pictures.
Let him describe, for instance, the impression
produced by walking down the deep canon
of Broadway, between those vast structures,
beautiful but sinister, where one feels de-
pressed by the mere sensation of enormous
creative hfe without sympathy and of un-
resting power without pity, — let him de-
scribe this terror of Broadway, and in a few
words he shall set ringing within you long
pulsations of emotion which reach down to
the depths of experience. Or, let him relate
by mere allusion the story of hearing a girl
say, *'Good-night" to some one parting
from her in a London park, and there shall
be awakened in your mind ghostly after-
tones that bring back memories of the
saddest separations and regrets of life. He
employs the power of suggestion through
perfect restraint.
But this self-restraint and suggestive style
is merely the instrument, the manner, so to
speak, of his art. If we examine the actual
substance of his writings, we shall discover
that it is borrowed from three entirely dis-
tinct, in fact almost mutually destructive,
philosophies, any one of which alone would
afford material for the genius of an ordinary
writer. He stands and proclaims his mys-
teries at the meeting of three ways. To
the religious instinct of India, — Buddhism in
particular, — which history has engrafted on
the aesthetic sense of Japan, Mr. Hearn
brings the interpreting spirit of Occidental
science; and these three traditions (Hindu,
Japanese, and European) are fused by the
peculiar sympathies of his mind into one rich
and novel compound, — a compound so rare
4 7-
PAUL ELMKR MORE
as ti) Iiave introduced into literature a psy-
cholo<;ical sensation unknown before. More
than any other recent author, he has added
a new thrill to our intellectual experience.
Of Japan, which gives the most obvious
substratum to Mr. Hearn's work, it has been
said that her people, since the days of
ancient Greece, are the only genuine artists
of the world; and in a manner this is true.
There was a depth and pregnancy in the
Greek imagination which made of Greek art
something far more universally significant
than the frail loveliness of Japanese crea-
tion, but not the Greeks themselves sur-
passed, or even equaled, the Japanese in
their all-embracing love of decorative
beauty. To read the story of the daily life
of these people, as recorded by Mr. Morti-
mer Menpes and other travelers, is to be
brought into contact with a national tem-
perament so far removed from Western com-
prehension as to seem to most of us a tale
from fairyland. When, for instance, Mr.
Menpes, with a Japanese friend, visited
Danjuro, he found a single exquisite kake-
monoy or painting, displayed in the great
actor's chamber. On admiring its beauty,
he was told by the friend that Danjuro had
taken pains to learn the precise character of
his visitor's taste, and only then had ex-
hibited this particular picture. To the
Japanese the hanging of a kakemono or the
arranging of a bough of blossoms is a serious
function of life. The placing of flowers is
indeed an exact science, to the study of
which a man may devote seven years, even
fourteen years, before he will be acknowl-
edged a master. Nature herself is subjected
to this elaborate system of training, and
often what in a Japanese landscape seems to a
foreigner the exuberance of natural growth
is really the w^ork of patient human artifice.
There is no accident [writes Mr. Menpes] in the
beautiful curves of the trees that the globe-trotter
so justly admires: these trees have been trained
and shaped and forced to form a certain decorative
pattern, and the result is — perfection. We in the
West labor under the delusion that if Nature were
to be allowed to have her sweet way, she would
always be beautiful. But the Japanese ha^^e gone
much farther than this: they realize that Nature
does not always do the right thing; they know
that occasionally trees will grow up to form ugly
lines; and they know exactly how to adapt and
help her. She is to them like some beautiful
musical instrument, finer than any ever made by
human hands, but still an instrument, with har-
monies to be coaxed out.
And the same aesthetic delicacy, touched
with artificiality if you will, pervades the
literature of this people. We are accustomed,
and rightly, to regard the Japanese as a
nation of imitators. But their poetry, we
are assured by Mr. Hearn, is the one origi-
nal art which they have not borrowed from
China, or from any other country; and
nowhere better than in their poetry can we
observe the swiftness and dexterity of their
imagination and that exquisite reserve with
its haunting echo in the memory. To repro-
duce in English the peculiar daintiness of
these poems is, w^e are told and can well
believe, quite an impossibility; but from the
seemingly careless translations scattered
through Mr. Hearn's pages we do at least
form some notion of their art in the original.
Many of these stanzas are mere bits of folk-
lore or the work of unknown singers, likb
this tiny picture of the cicada:
Lo! on the topmost pine, a solitary cicada
Vainly attempts to clasp one last red beam of sun.
That is light enough in English, but even one
entirely ignorant of the Japanese language
can see that, in comparison with the rhythm
of the original, 1 it is like the step of a
quadruped compared with the fluttering of
a moth. It contains only sixteen syllables
in the original; and indeed all these poems
are wrought into the brief compass of a
stanza, like certain fragile little vases painted
inside and out which are so highly prized by
connoisseurs. Yet these tiny w^ord-paintings,
by virtue of their cunning restraint, are
capable at times of gathering into their
loveliness echoes of emotion as wnde-reaching
as love and as deep as the grave:
Perhaps a freak of the wind — yet perhaps a sign
of remembrance, —
This fall of a single leaf on the water I pour for
the dead.
I whispered a prayer at the grave: a butterfly rose
and fluttered —
Thy spirit, perhaps, dear friendl
1 Semi hitotsu
Matsu no yu-hi wo
Kakae-keri. (Author'5 note.)
LAFCADIO HEARN
473
To have been able to convey through the
coarser medium of Enghsh prose something
of this aesthetic grace, this deftness of touch,
and this suggestiveness of restraint, would
in itself deserve no slight praise. But be-
neath all this artistic delicacy lies some
reminiscence of India's austere religious
thought, a sense of the nothingness of life
strangely exiled among this people of graceful
artists, yet still more strangely assimilated by
them; and this, too, Mr. Hearn has been able
to reproduce. We feel this shadow of India's
faith lurking in the sunshine of many of the
lightest of the stanzas, — a touch of swift
exotic poignancy, if nothing more. We feel
it still more strongly in such poems as these,
which are inspired by the consciousness of
endless change and of unceasing birth and
death and again birth:
All things change, we are told, in this world of
change and sorrow;
But love's way never changes of promising never
to change.
Even the knot of the rope tying our boats together
Knotted was long ago by some love in a former
birth.
Endless change, a ceaseless coming and
going, and the past throwing its shadow on
into the future, — that is the very essence of
Hindu philosophy; but how the tone of this
philosophy has itself become altered in pass-
ing from the valley of the Ganges to the
decorated island of the Mikado! Over and
over again Buddha repeats the essential law
of being, that all things are made up of con-
stituent parts and are subject to flux and
change, that all things are impermanent. It
is the All things pass and nothing abides of
the Greek philosopher, deepened with the
intensity of emotion that makes of philos-
ophy a religion. In this ever-revolving
wheel of existence one fact only is certain,
karma, the law of cause and effect which
declares that every present state is the effect
of some previous act and that every present
act must inevitably bear its fruit in some
future state. As a man soweth so shall he
reap. We are indeed the creatures of a fate
which we ourselves have builded by the
deeds of a former life. We are bound in
chains which we ourselves have riveted, yet
still our desires are free, and as our desires
shape themselves, so we act and build up our
coming fate, our karma; and as our desires
abnegate themselves, so we cease to act and
become liberated from the world. Endless
change subject to the law of cause and
effect — not even our personality remains
constant in this meaningless flux, for it too
is made up of constituent parts and is dis-
solved at death as the body is dissolved,
leaving only its karma to build up the new
personality with the new body. From the
perception of this universal impermanence
springs the so-called "Truth" of Buddhism,
that sorrow is the attribute of all existence.
Birth is sorrow, old age is sorrow, death is
sorrow, every desire of the heart is sorrow;
and the mission of Buddha was to deliver
men out of the bondage of this sorrow as
from the peril of a burning house. The song
of victory uttered by Gotama when the
great enlightenment shone upon him, and
he became the Buddha, was the cry of a man
who has escaped a great evil.
But because the Buddhist so dwells on the
impermanence and sorrow of existence, he is
not therefore properly called a pessimist.
On the contrary, the one predominant note
of Buddhism is joy, for it too is a gospel of
glad tidings. The builders who rear these
prison houses of life are nothing other than
the desires of our own hearts, and these we
may control though all else is beyond our
power. To the worldly this teaching of
Buddha may seem wrapped in pessimistic
gloom, for deliverance to them must be only
another name for annihilation; but to the
spiritually minded it brought ineffable joy,
for they knew that deliverance meant the
passing out of the bondage of personality
into a freedom of whose nature no tongue
could speak. It is an austere faith, hardly
suited, in its purer form, for the sentimental
and vacillating, — austere in its recognition
of sorrow, austere in its teaching of spiritual
Yet the wonderful adaptability of
Buddhism is shown by its acceptance
among the Japanese, certainly of all peoples
the most dissimilar in temperament to the
ancient Hindus. Here the brooding of the
Hindu over the law of impermanence melts
into the peculiar sensitiveness to fleeting
impressions so characteristic of the Japanese,
and the delicacy of their aesthetic taste is
474
PAUL ELMKR MORE
enhanced by this half-understood spiritual
insipht. And it deepens their temperament:
I think that the feehng awakened by all
these dainty stanzas of somethmg not said
but only hinted, that the avoidance of
ittakkiri to which Mr. Ilearn alludes, the
echoing reverberations that haunt us after
the single stroke of the bell, are due to the
residuum of Hindu philosophy left in these
vases of Japanese art. "Buddhism," writes
Mr. Hearn, "taught that nature w^as a
dream, an illusion, a phantasmagoria; but
it also taught men [men of Japan, he should
say] how to seize the fleeting impressions of
that dream, and how to interpret them in
relation to the highest truth."
Buddhism when it passed over to Japan
came into contact with the national religion
of Shinto, a kind of ancestor-worship, which
proclaimed that the world of the living was
directly governed by the world of the dead.
On this popular belief the doctrine of karma
was readily engrafted, and the two flourished
henceforth side by side. Faith in the pro-
tecting presence of ancestors and faith in the
present eflicacy of our own multitudinous
preexistence were inextricably confused. To
the Japanese Buddhist the past does not die,
but lives oh without end, involving the
present in an infinite web of invisible influ-
ences not easily comprehensible to the
V\ estern mind.
And the Indian horror of impermanence
and the rapture of deliverance have suflfered
like transformation with their causes. First
of all, the sharp contrast between the horror
and the joy is lightened. The sorrow fades
to a fanciful feeling of regret for the beauty
of the passing moment, — the same regret
that speaks through a thousand Western
songs such as Herrick's "Gather ye rosebuds
while ye may," and Malherbe's ** Et rose elle
a vccu ce que vivent les roses^^ but touched
here in Japanese poetry with a little mys-
tery and made more insistent by some echo
of Hindu brooding. And the joy, severed
from its spiritual sustenance, loses its high
ecstasy and becomes almost indistinguishable
from regret. Sorrow, too, and joy are
impermanent, and the enlightened mind
dwells lingeringly and fondly on each fair
moment garnered from the waste of Time.
Here is no longer the spiritual exaltation,
the dhydna, of the Indian monk, but the
charmed impressions of the artist. The
religion of the (janges has assumed in Japan
the mask of aesthetic emotionalism.
Now this refinement of emotionalism Mr.
Hearn by his peculiar temperament has been
able to reproduce almost miraculously in the
coarser fiber of English. But more specially
he has sought to interpret the deeper
influence of India on Japan, — the thoughts
and images in which we see the subtlety
of the Japanese turned aside into a
strange new psychology. One may suppose
that some tendency to mingle grace and
beauty with haunting suggestions was in-
herent in the Japanese temper from the
beginning, but certainly the particular form
of imagination that runs through most of the
tales Mr. Hearn has translated is not the prod-
uct of Japan alone. Nor is it purely Hindu:
the literature of India includes much that is
grotesque but hardly a touch of the weird or
ghostly, for its religious tone is too austere
and lacks the suggestive symbolism which
that quality demands. Out of the blending
of the stern sense of impermanence and
moral responsibility with the flower-like
beauty of Japan there arises this new feeling
of the weird. How intimately the two
tempers are blended and how rare their prod-
uct is, may be seen in such sketches as that
called Ingzua-banashi: A Tale of Karma.
Had it been that Mr. Hearn's art sufficed
only to reproduce the delicacy and haunting
strangeness of Japanese tales, he would have
performed a notable but scarcely an extra-
ordinary service to letters. But into the
study of these byways of Oriental literature
he has carried a third element, the dominant
idea of Occidental science; and this element
he has wedded with Hindu religion and
Japanese aestheticism in a union as bewilder-
ing as it is voluptuous. In this triple combi-
nation lies his real claim to high originality.
Now the fact is well known to those who
have studied Buddhism at its genuine sources
that our modern conception of evolution fits
into Buddhist psychology more readily and
completely than into any dogmatic theology
of the West. It is natural, therefore, that
the Western authors quoted most freely by
Mr. Hearn in support of his Oriental medita-
tions should be Huxley and Herbert Spencer.
For the most part these allusions to Western
science are merely made in passing. But in
LAFCADIO HEARN
475
one essay, that on The Idea of Preexistence,
he endeavors with something of philosophic
system to develop the harmony between
evolution and the Buddhist conception of
previous existences, a conception which, as
he shows, has little in common with the crude
form of metempsychosis embodied by Words-
worth in such poems as Fidelity and Intima-
tions of Immortality. To justify his theory
he turns to Professor Huxley and quotes
these words: "None but very hasty thinkers
will reject it on the ground of inherent ab-
surdity. Like the doctrine of evolution
itself, that of transmigration has its roots in
the world of reality; and it may claim such
support as the great argument from analogy
is capable of supplying." Again, in his
essay on Nirvana he compares the doctrine
of impermanence, out of which the con-
ception of Nirvana springs as a natural
corollary, with similar ideas in evolutionary
science. "Every feeling and thought," so
he quotes from Herbert Spencer, "being but
transitory; nay, the objects amid which life
is passed, though less transitory, being
•severally in the course of losing their indi-
vidualities, whether quickly or slowly, — zve
learn that the one thing permanent is the
Unknowable Reality hidden under all these
changing shapes.^*
The parallel is at once apt and misleading.
In both Oriental faith and Occidental science
we do indeed have the conception of all
phenomena, including that ultimate phe-
nomenon which we name our personality, —
we do indeed have the conception of these
as suffering endless flux and change behind
which lies a permanent inexpressible Reality.
The parallel so far is close and makes possible
the peculiar blending of traditions which,
as I have said, is the chief mark of originality
in Mr. Hearn's essays. But in the next step
the two diverge as far as the rising sun is
from the setting. To Mr. Spencer and all
the spokesmen of science it is the imperma-
nent sphere of phenomena that is alone
knowable, whereas the permanent Reality
hidden from the eyes is the great Unknow-
able. To the Buddhist on the contrary, all
impermanence is wrapped in illusion, as indeed
the very meaning of the word would seem to
imply, whereas the permanent Reality,
though inexpressible, is alone knowable.
The diflPerence is of great importance when
we come to consider the effect of interpreting
Japanese ideas in Occidental terms. It even
seems that Mr. Hearn himself is not aware
of the gulf set between these two methods of
viewing existence, and that consequently he
has never measured the full originality of
this realm of sensation which his art has
opened by spanning a bridge between the
two. In the fusion of Mr. Hearn's thought
the world of impermanent phenomena is at
once knowable and unknowable: it is the
reality of Western cognition, and therefore
is invested with an intensity of influence and
fullness of meaning impossible to an Oriental
writer; and at the same time it is the un-
reality of Eastern philosophy, and hence is
involved in illusion and subtle shadows into
which it threatens momentarily to melt
away. It is a realm of half reality, this
phenomenal world, a realm of mingled spirit
and matter, seeming now to tantalize the
eyes with colors of unimaginable beauty that
fade away when we gaze on them too
intently, and again to promise the Soul that
one long-sought word which shall solve the
riddle of her existence in this land of exile.
It is a new symbolism that troubles while
it illumines. It leads the artist to dwell on
the weirder, more impalpable phases of
Japanese literature, and to lend to these sub-
conscious motives a force of realism which
they could never possess in the original.
The perception of impermanence is accom-
panied with a depth of yearning regret quite
beyond the frailer beauty of the songs of the
East which could see little gravity of mean-
ing in phenomena dissevered from the spirit,
and equally beyond the songs of the West
composed before science had carried the law
of material mutability into the notion of
personality. From this union with science
the Oriental belief in the indwelling of the
past now receives a vividness of present
actuality that dissolves the Soul into ghostly
intimacy with the raystic unexplored back-
ground of life. As a consequence of this new
sense of impermanence and of this new
realism lent to the indwelling past, all the
primitive emotions of the heart are translated
into a strange language, which, when once
it lays hold of the imagination, carries us
into a region of dreams akin to that world
which our psychologists dimly call the sub-
liminal or subconscious. The far-reaching
476
PAIL KLMER MORE
results of this psychology on literature it is
not easy to foresee. Mr. Hearn has nowhere
treated systematically this new interpreta-
tion of human emotions, but by bringing
together scattered passages from his essays
we may form some notion of its scope and
efficacy.
Beauty itself, which forms the essence of
Mr. Hearn's art as of all true art, receives a
new content from this union of the East and
the West. So standing before a picture of
nude beauty we might, in our author's words,
question its meaning. That nudity which is
divine, which is the abstract of beauty abso-
lute,— what power, we ask, resides within it
or within the beholder that causes this shock
of astonishment and delight, not unmixed
with melancholy.? The longer one looks, the
more the wonder grows, since there appears
no line, or part of a line, whose beauty does
not surpass all memory of things seen.
Plato explained the shock of beauty as being
the Soul's sudden half-remembrance of the
World of Divine Ideas: "They w^ho see here
any image or resemblance of the things which
are there receive a shock like a thunderbolt,
and are, after a manner, taken out of them-
selves." The positive psychology of Spencer
declares in our own day that the most power-
ful of human passions, first love, when it
makes its appearance, is absolutely ante-
cedent to all individual experience. Thus do
ancient thought and modern — metaphysics
and science — accord in recognizing that the
first deep sensation of human beauty known
to the individual is not individual at all.
Must not the same truth hold of that shock
which supreme art gives.'' The emotion of
beauty, like all our emotions, is certainly
the inherited product of unimaginably count-
less experiences in an immeasurable past.
In every aesthetic sensation is the stirring of
trillions of trillions of ghostly memories
buried in the magical soil of the brain. And
each man carries within him an ideal of
beauty which is but an infinite composite of
dead perceptions of form, color, grace, once
dear to look upon. It is dormant, this
ideal, — potential in ' essence, — cannot be
evoked at will before the imagination; but
it may light up electrically at any perception
by the living outer sense of some vague
affinity. 1 hen is felt that weird, sad, de-
licious thrill, which accompanies the sudden
backward-flowing of the tides of life and
time.
So, again, to follow Mr. Hearn, it is easy
to infer how this perception of the indwelling
of the past gives a wonderful significance to
the thraldom of love, — to first love most of
all, when the shock of emotion comes un-
troubled by worldly calculations of the
present. What is the glamour, we ask with
our author, that blinds the lover in its sweet
bewildering light when first he meets the
woman of his involuntary choice .? Whose the
witchcraft? Is it any power in the living
idol.'' Rather it is the power of the dead
within the idolater. The dead cast the spell.
Theirs the shock in the lover's heart; theirs
the electric shiver that tingled through his
veins at the first touch of one girl's hand.
We look into the eyes of love and it is as
though, through some intense and sudden
stimulation of vital being, we had obtained —
for one supercelestial moment — the glimpse
of a reality never before imagined, and never
again to be revealed. There is, indeed, an
illusion. We seem to view the divine; but
this divine itself, whereby we are dazzled
and duped, is a ghost. Our mortal sight
pierces beyond the surface of the present into
profundities of myriads of years, — pierces
beyond the mask of life into the enormous
night of death. For a moment we are
made aware of a beauty and a mystery and
a depth unutterable: then the Veil falls
again forever. The splendor of the eyes
that we worship belongs to them only as
brightness to the morning star. It is a
reflex from beyond the shadow of the Now,
— a ghost-light of vanished suns. Unknow-
ingly within that maiden-gaze we meet the
gaze of eyes more countless than the hosts
of heaven, — eyes otherwhere passed into
darkness' and dust.
And if we turn to another and purer form
of love, it is the same force we behold. So
long as we supposed the woman soul one in
itself, — a something specially created to fit
one particular physical being, — the beauty
and the wonder of mother-love could never
be fully revealed to us. But with deeper
knowledge we must perceive that the in-
herited love of numberless millions of dead
mothers has been treasured up in one life; —
that only thus can be interpreted the infinite
sweetnes*- of the speech which the infant
LAFCADIO HEARN
477
iiears, — the infinite tenderness of the look of
caress which meets its gaze.
So too when we Hsten to the harmonies of
instrumental music or the melody of the
human voice, there arises a strange emotion
within us which seems to magnify us out of
ourselves into some expanse of illimitable
experiences, to lift us above the present cares
of our petty life into some vast concern —
so vast that the soul is lost between the
wonderings of divine hope and divine fear.
Great music is a psychical storm, agitating to
fathomless depths the mystery of the past
within us. Or we might say that it is a
prodigious incantation. There are tones that
call up all ghosts of youth and joy and
tenderness; — there are tones that evoke all
phantom pain of perished passion; — there
are tones that resurrect all dead sensations
of majesty and might and glory, — all expired
exultations, — all forgotten magnanimities.
Well may the influence of music seem in-
explicah!3 to the man who idly dreams that
his life began less than a hundred years ago!
He who has been initiated into the truth
knows that to every ripple of melody, to
every billow of harmony, there answers
within him, out of the Sea of Death and
Birth, some eddying immeasurable of ancient
pleasure and pain.
Genius itself, the master of music and
poetry and all art that enlarges mortal life,
genius itself is nothing other than the re-
verberation of this enormous past on the
sounding-board of some human intelligence,
so finely wrought as to send forth in purity
the echoed tones which from a grosser soul
come forth deadened and confused by the
clashing of the man's individual impulses
Is it not proper to say, after reading such
passages as these, that Mr. Hearn has
introduced a new element of psychology into
literature.'' We are indeed living in the past,
we who foolishly cry out that the past is
dead. In one remarkable study of the
emotions awakened by the baying of a
gaunt white hound, Mr. Hearn shows how
even the very beasts whom we despise as
unreasoning and unremembering are filled
with an inarticulate sense of this dark back-
ward and abysm of time, whose shadow falls
on their sensitive souls with the chill of a
vague dread, — dread, I say, for it must begin
to be evident that this new psychology is
fraught with meanings that may well trouble
and awe the student. In the ghostly resid-
uum of these meditations we may perceive
a vision dimly foreshadowing itself which
mankind for centuries, nay for thousands of
years, has striven half unwittingly to keep
veiled. I do not know, but it seems to me
that the foreboding of this dreaded dis-
closure may account for many things in the
obscure history of the race. By reason of
this terror the savage trembled before the
magician who seemed to have penetrated the
mysteries of nature about him. Among the
free-hearted Greeks it showed itself in many
ways, even in persecutions and deaths, as
later among the Christians. It expressed
itself mythologically in the haunting legend
of Prometheus, who, by stealing the celestial
fire (a symbol of forbidden prying into natural
laws), brought on himself torment and chains
and on mankind a life of brutal labor.
But more particularly in the Christian
world this formless terror has taken to itself
a body and a name; it is the heart of the
inquisition, which has always followed with
excommunications and tortures the unveiling
of the recondite powers of nature. It has
thus made of itself a potent factor of civiliza-
tion— some would say against civilization^
yet he is a very bold man or a very ignorant
man who would brush away this long protest
of religion against scientific discoveries as the
mere vaporings of superstition. If we ex-
amine this bitter warfare between science
and revelation, we shall find the Church
actuated throughout by one ever-present,
obscure dread, and when the source of this
dread is made clear to us we shall be slow
to condemn her conduct. We shall at least
have sympathy with her in the struggle, for
if she has been a persecutor, she has also been
the champion of a losing cause.
At the first, indeed, she was victorious. In
the conflict with what remained of Greek
philosophy and science the prophets of the
new revelation were easily victors. "Igno-
rance is the mother of devotion," was the
motto of Gregory, and ignorance won the
day. We love to think of the bright natural-
ism of antiquity as sufi^ering martyrdom
with Hypatia, philosopher and mathemat-
ician,—
Hypatia, fair embodiment
Of learning's great delight.
478
PAIL KLMKR MORK
And tin- picture of her naked body torn to
pieces by oyster sliells in the hands of a
bigoted mob is a true emblem of the dis-
memberment of tlic old nature-worship.
Man was no longer to be an integral part of
the world; he was set apart and raised above
it.
Hut the Church did not fare so well in the
ceaseless conflict with learning, when, at the
time of the Renaissance, she laid violent
hands on the followers of Copernicus. It
may seem to us now a futile crime that Gior-
dano Bruno should have been burned at the
stake for teaching the infinity of space and
the revolution of the earth about the sun,
and that Galileo should have languished in
prison for the same cause. But at bottom the
question was one of vital importance to
religion; and Bruno may have been right in
saying that the sentence was pronounced
against him with greater fear than he re-
ceived it. Despite the narrow bigotry dis-
played, it was a sublime contest for the
integrity of the human soul, — for who would
believe that the divine drama of redemption
was wrought out for a race of puny creatures
inhabiting a mere atom in the illimitable ex-
panse of space ? Copernicus and his followers
disabused us of the old belief that the
universe revolved about the home of man.
Henceforth the history of the earth was the
insignificant story of one of the least of a
countless multitude of worlds. The su-
premacy and lordship of man in creation
were no longer conceivable, and in the
triumph of science our personal pride re-
ceived a blow from which it has never fully
recovered.
Custom and time, however, did in a way
heal the wound, and things went well until
the forces of science rallied once again under
the banner of evolution. Volumes have been
written to prove that the new belief only
adds to the dignity of man, and Darwin him-
self professed never to understand the wide-
spread opposition to his theory. But the
new terror that aroused theological hostility
was as firmly grounded as it was against the
invasion of Copernicus centuries before.
There is no place for Providence or for the
divine prerogatives of the human soul in the
law of evolution. We are made a brother
to the brute and akin to unclean things that
crawl in the dust. Yet this quarrel also was
adjusted after a fashion, as the quarrels
before it had been composed. What though
ignorance is necessary to obscure our kinship
with living nature, as Pope Gregory de-
clared; what though our home is but a point
in space; what though we are inheritors of a
past of brutal degradation; — still our con-
sciousness has no recking of these things,
and dwells serene in its assumption of divine
supremacy and isolation.
But now at the last we are shocked out of
our security. We are made conscious of the
shame of the hidden past, and the ancient
haunting terror is revealed in all its hideous
nakedness. Have you ever by chance
strayed through a museum where the relics
of old-world life are gathered together, —
filthy amphibians armed with impenetrable
scales, grotesque serpents eight fathoms long
that churned the seas, huge reptiles that
beat the air with wings of nightmare breadth?
The imagination recoils from picturing what
the world must have been when Nature ex-
hausted herself to fashion these abhorrent
monstrosities. We have burrowed the soil
and brought into the light of day these
reluctant hidden records of bestial growths.
Consider for a moment what it would mean
if some new geology should lay bare the
covered strata of memory in our own brain
corresponding to these records of the earth;
for there is nothing lost, and in som^ mys-
terious way the memories of all that obscure
past are stored up within us. If evolution
be true, we are the inheritors in our soul of
the experience and life of those innumerable
generations whose material forms lie molded
in the bed-rock of earth. Consider the horror
of beholding in our own consciousness the
remembrance of such fears and frenzies, such
cruel passions and wallowing desires as would
correspond to those gigantic and abortive
relics of antiquity. Would not the world in
its shame cry out for some Lethean draught
of sleep, though it were as profound as the
oblivion of Nirvana ^ This is the terror, then,
that from the beginning has beset the up-
holders of religion, and has caused them to
attack the revelations of natural science; for
what faith or beauty of holiness can abide
after such an uncovering.? None, unless to
obtain spiritual grace the whole memory and
personality of a man be blotted out, and the
spirit be severed from the experiences of the
THE NEW MORALITY
479
body by an impassable gulf. A/id I think the
shadow of this dread is typified in the curse
which Noah laid upon his son Ham.
The final outcome of this dread in all its
nakedness we see foreshadowed in these
fantasies and essays of an author, who, as I
have attempted to show, has brought to-
gether into indissoluble union our Western
theory of Darwin and that strange doctrine
of metempsychosis which was carried to
Japan with Buddhism and is so curiously
engrafted on the laughing fancies of the
people of the Mikado. To understand the
tremendous realism of horror and gloom con-
nected with this doctrine of everlasting birth
and death, and re-birth, one must go to the
burning valley of the Ganges, where the con-
ception first laid hold of the human mind.
But overpowering as this notion of endless
unrest may be, a new shadow would seem to
be added to it by contact with the scientific
hypothesis of evolution which has been de-
veloped in the Occident. Evolution is a
theory, drawn from the observation of outer
phenomena, that man is the last product of
myriads of generations of life reaching back
into the past; but evolution has forborne
to make any appeal to the inner conscious-
ness of the human soul. Metempsychosis,
on the contrary, is a half-mystical theory
evolved out of the consciousness of the soul,
which in a dim way seems to carry remem-
brance of illimitable existence before its
present birth. But this symbolic faith of the
Orient has never sought confirmation in
scientific study of the outer world. Now
comes the blending of these two theories, and
the result is a laying bare of those hideous
realities (pray heaven they prove pseudo-
realities in the end) that mankind has in-
stinctively shunned and denounced.
It is because I see in Mr. Hearn's sketches
and translations a suggestion of the incal-
culable influences that may spring from this
union of the East and the West, that I have
treated them with a seriousness that will
seem to many readers greater than they
deserve. The skeptical I would refer, in con-
clusion, to that little essay on the Nightmare-
Touchy which attempts to account for the
shuddering fear of seizure that so often
troubles our dreams, and to associate that
fear with the widespread superstitious dread
of being touched by a ghost. The closing
words of the essay have the sinister beauty
and acrid odor of the flowers in some
Rappaccini's garden:
Furthermore, through all the course of evolu-
tion, heredity would have been accumulating the
experience of such feeling. Under those forms of
imaginative pain evolved through reaction of re-
ligious beliefs, there would persist some dim sur-
vival of savage primitive fears, and again, under
this, a dimmer, but incomparably deeper, sub-
stratum of ancient animal-terrors. In the dreams
of the modern child all these latencies might
quicken — one below another — unfathomably —
with the coming and the growing of nightmare.
It may be doubted whether the phantasms of
any particular nightmare have a history older
than the brain in which they move. But the
shock of the touch would seem to indicate some
point of dream-contact with the total race-experience
of shadowy seizure. It may be that profundities
of Self — abysses never reached by any ray from
the life of sun — are strangely stirred in slumber,
and that out of their blackness immediately re-
sponds a shuddering of memory, measureless even
by millions of years.
THE NEW MORALITY!
Some ten or twelve years ago a certain
young woman, then fresh from the hands of
an esteemed but erratic professor of English
literature, wrote a novel the plot of which
was roughly as follows. A college graduate
suddenly finds himself the inheritor of a
shoe factory in a New England town.
Filled with the benevolent ideas absorbed
in the academic contemplation of economics,
he undertakes to introduce profit-sharing
with his employees and otherwise to conduct
his business for the benefit of the community.
So far, good. But hard times follow, and his
competitors by lowering wages and reducing
labor are able to undersell him. Now there
is in his control a considerable sum of money
which a widow had entrusted to his father to
invest for her, and the question arises
whether he shall shut down his mills and
inflict suff"ering upon his men, or shall
divert this trust fund to his business and so
try to tide over the period of stress. He
yields to his sympathies and virtually-
embezzles the trust fund; but fails neverthe-
less, and with his own loss brings ruin upon
' From Aristocracy and fusticey Shelburne EssaySy
Ninth Series (191 5). Originally printed in The Un-
popular Review,
4So
PAUL ELMER MORE
tin- widow. The story was called The
Burdrn of Christophery with the implication
that the hero was a bearer of Christ in his
misfortune, and the author indicates pretty
clearly her sentiment that in surrendering
his personal integrity for the expected good
of his working people he was following the
higher of two conflicting codes of ethics.
The book no doubt has gone its ow^n way
to the "limbo large and broad," where the
heroes of ancient fiction wander with
Embryos and idiots, eremites and friars;
but it made a lasting impression on one
reader at least as the first popular presenta-
tion to come under his notice of a theory
which now^ confronts him wherever he turns
his eyes. There has, in fact, been an astonish-
ing divulgation in the past decade of what
is called, with magnificent audacity, the
New Morality.
Perhaps the most honored teacher of this
code is the mistress of Hull House, who by
her devoted life and her services to the people
of Chicago in various times of need has won
the right to speak with a certain authority
for the striving generation of the day. And
in one of her books, the Newer Ideals of
Peccey Miss Addams tells of an actual occur-
rence and infers a moral which points in the
same direction as the novel of Christopher.
A family of five children is left motherless.
The father, a drunkard, disappears, and the
household is left to the care of a feeble old
grandmother. Thereupon work is found for
the oldest boy, "a fine, manly little fellow"
of twelve, who feels keenly **his obligation
to care for the family." But after a time he
becomes "listless and indifferent," and at
sixteen turns to professional tramping. "It
was through such bitter lessons as these,"
observes Miss Addams, "we learned that
good intentions and the charitable impulse
do not always work for righteousness." As
the story is told there is a plain implication
that to find work for a boy under such
circumstances is "cruel and disastrous"
(her own comment), and that society, and
fjot his own nature, was responsible for his
relapse. One would suppose that scarcely
an honest workman, or prosperous merchant,
or successful professional man had ever
taken up the burden of a family in youth or
childhood. Doubtless hardships and waste
often come from the exigencies of life, but
there is not a single word in Miss Addams's
account to indicate that she has felt the
need of developing in the future citizen a
sensitiveness to the peculiar duties that will
confront him, or has reflected on the evil
that might have been done the boy if he
had been relieved of his natural obligations
and supported by society. "Our democracy,"
as she says with approval, "is making
inroads upon the family, the oldest of human
institutions."
This is not an isolated case in Miss Ad-
dams's works, nor does it in any wise
misrepresent her. In another book. The
Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, the
thesis is maintained and reiterated, that
crime is for the most part merely the result of
repressing a wholesome "love for excite-
ment" and "desire for adventure." In the
year 1909 "there were arrested and brought
into court [in Chicago] fifteen thousand
young people under the age of twenty, whc
had failed to keep even the common law of
the land. Most of these young people had
broken the law in their blundering efforts to
find adventure." The inference to be drawn
here and throughout the book is that one
need only relieve the youth of the land from
the necessity of "assuming responsibility
prematurely," affording them meanwhile
abundant amusement, and the instincts ol
lawlessness and the pursuit of criminal
pleasure will vanish, or almost vanish, of
themselves — as if there were no Harry
Thaws^ and the sons of the rich were all
virtuous.
But it must not be supposed that Hull
House occupies a place of lonely isolation
as the fountain of these ideas. From every
self-authorized center of civic virtue in which
a typewriter is at work, the stream pro-
ceeds. The very presses groan, as we used to
say when those machines were still in the
mythological stage, at their labor of supply-
ing the world with the new intellectual
pabulum. At this moment there lies before
the writer of this essay a pile of books, all
recently published, which are devoted more
or less specifically to the subject, and from
all of which, if he had courage to go through
them, he might cull abundant examples and
' The murderer of Stanford White, the architect.
THE NEW MORALITY
481
quotations. He was, indeed, about to enter
this "hollow cave, amid the thickest woods,"
when, an unvaliant knight, he heard the
warning of the lady Una:
Yea but (quoth she) the perill of this place
I better wot then you, though now too late
To wish you backe returne with foule disgrace.
Yet wisedome warnes, whilest foot is in the gate,
To stay the steppe, ere forced to retrate.
We have in fact to deal with the consumma-
tion of a long and deep-seated revolution,
and there is no better way to understand the
true character of the movement than by turn-
ing aside a moment to glance at its historical
sources. This attempt to find some basis of
conduct to take the place of the older concep-
tion of personal integrity, as we see it exempli-
fied in the works of Miss Jane Addams
and a host of other modern writers, is in
fact only one aspect of the slow drift from
medieval religion to humanitarianism. For
a thousand years and well into the second
thousand the ethical feeling of Christian
Europe may be said to have taken its color
from the saying, "What shall it profit a man,
if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his
own soul?" — which in extreme cases was
interpreted as if it read. If he reform the
whole world; and on the other, kindred say-
ing, "Sell all that thou hast and distribute
unto the poor, and thou shall have treasure
in heaven, and come, follow me" — in which
the command of charity was held to be not
so much for the benefit of the poor as for the
liberation of the giver's own soul from the
powers of this world. Such was the law, and
its binding force was confirmed by the
conception of a final day of wrath when the
souls of men should stand before a merciless
tribunal and be judged to everlasting joy
or everlasting torment. The vivid reality of
the fear that haunted men, at least in their
moments of reflection, may be understood
from the horrors of such a picture as Michael
Angelo's Last Judgment^ or from the medita-
tions of one of the most genial of English
cavaliers. In his little treatise on Man
in Darkness — appropriate title — Henry
Vaughan puts the frank question to him-
self:
And what madness then is it, for the enjoying
of one minute's pleasure for the satisfaction of our
sensual corrupt appetite, to lie forever in a bed of
burning brass, in the lake of eternal and unquench-
able fire? "Suppose," saith the same writer
IDrexelius], "that this whole globe of earth were
nothing else but a huge mass or mountain of sand,
and that a little wren came but once in every
thousand years to fetch away but one grain of that
huge heap; what an innumerable number of years
would be spent before that world of sand could be
so fetched away! And yet, alas! when the damned
have lain in that fiery lake so many years as all
those would amount to, they are no nearer coming
out than the first hour they entered in."
No doubt practice and precept were at
variance then, as to a certain extent they
are at all times, and there were many texts
in the Bible which might be taken to mitigate
the harsher commands; but such in its purest,
highest form was the law, and in the more
sensitive minds this conception of the soul
naked before a judging God must have
created a tremendous anxiety. Morality
was obedience and integrity; it scorned
the world for an ideal of inner righteousness;
it created a sense of individual I'esponsibility
for every word and deed; and, say what we
will, there is something magnificent in this
contempt for the reckoning of other men
beside that eternal fame which
. . . lives and speaks aloft by those pure eyes.
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove.
But there was also in this law something
repellent and even monstrous. Who has not
shuddered with amazement at the inscription
which Dante set over the portal of Hell:
E 'l primo amore? Was it Love that
prepared those winding coils of torture to
enclose for endless time the vast majority of
mankind? Was it even justice to make the
everlasting doom of a soul depend on its
grasp of truth in these few years spent in a
world of shadows and illusions? There is
something repulsively irrational in the notion
of an unchanging eternity suspended on the
action in a moment of time — ex hoc momenta
pendet crternitas. It should seem to be
unthinkable, if it had not actually been
thought. As a matter of fact the rigor and
crudity of this doctrine had been mitigated
in the Middle Ages by the interposition
between man and God of the very human
institution of the Church, with its sub-
stitution of temporal penances and pardons
and an interposed Purgatory in place of the
482
PAUL ELMER MORE
terrible paradox of irrevocable judgment.
It remained for the Reformation, and par-
ticularly for the Calvinistic Puritans, to
tear away those veils of compromise and
brinp; man face to face with the awful
abstraction he had created. The result
was for a while a great hardening and
strengthening of character, salutary indeed
after what may be called the almost hypo-
critical compromise of Catholicism; but in
the end human nature could not endure the
rigidity of its own logic, and in revolting
turned not to another compromise but to
questioning the very hypothesis of its faith.
The inevitable reaction from the intoler-
able logic of the Protestants was Deism, in
which God was stripped altogether of his
judicial and moral attributes and reduced to
a kind of immanent, all-benevolent force in
nature. "But now comes a modern Sage,"
says Warburton of Bolingbroke, "... who
tells us 'that they made the Basis of Religion
far too wide; that men have no further con-
cern with God than to believe that he is,
which his physical attributes make fully
manifest; but, that he is a rezvarder of them
who diligeyitly seek /am, Religion doth not
require us to believe, since this depends on
God's MORAL attributes, of which we have
no conception.'" But the deistic position
was manifestly untenable, for it left no place
for the undeniable existence of evil in this
world and life. From the unaccountable
distribution of wrong and suffering the
divine had 4irgued the certainty of adjust-
ment in a future state; the deist had flown in
the face of facts by retaining the belief in a
benevolent Providence while taking from it
the power of supernatural retribution; the
atheist was more logical, he denied the
existence of Providence altogether and
turned the universe over to chance or blind
law. Such was the progress of thought
from Baxter to Bolingbroke and from Bol-
ingbroke to Hume.
The positive consequences of this evolu-
tion are written large in the literature of
the eighteenth century. With the idea of
an avenging deity and a supernatural test
there disappeared also the sense of deep
personal responsibility; the very notion of a
radical and fundamental difference between
good and evil was lost. The evil that is
apparent in character comes to be regarded
merely as the result of the restraining and
thwarting institutions of society as these
exist — why, no one can explain. Envy anc'
jealousy and greed and the sheer lust of
power, all those traits which were summed up
in the single Greek word pleonexia, the desire
to have morey are not inherent in the human
heart, but are artificially introduced by
property and a false civilization. Change
these institutions or release the individual
entirely from restrictions, and his nature will
recoil spontaneously to its natural state of
virtue. He needs only follow the impulse
of his instinctive emotions to be sound and
good. And as a man feels of himself, so he
feels of others. There is no real distinction
between the good and the evil, but all are
naturally good and the superficial variations
we see are caused by the greater or less
freedom of development. Hence we should
condemn no man even as we do not con-
demn ourselves. There is no place for sharp
judgment, and the laws which impose
penalties and restrictions and set up false
discriminations between the innocent and
the criminal are subject to suspicion and
should be made as flexible as possible. In
place of judgment we are to regard all man-
kind with sympathy; a sort of emotional
solidarity becomes the one great virtue,
in which are included, or rather sunk, all the
law and the prophets.
It was the great work of the eighteenth
century, beginning in England and develop-
ing in France, to formulate this change
and indoctrinate with it the mind of the
unthinking masses. Here is not the place
to follow the development in detail, and
those who care to see its outcome may be
referred to the keen and unjustly neglected
chapters on the philosophes in La Harpe's
Lycee. To those, indeed, who are acquainted
with the philosophical writings that preceded
and introduced the French Revolution, the
epithet "new" as it is attached to our
present-day morality may seem a bit pre-
sumptuous; for it would be difficult to find
a single fundamental idea in current litera-
ture on this subject which could not be
closely paralleled by a quotation from
Rousseau, or Diderot, or Helvetius, or one of
their compeers. Thus, in our exaltation of
sympathy above judgment and of the un-
restrained emotions generally as the final
THE NEW MORALITY
483
rule of character, we are but following;
Diderot's philosophy of the heart: '' Les
passions amorties dcgradent les hommes ex-
traordinaire s'^\ and when we read in Ellen
Key and a host of other feminist libera-
tors the apotheosis of love as higher
than any divine or human obligations, we
are but meeting again with Toussaint's
religion a little disguised: "On aime de meme
Dieu et sa maitresse." Our revolt from con-
stitutional law as a power imposed by the
slower reflection of men upon their own im-
mediate desires and opinions is essentially
the same as the restlessness consecrated by
the French economistes in the phrase, **/
despotisme legal." And, to return whence
we began, the economics of Hull House
flow only too easily from Helvetius's defini-
tion of virtue as '*/ desir du bien public,'*
and from his more specific statement: "The
integrity which is related to an individual
or to a small society is not the true integrity;
integrity considered in relation to the public
is the only kind that really deserves and
'generally obtains the name."
Miss Addams herself has been disturbed
by these reminiscences. Thus she quotes
from one of the older humanitarians a
characteristic saying: "The love of those
whom a man does not know is quite as
elemental a sentiment as the love of those
whom a man does know," and repudiates it
as vague and unpractical beside the New
Morality. She ought to know, and may be
right; yet it is not easy to see wherein her
own ethics are any less vague when she de-
plores the act of a boy who goes to work for
his starving grandmother because in doing
so he is unfitting himself for future service to
society. And as for effectiveness, it might
seem that the French Revolution was a
practical result fairly equivalent in magni-
tude to what has been achieved by our
college settlements. But Miss Addams is by
no means peculiar in this assumption of
originality. Nothing is more notable in the
humanitarian literature of the day than the
feeling that our own age is severed from
the past and opens an entirely new epoch in
history. " The race has now crossed the great
divide of human history!" exclaims an
hysterical doctor of divinity in a book just
published. "The tendency of the long past
has been toward diversity^ that of the longer
future will be toward oneness. The change
in this stream of tendency is not a temporary
deviation from its age-long course — a new
bend in the river. It is an actual reversal
of the current, which beyond a peradventure
will prove permanent." To this ecstatic
watcher the sudden reversal took place at no
remote date, but yesterday; and by a
thousand other watchers the same miracle
is vociferously heralded. Beyond a perad-
venture! Not a little of this flattering as-
sumption is due to the blind and passionate
hope of the human heart clamoring against
the voice of experience. So many prophets
before now have cried out, looking at the
ever-flowing current of time, and having
faith in some Thessalian magic:
Ces saver e vices rerum.
.. . . Amnisque cucurrii
Non qua pronus erat}
So often the world has been disappointed;
but at last we have seen — beyond a perad-
venture. If the vicissitudes of fate have
not ceased, yet at least we have learned to
look with complacency on the very law of
mutation from which the eyes of men had
hitherto turned away in bewildered horror,
at last the stream has turned back upon its
sources, and change itself is carrying us no*
longer toward diversity, but toward the
consummation of a divine oneness.
But it would equally be an error to insist
too dogmatically on the continuity of the
present-day movement with that of the
eighteenth century; for one generation is
never quite as another. We must not forget
that for a hundred years or thereabout there
was a partial reaction against the doctrines
of the philosopheSy during which time the
terrors of the Revolution lay like a warning
nightmare in the imagination of the more
thoughtful men. A hundred years is a long
period for the memory to bridge, particularly
in a time when the historical sense has been
weakened. Superficially, too, the application
of the theory is in some respects different
from what it was; the law of social sym-
pathy has been developed into different
conceptions of socialism, and we have
devised fresh schemes for giving efficacy
to the immediate will of the people.
'Things have ceased from changing, and the river
from flowing as it was wont to do.
4«4
1\AUL ELMER MORE
Even deeper Is tlic change that has come
over the nttitiide of rehgious organizations
toward the movement. In the age of the
Revolution the Church, both Catholic and
IVotestant, was still strongly intrenched in
the old beliefs and offered a violent resistance
to the substitutions of humanitarianism for
responsibility to the priest and to God.
Now this last barrier has been almost swept
away. Indeed, not the least remarkable
feature of this literature is the number of
clergymen who are contributing to it, with
their constant appeal to the New Morality
as the test of faith. Open one of these
books before us — let us take The Christian
Reconstruction of Modern Life, for the
promise of its title — and you will be pretty
likely to come upon such a passage as this:
"Eaith's fellowship with Jesus is one with
the realization of our fellowship in human-
ity"; or, on another page: "If the fundamen-
tal of the true philosophy cannot be found
by common men, what advantage in any
man's finding it.^ If life's secret, direction,
and power ... is not attainable by the
lowliest, then a man of this age, living in the
social passion of our time, is forced to be
indifferent to that which would be the mo-
nopoly of a few gifted souls." If such a
social passion means anything, it means
the reconstruction of life to the level of the
gutter. It is the modern sham righteousness
which would have called from Jesus the
same utter scorn as that which he poured
upon the Pharisaical cant of his own day.
Yet it is not in religious books alone that
you will meet with this sort of irreligion.
For one sermon you will hear on the obliga-
tion of the individual soul to its maker and
judge, and on the need of personal regenera-
tion and the beauty of holiness, you will
hear a score on the relation of a man to his
fellows and on the virtue of social sympathy.
In effect, the first and great commandment,
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart and with all thy soul and with all
thy mind," has been almost forgotten for
the second, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself." Worship in the temple is no
longer a call to contrition and repentance,
but an organized flattery of our human
nature, and the theological seminary is
fast becoming a special school for investigat-
ing poverty and spreading agnosticism. In
this sense, or degree, that humanitarianism
is no longer opposed by organized religion,
but has itself usurped the place of the
Church, the New Morality may really
justify its name.
What are the results of this glorification of
humanity.'' What does the New Morality
mean in life and conduct? Well, of such
matters it is wise to speak cautiously. The
actual morals of an age are an extremely
complicated and elusive network of facts,
and it is only too easy to generalize from
incomplete observation. On the other hand
we must guard against allowing ourselves
to be deceived by the fallacy everywhere
heard, that, because the preacher has
always, even from the remotest record of
Egypt, bewailed his own times as degenerate,
therefore no age has fallen off in morality
from its predecessor. Such an argument is a
complete non-sequitur: there have been
periods of degeneration, and there may yet
be. As for our own age, only a fool would
dogmatize; we can only balance and surmise.
And in the first place a certain good must
almost certainly be placed to the credit of
humanitarianism. It has softened us and
made us quicker to respond to the sufferings
of others; the direct and frightful cruelty
that runs through the annals of history like
a crimson line has been largely eliminated
from civilization, and with it a good deal of
the brutality of human nature. We some-
times hear the present age compared with
the later Roman Republic and the Empire,
and in some respects speciously, but the
callousness of the greater Romans to human
misery and their hardness are almost un-
thinkable to-day. Consider a sentence or
two from Appian: "The head and hand of
Cicero were suspended for a long time from
the rostra in the forum where formerly he
had been accustomed to make public
speeches, and more people came together
to behold this spectacle than had previously
come to listen to him. It is said that even
at his meals Antony placed the head of
Cicero before his table, until he became
satiated with the horrid sight." Such an
episode scarcely stands out from the hideous
story of the Civil W^ars; to the modern
reader it brings a feeling almost of physical
sickness. So much we seem to have gained,
and the change in this respect even from our
THE NEW MORALITY
48s
own seventeenth century shows that the
credit is clue in no small part to the general
trend of hunianitarianism.
But in other directions the progress is not
so clear. Statistics are always treacherous
witnesses, but so far as we can believe them
and interpret them we can draw no comfort
from the prevalence of crime and prostitu-
tion and divorce and insanity and suicide.
At least, whatever may be the cause of this
inner canker of society, our social passion
seems to be powerless to cure it. Some might
even argue that the preaching of any doc-
trine which minimizes personal responsibility
is likely to increase the evil. Certainly a
teacher who, like Miss Jane Addams,
virtually attributes the lawless and criminal
acts of our city hoodlums to a wholesome
desire of adventure which the laws un-
righteously repress, would appear to be
encouraging the destructive and sensual
proclivities which are too common in human
nature, young and old. Nor are the ways of
honesty made clear by a well-known humani-
tarian judge of Denver, who refused to
punish a boy for stealing a Sunday-school
teacher's pocketbook, for the two good
reasons, as his honor explained in a public
address, ''that the boy was not responsible
and, secondly, that there were bigger thieves
in the pews upstairs." So, too, a respectable
woman of New York who asks whether it
may not be a greater wrong for a girl to
submit to the slavery of low wages than to
sell herself in the street, is manifestly not
helping the tempted to resist. She is even
doing what she can with her words to con-
fuse the very bounds of moral and physical
evil.
There is, in fact, a terrible confusion
hidden in the New Morality, an ulcerous
evil that is ever working inward. Sympathy,
creating the desire for even-handed justice,
is in itself an excellent motive of conduct,
and the stronger it grows, the better the
world shall be. But sympathy, spoken with
the word "social" prefixed, as it commonly
is on the platforms of the day, begins to
take on a dangerous connotation. And
"social sympathy" erected into a theory
which leaves out of account the responsi-
bility of the individual and seeks to throw
the blame of evil on the laws and on society,
though it may effect desirable reforms here
and there in institutions, is bound to leave
the individual weakened in his powers of
resistance against the temptations which can
never be eliminated from human life. The
whole effect of calling sympathy justice and
putting it in the place of judgment is to relax
the fiber of character and nourish the pas-
sions at the expense of reason and the will.
And undoubtedly the conviction is every day
gaining ground among cool observers of our
life that the manners and morals of the
people are beginning to suffer from this
relaxation in many insidious ways apart
from acts which come into the cognizance
of the courts. The sensuality of the pre-
vailing music and dancing, the plays that
stir the country as organs of moral regenera-
tion, the exaggeration of sex in the clothing
seen in the street, are but symptoms more or
less ominous to our mind as we do or do not
connect them with the regnant theory of
ethics. And in the end this form of social
sympathy may itself quite conceivably
bring back the brutality and cruelty from
which it seems to have delivered us. The
Roman who gloated over the head of his
and the people's enemy lived two thousand
years ago, and we think such bloodthirstiness
is no longer possible in public life. Yet
not much more than a century ago the
preaching of social sympathy could send a
Lebon and his kind over France with an
insatiable lust for killing, complicated with
Sadism, while in Paris the leader of the
government of the most civilized country
of Europe was justifymg such a regime on
the pious principle that, "when the sovereign
people exercises its power, we can only bow
before it; in all it does all is virtue and
truth, and no excess, error, or crime is pos-
sible." The animal is not dead within us,
but only asleep. If you think he has been
really conquered, read what he has been
doing in Congo and to the Putumayo
Indians, or among the redeemers of the
Balkan States. Or if you wish to get a
glimpse of what he may yet do under the
spur of social sympathy, consider the cal-
lous indifference shown by the labor unions
to the revelation, if it deserves the name, of
the system of dynamiting and murder
employed in the service of "class-con-
sciousness." These things are to be taken
into account, not as bugbears, for society
486
PAUL KLMKR MORp:
at larj;c is no doubt soiiiul at heart and will
arouse itself at last against its false teachers,
but as syniptt>nis to warn and prepare.^
To some few the only way out of what
seems a state of moral blindness is through
a return to an acknowledgment of the re-
sponsibility of the individual soul to its
maker and inflexible judge. They may be
right. Who can tell what reversal of belief
may lie before us or what religious revolu-
tion may be preparing in the heart of in-
fidelity? Hut for the present, at least, that
supernatural control has lost its general
efficacy and even from the pulpit has only
a slight and intermittent appeal. Nor does
such a loss appear w'ithout its compensations
when we consider the harshness of medieval
theology or the obliquities of superstition
that seem to be inherent in the purest of
religions. Meanwhile, the troubled in-
dividual, whatever his skepticism may be,
need not be withheld from confirming his
moral faith by turning from the perverted
doctrine of the "Enlightenment" and
from its recrudescence in modern humani-
tarianism to a larger and higher philosophy.
P'or there is a faith which existed long before
the materialism of the eighteenth century
and before the crude earlier anthropomor-
phism, and which persisted unchanged,
though often half-concealed, through those
ages and still persists as a kind of shamefast
inheritance of truth. It is not necessary to
go to ancient books to recover that faith.
Let a man cease for a moment to look so
strenuously upon what is right for his
neighbors. Let him shut out the voices of
the world and disregard the stream of in-
forming books which pour upon him from
the modern press, as the "floud of poyson"
was spewed upon Spenser's Knight from
"Errours den":
Mcr fruitful cursed spawne of serpents small.
Let him retire into himself, and in the
silence of such recollection examine his
own motives and the sources of his self-
approval and discontent. He will discover
there in that dialogue with himself, if his
> All this was written and printed, I need scarcely
say, before the outbreak of the Kuropean war. I
should not to-day refer to the Congo and the Putu-
mayo Indians for the savagery underlying civilization.
(Author's note.)
abstraction is complete and sincere, that his
nature is not simple and single, but dual,
and the consequences to him in his judgment
of life and in his conduct will be of incal-
culable importance. He will learn, with a
conviction which no science or philosophy
falsely so-called can shake, that beside
the passions and wandering desires and
blind impulses and the cravings for pleasure
and the prod of sensations there is some-
thing within him and a part of him, rather
in some way his truer self, which controls
and checks and knows and pronounces
judgment, unmoved amid all motion, un-
changed amid continual change, of ever-
lasting validity above the shifting valu-
ations of the moment. He may not be
able to express this insight in terms that
will satisfy his own reason or will convince
others, but if his insight is true he will not
waver in loyalty to it, though he may sin
against it times without number in spoken
word and impulsive deed. Rather, his
loyalty will be confirmed by experience.
For he will discover that there is a happiness
of the soul which is not the same as the
pleasure of fulfilled desires, whether these
be for good or for ill, a happiness which is
not dependent upon the results of this or
that choice among our desires, but upon
the very act itself of choice and self-control,
and which grows with the habit of staying
the throng of besetting and conflicting
impulses always until the judicial fiat has
been pronounced. It is thus that happiness
is the final test of morality, bringing with it
a sense of responsibility to the supernatural
command within the soul of the man him-
self, as binding as the laws of religion and
based on no disputable revelation or outer
authority. Such a morality is neither old nor
new, and stands above the varying customs
of society. It is not determined essentially
by the relation of a man to his fellows or by
their approval, but by the consciousness of
tightness in the man's own breast, — in a
word, by character. Its works are temper-
ance, truth, honesty, trustworthiness, forti-
tude, magnanimity, elevation; and its
crown is joy.
Then, under the guidance of this intuition,
a man may turn his eyes upon the world
with no fear of being swayed by the ephem-
eral winds of doctrine. Despite the clamor
SPIRIT AND POETRY OF EARLY NEW ENGLAND
487
of the hour he will know that the ohligation
to society is not the primal law and is not
the source of personal integrity, but is
secondary to personal integrity. He will
believe that social justice is in itself desir-
able, but he will hold that it is far more im-
portant to preach first the responsibility of
each man to himself for his own character.
He wdl admit that equality of opportunity
is an ideal to be aimed at, but he will think
this a small thing in comparison with the
universality of duty. In his attitude toward
mankind he will not deny the claims of
sympathy, but he will listen first to the
voice of judgment:
Away with charity that soothes a lie,
And thrusts the truth with scorn and anger by.
He will be sensitive to the vast injustices of
life and its widespread sorrows, but he will
not be seduced by that compassion into the
hypocrisy of saying that "the love of those
whom a man does not know is quite as
elemental a sentiment as the love of those
whom a man does know." Nor, in repudiat-
ing such a falsehood, will he, like the mistress
of Hull Hall, lose his power of discrimination
under the stress of "those vast and domi-
nant suggestions of a new peace and holi-
ness," that is "to issue forth from broken
human nature itself, out of the pathetic
striving of ordinary men." Rather, he will,
at any cost, strive to clear away the clouds of
cant, and so open his mind to the dictates
of the everlasting morality.
THE SPIRIT AND POETRY OF
EARLY NEW ENGLAND ^
The refuge of the Puritans on this side
of the ocean was not exactly a nest of
singing birds; but it had a character and self-
conscious spirit which sought expression in
verse as well as in sermons, and, at least, if
not poetical, it resounded with the psalmody
of the saints. In judging the strength and
weakness of those early poets, to grant them
the title by courtesy, we should remember
first of all that for the most part they be-
longed to the class who were leaders in
breaking away from the full current of
> From A New England Group and Others, Shelburrie
Essays, Eleventh Series (1921).
English life, and spoke for a people who
brought with them to these lands a civiliza-
tion rent and shorn by what rightly may be
called one of the huge mischances of history.
It is, I know, the teaching of a certain
school of scientific historians that the
changes of civilization are produced by large
impersonal laws under whose sway the will
of the individual sinks into insignificance.
1 hat theory is, perhaps, not quite so com-
mon now as it was a few years ago. And
surely, if any great event can be referred
to the character of individual men, it was the
crime of the seventeenth century in England,
with its consequent train of evils. In that
month of spring in the year 1603 when
James Stuart was riding south to take up
his crown in London, a prophetic eye might
have foreseen the troubles he and his son
were to cause. On the way the so-called
Millenary Petition was presented to him
by a band of moderate and conforming
Puritans, who desired only a few unimpor-
tant changes in the service and Prayer
Book; one of the first acts of James at
Hampton Court was to deny the Petition
and to abuse the petitioners with a threat to
"harry them out of the land." After that
the history of England for two generations
was a series of ifs, depending on the actions
of a small group of men. Thus, if Prince
Henry, with his objection to a Catholic
marriage, had not imprudently overheated
himself on the tennis court, and so left the
throne to his brother Charles; if Charles at
the beginning of his reign had not been bribed
to accept the Petition of Right and so to
bind his hands; if Wentworth had been
kept in England to raise a standing army,
instead of being called back from Ireland
when too late, and if Henrietta Maria by
meddling with the soldiers had not brought
him to the scaffold; if Charles had married
a Protestant instead of a Bourbon princess;
if he had chosen a wiser prelate than Laud;
if he had not attempted to seize the five
members of Parliament, or had planned the
attempt more secretly; if the navy had not
been wantonly alienated; — If, in a word,
James and Charles had not been at once so
obstinate and so weak, either they might
have succeeded in establishing, for a time
at least, a monarchy like that raised in
France on the ruin of the Fronde and the
4SS
PAUL ELMER MORE
Reformation, or tlicy niit^lit have ^uiidetl
their people through a bloodless and healthy-
revolution. Hut for the fanaticisni of the
King tiie opposing fanaticisni of iVin and
Lilburne and Cromwell would never have
come to the top, crushing between them
the moderate men who were the real
strength and, in the end, the salvation of
England. And so I, for one, cannot look
back upon that period without shuddering
at its passion of violent extremes, and with-
out a feeling of amazement that so much
evil in the world can be traced to the temper
of a few fanatics who, by the whim of For-
tune, had the destiny of the English people
in their hands.
Old England, though her richer and com-
pleter development was perhaps forever
marred by the harsh divisions of that age,
did nevertheless in a manner quickly shake
herself into balance. But we must remember
that the New England colonists, driven from
their homes by the Laudian persecution,
came almost exclusively from one of the
national factions. They did not bring with
them the full temper of the English people,
or even that part of its character which
has given us Chaucer and Shakespeare
and Dryden and Swift and Johnson and By-
ron and Tennyson. Their poetry therefore
must be criticized, not as belonging to the
main current of English literature, but as a
slender branch, so to speak, running to one
side, and deprived of the broader nourish-
ment of tradition. It is the prolongation of
a mood that had been tortured into excess
by the goading stings of Accident; nor must
we forget that at home under the sway of
this same mood the imagination was dis-
trusted, the theaters were closed, the picture
collections of Charles dispersed or destroyed,
the churches made barren of their beauty,
the courtly poets silenced or driven into
obscure places — that the land was for a time,
in the language of Strafford, "frequent in
combustions, full of massacres and the
tragical ends of princes.'*
It would be unjust, of course, to say that
with this iconoclasm all the charm of life
was banished by the Puritans. Even
leaving out of account the supreme achieve-
ment of Milton, no one can go through the
writings of these men without finding pas-
sages that have a grace entirely their own.
One recalls, for instance, the scene in
Bunyan's pilgrimage, when Christian, having
twice climbed the Hill Difficulty, comes to
the Palace Beautiful, and is there enter-
tained by the maidens Piety, Prudence, and
Charity. "Thus they discoursed together
till late at night," the narrative proceeds,
"and after they had committed themselves
to their Lord for protection, they betook
themselves to rest. The Pilgrim they laid
in a large upper chamber, whose window
opened towards the sunrising; the name of
the chamber was Peace, where he slept till
break of day; and then he awoke and sang."
I shall not repeat the words of the Pilgrim's
song, for Bunyan, with all his genius, endured
the confinement of Bedford Gaol better than
the shackles of rhyme; but no candid reader
will fail to respond to the peculiar beauty of
that chamber of peace. In this chastened
loveliness, won by the exclusion of a whole
half of life, the Puritan literature is not
wanting. One foresees in it much that long
afterwards will charm the ear in the poems of
Longfellow and Whittier.
And in one respect the Puritans brought no
diminution to the field of art and literature,
but effected rather a return to the main
line of tradition from which England for a
while had been partially diverted by the
seductions of the Renaissance. I mean that
sense of something central and formative
in man, of character as distinguished from
the mere portrayal of unrelated passions,
which was so lamentably lacking in most of
the dramatists, and which since the advent
of Puritanism has been the chief honor of
British letters. With this subject I have
already dealt at some length in the preceding
series of these essays^ — as in fact I have
touched here and there on the various other
origins of the New England spirit — and need
not repeat the argument; but it is highly
important to remember this positive side of
Puritanism when reckoning up the devastat-
ing effects of its rigid and combative morality
on the imagination.
Now the very conditions of existence in
New England exaggerated the seclusions of
the half-civilization which the people brought
over with them in their exile. Not only were
the colonists withdrawn from contact with
I In the essay on Beaumont and Fletcher, in With the
Wits, Shelburne Essays, Tenth Series.
SPIRIT AND POETRY OF EARLY NEW ENGLAND
489
the secular tradition wiiicli makes itself so
deeply felt in the art of a Milton, but the
inevitable hardships of their state intensified
their belief that life is a perpetual battle
with the powers of evil, to whom no conces-
sion must be granted. In the dark unre-
deemed forests that surrounded them there
lurked tribes of savage people whose ap-
pearance and habits were such as to war-
rant the notion that here indeed Satan
was unchained and held undisputed sway.
One of the first voyagers to the new conti-
nent, William Strachey, carried back this
report of devil worship to credulous ears.
*'There is yet in Virginia," he wrote in 1618,
"no place discovered so savadge and simple,
in which the inhabitants have not a religion
and the use of bow and arrows. All things
they conceive able to do them hurt beyond
their prevention, they adore with their kind
of divine worship, as the fire, water, light-
ning, thunder, ourj ordinaunce pieces,
horses, etc.\ but their chief god they wor-
ship is no other, indeed, than the devill,
whom they make presentments of, and
shadow under the form of an idol, which they
entitle Okeus." Naturally the settlers,
looking out into the infinite wilderness, saw
visi®ns of dread and heard sounds of preter-
natural portent. Even the redoubtable
Captain John Smith was suflficiently troubled
to express his apprehensions in doggerel
rhyme: . ,
But his waking mind in hideous dreams did oft see
wondrous shapes
Of bodies strange, and huge in growth, and of stu-
pendous makes.
This may have been a passing sentiment
in Virginia, but in Massachusetts it became a
rooted conviction. It is the excuse, if any
excuse be possible, for the wild delusion of
witchcraft that for a time drove the leaders
of Boston and Salem into a mania of fear
and persecution. **The New Englanders,"
wrote Cotton Mather, **are a people of
God settled in those which were once the
devil's territories. ... An army of devils is
horribly broke in upon the place which is the
center and, after a sort, the first-born of our
English settlements; and the houses of the
good people there are fill'd with the doleful
shrieks of their children and servants,
tormented by invisible hands, with tortures
altogether preternatural." If we were dis-
cussing the prose of America as well as the
poetry, we should find in the after-effects of
this superstition, this deisidaimonia in the
true sense of the word, turned now from a
religious conviction into a kind of haunting
mood of the imagination, the sources of
Hawthorne's dark psychology and no small
part of that awe which Thoreau felt in the
presence of the mountains and lonely forests.
Meanwhile we can see something of its
influence in contracting the poetry of the
colonists within still narrower bounds of
religious sentiment. The first volume
printed in this country was the Bay Psahn
Booky translated from the Hebrew by
Richard Mather, Thomas Welde, and John
Eliot in 1640. In the preface Mather made
this candid statement: "If therefore the
verses are not alwaies so smooth and elegant
as some may desire or expect, let them con-
sider that God's altar needs not poUishings."
And indeed the polishings are conspicuous
by their absence, as any specimen of this
notable book will show. For instance, the
great nineteenth Psalm is thus rendered for
the satisfaction of the faithful:
The heavens doe declare
The majesty of God:
also the firmament shows forth
his handy-work abroad.
Day speaks to day, knowledge
night hath to night declar'd.
There neither speach nor language is
where their voyce is not heard.
It would not be easy outside of Puritans
to find a great religion divesting itself so
heroically not only of the smoothness and
elegance but of the manifold traditions of
life. But if the oracles of God were thus
delivered through the nose, they could con-
vey the menace of wrath as well as the up-
liftings of holiness. Perhaps the best known
of the early New England poets is that Michael
Wigglesworth who, for one fearless theolog-
ical line, has obtained a kind of immortality
in obloquy. Possibly a few of my re.iders
will be unacquainted with Master Wiggles-
worth's picture of the terrors of the damned,
when God at the Day of Doom has pro-
nounced judgment upon them, and a merci-
ful Christ has begun to consume the universe
in fire:
490
PAl L ELMER MORE
1 lu-n niiulit \t)ii In at tluin rcnii and tear
IIk- air with tluir oiitcriis;
1 he hideous noise of their sad voice
Asccndcth to the skies.
They wrinj^ their hands, their caitifF-hands,
And gnash their teeth fbr terror;
They cry, they roar, for anguish sore,
And gnaw their tongues for horror.
But get away without delay;
Christ pities not your cry:
Depart to hell, there you may yell
And roar eternally.
With iron hands they bind their hands
And cursed feet together;
And cast them all, both great and small,
Into that lake forever;
Where day and night, without respite,
They wail and cry and howl,
For torturing pain which they sustain,
In body and in soul.
For day and night, in their despite,
Their torment's smoke ascendeth;
Their pain and grief have no relief,
Their anguish never endeth.
There must they lie and never die.
Though dying every day;
There must they, dying, ever lie,
And not consume away.
Say what one will, there is a grim sincerity
in these lines which lifts them out of the
commonplace and gives them something of
the rmg of poetry; and after all, if you are
going to depict an eternal hell, there's no use
in being finicky about the benevolence of
your deity. It is only when our prophet of
the New World vouchsafes to make con-
cessions to human sympathy that he be-
comes odious. You know the words with
which the Almighty Judge is supposed to
condemn the little pleading souls of un-
baptized infants:
You sinners are, and such a share
As sinners, may expect;
Such you shall have, for I do save
None but mine own elect.
Yet to compare your sin with their
Who lived a longer time,
I do confess yours is much less,
Though every sin's a crime.
A crime it is; therefore in bliss
You may not hope to dwell;
But unto you I shall allow
The easiest ''oora in hell.
W'e shudder at that concession, *'the
easiest room in hell"; it really is odious.
And yet, again, if we are to permit logic to
deal with these matters, what possible dif-
ference does it make whether those chosen
by God of His own free will for eternal
damnation pass into this state after a few
days of life or after many years? In either
case their evil fate was imposed upon them
at their birth. The only condemnation we
can pronounce upon Wigglesworth is that,
having allowed his natural human emotions
to enter into the question at all, he stopped
short halfway and did not revolt from the
whole logical scheme of Calvinistic theology.
I am disposed to feel a certain respect for
this doggerel Dante of the New England
meeting-house; though his power of expres-
sion was crude, there is in him, as in Jonathan
Edwards and others of the line, an appalling
energy and straightforwardness of the
imagination. And if a late New Englander,
Oliver Wendell Holmes, thought no decent
man could really hold the doctrine of free
grace and election without going mad, we
must remember that Wigglesworth spoke the
honest and deep-rooted conviction of his
contemporaries — and they were not mad.
And there is this, too, to be said for his un-
flinching sense of the awful consequences of
sin, that it bears on the actual problems of
life. One recalls that story of a farmer of the
present day who was asked by a troubled
clergyman why the village churches were
left empty, and who replied with Yankee
candor and shrewdness: "Wall, sir, I callate
it is about like this: since you preachers have
stopped preaching hell fire, we country folk
have made up our minds that we might as
well take our chances on t'other world."
But if the older theological taste had about
it a prevailing odor of the pit, we must not
infer that life in the colonies, gray in color
though it may have been, was entirely bleak
and without those chambers toward the
sunrise. Much of the verse produced may
have been of the kind described by Captain
Edward Johnson:
From silent night true Register of moans.
From saddest soul consum'd in deepest sin.
From heart quite rent with sighs and heavy groans,
My wailing muse her woful work begins.
And to the world brings tunes of sad lament,
Sounding naught else but sorrow's sad relent — .
SPIRIT AND POETRY OF EARLY NEW ENGLAND
491
Much of the verse produced was of this
nasal quahty; but not all. Cotton Mather,
he of the witchcraft fame, tells of a certain
friend whose custom it was, "when he first
arose in the morning, to repair into his
study: a study well perfumed with the
meditations and supplications of an holy
soul." Can any scholar to-day hear that
sentence without a thrill of envy at the
thought of the long uninterrupted hours
which those old divines contrived to pass in
the earnest and unrepentant searching of
mighty books? Ah, that study well perfumed
with the meditations and supplications of an
holy soul — how many a student of our age,
distracted by the multitude of conflicting
intellectual interests, disturbed by doubts
of the value of learning in itself, when he
enters his work-room of a morning, can
breathe that atmosphere of assured content,
as it were the palpable memory greeting him
of similar days past? And this quiet satis-
faction of a life devoted to retired scholar-
ship and public teaching found due expres-
sion in literature. Nothing is more character-
istic of the prose and poetry of the day
than the innumerable eulogies of good men
and women, to some of which the pax
theologica lends an element of passionate
sincerity. One of the best known of these
is Urian Oakes's Elegy on the Death of Thomas
Shepard, a saintly minister of Charlestown,
who died in 1677. A few of the concluding
stanzas will indicate the quality of the piece:
If to have solid judgment, pregnant parts,
A piercing wit, and comprehensive brain;
If to have gone the round of all the arts.
Immunity from death could gain; . . .
If holy life, and deeds of charity,
If grace illustrious, and virtue tried,
If modest carriage, rare humility,
Could have bribed Death, good Shepard had not
died. . . .
Farewell, dear Shepard! Thou art gone before,
Made free of heaven, where thou shalt sing loud
hymns
Of high triumphant praises evermore,
In the sweet choir of saints and seraphims. . . .
My dearest, inmost, bosom-friend is gone!
Gone is my sweet companion, soul's delight!
Now in an huddling crowd I'm all alone,
And almost could bid all the world^Good-night.
Blest be my Rock! God lives; O let him be.
As He is All, so All in All to me!
We need not magnify the virtues of such
an elegy as this, which would in fact appear
poor enough if compared with Mdton's
superb lines on the reception of Edward
King into the
. . . solemn troops, and sweet societies,
That sing, and singing in their glory move,
or with Cowley's learned lament for his
Cambridge companion in philosophy. Yet
we shall miss the truth if we fail to discover
in Oakes's less polished muse the charm of a
friendship built upon a sure sympathy in
the hopes of the spirit. As he himself wrote
in one of the Latin verses whose elegance
won the applause of his contemporaries,
Parvum parva decent, sed inest sua gratia
parvis.^
From these by-products of the theological
laboratory we may turn aside to say some-
thing of the first and most ambitious of the
professional poets of the age, the stupendous
Anne Bradstreet, whose volume of verse
was heralded to the world with this over-
whelming title-page:
The Tenth Muse lately sprung up in America;
or Several Poems, compiled with great variety of wit
and learning, full of delight; wherein especially is
contained a complete discourse and description of the
four elements, constitutions, ages of man, seasons of
the year; together with an exact epitome of the four
monarchies, viz., the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian,
Roman; also, a dialogue between Old England and
New concerning the late troubles; with divers other
pleasant and serious poems. By a gentlewoman in
those parts. Printed at London, for Stephen Bow-
tell, at the sign of the Bible, in Pope's Head Alley,
1650.
Well, Mistress Anne was in sooth a mem-
orable and characteristic figure of the
New World. Though born and married in
England, she migrated at the early age of
eighteen to this country, and through her
children became the fountain head of one of
rhe purest streams of the so-called Brahmin-
ism. One of her descendants was Richard
Henry Dana, another Oliver Wendell
1 Small things beseem the small man, but small
things bring their own si'tisfaction.
4^)2
PAUL ELMER MORE
HoliiU'S. John Norton of Ilin^liam, ancestor
of the present Nortons and Adamses, whose
Hne also was to intermarry with the EHots,
gave vent to his admiration of the dead
poetess in resoundmg couplets:
Virtue ne'er dies: time will a poet raise,
Born under better stars, shall sinji thy praise.
Praise her who list, yet he shall be a debtor;
For Art ne'er feigned nor Nature framed, a better.
Her virtues were so great, that they do raise
A work to trouble fame, astonish praise.
I do not know that time has yet raised a
poet to celebrate her works to the taste of the
pastor of Hingham, but one of his descend-
ants, the late Charles Eliot Norton, edited
the poems of the matchless gentlewoman,
and in his introduction wrote of her character
in his most genial vein.
All, indeed, that we know of Anne Brad-
street from contemporary sources and
from her own autobiographical sketch
justifies us in revering her as one of those
large-minded women of the seventeenth
century who managed somehow, in ways
that seem inexplicable to their daughters, to
combine the manifold cares of a household
with indefatigable study and sober un-
hurried reflection. But the outpourings of
her muse, it must be acknowledged, remind
us too forcibly of one of her own aphorisms:
"A ship that bears much sail, and little or no
ballast, is easily overset.'* She is seen per-
haps at her best in such stanzas as these:
I heard the merry grasshopper then sing,
The black-clad cricket bear a second part,
They kept one tune, and played on the same string,
Seeming to glory in their little art.
Shall creatures abject thus their voices raise?
And in their kind resound their Maker's praise:
Whilst I, as mute, can warble forth no higher lays.
When I behold the heavens as in their prime.
And then the earth (though oldj still clad in
green,
The stones and trees, insensible of time,
Nor age nor wrinkle on their front are seen;
If winter come, and greenness then do fade,
A spring returns, and they more youthful made;
But man grows old, lies down, remains where once
he's laid.
0 Time, the fatal wrack of mortal things,
1 hat draws oblivion's curtains over kings.
Their sumptuous monuments, men know them not,
Their names without a record are forgot,
Their parts, their ports, their pomps all laid in
th' dust.
Nor wit, nor gold, nor buildings 'scape time's rust;
But he whose name is grav'd in the white stone
Shall last and shine when all of these are gone.
Professor Barrett Wendell, who quotes
these stanzas, remarks aptly that in seven-
teenth-century New England the author
"stands alone, without forerunners or
followers; and if you compare her poetry
with that of the old country, you will find it
very much like such then antiquated work
as the Nosce Teipsum of Sir John Davies,
published in 1599, the year which gave us
the final version of Romeo and Juliet.'' The
female prodigy of New England, in fact,
belongs to that strain of literary Puritan-
ism which is more distinctly British than
American, and which was already becoming
outworn in the old home.
The names of Mrs. Bradstreet's more
poetical descendants serve to remind us how
intimately all this New England society was
knit together, and how its spirit was handed
down from generation to generation as a
kind of family possession. Her own con-
temporary fame may call our attention to
the fact that women played no inconsider-
able part in creating the peculiar tone of the
New World literature. And their influence
was felt in two ways. In the first place that
sturdiness and uprightness of character,
which was one of the great, the very great,
compensations of Puritanism, not only made
itself heard in the eulogies pronounced over
those who died in the harness of virtue, but
was active in the family relations of the liv-
ing. Saintliness, I know, does not invariably
make for comfort. Sometimes the Puritan
hardness of character dominated too tyran-
nically the softer traits of affection and com-
pliance, bringing what might be called a
desolation of sanctity into the home. But
there were other households — and these I
believe the majority — in which the tender-
ness to every duty, the sense of due subordi-
nation, the competence of training, the
repose of a clear conscience, must have
evoked an atmosphere of serene and equi-
table joy. The very discipline of the passions,
the renunciation of the w^ider sweep of human
experience, would put a stamp of sacredness
on those chaster pleasures which knit a
family together in contented unison. In a
SPIRIT AND POETRY OF EARLY NEW ENGLAND
493
way all of New England may be said to have
been snow-bound, in creed as well as in
climate, but in the shelter of the hearth
there was warmth for the body and there
was comfort for the soul. Whittier was
recalling a true incident of his childhood,
and was writing also an allegory of New
England's inner life, when he described that
night of storm and snow:
Shut in from all the world without.
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north-wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat.
One can find in the older literature abun-
dant evidence of these protected comforts
of the home. Take for instance Cotton
Mather's life of John Eliot. There, if
anywhere, you have one of the stalwarts.
So diligent was Eliot in study that he took
to sleeping in his library, in order that he
might get to his beloved books at some
unearthly hour in the morning without dis-
turbing the household. So fervid was he in
piety that he is described as *' perpetually
'jogging the wheel of prayer.'" Now the
habit of perpetually jogging the wheel of
prayer does not, I admit, sound alluring
to our modern unsanctified ears; the ap-
pearance of a reverend jogger in our parlor
would probably cause a little constraint, but
then — other times other manners. And of
Eliot we are assured by his biographer that
"he was indeed sufficiently pleasant and
witty in company, and he was affable and
facetious in conversation." His affability, I
doubt not, was only a part of the large
charity of his nature. When an old man he
said to one who questioned him about his
state: "Alas, I have lost everything; my
understanding leaves me, my memory fails
me, my utterance fails me; but, I thank God,
my charity holds out still; I find that rather
grows than fails!" And his charity and
affability, as well as his prayerfulness, were
exercised at home, as sometimes in this
strange world they are not. Of his relations
with his wife it is said: "His whole conversa-
tion with her had that sweetness^ and that
gravity and modesty beautifying it, that
every one called them Zachary and Eliza-
beth." The biographer continues: "God
made her a rich blessing, not only to her
familyy but also to her neighbor Iwod; and
when she died, I heard and saw her aged
husband, who else very rarely wept, yet
now with tears over the coffin, before the
good people, a vast confluence of which were
come to her funeral, say, 'Here lies my dear,
faithful, pious, prudent, prayerful wife;
I shall go to her, and she not return to me.'"
These are the commonplaces of life, you
may think, and perhaps they are, although
I am not sure that peace and self-control
are ever quite commonplace; but it is
just these softer aspects of the old New Eng-
land that we are likely to forget.
Now in the making of this home spirit the
woman naturally played an important role.
Thomas Shepard, for example, he whose
own elegy was sung so enthusiastically by
Urian Oakes, had written a Character of
Mistress Joanna Shepardy his wife, wherein
he had portrayed her as "a woman of in-
comparable meekness of spirit, toward my-
self especially, and very loving; of great pru-
dence to take care for and order my family
affairs, being neither too lavish nor sordid in
anything, so that I knew not what was
under her hands. She had an excellency to
reprove sin, and discern the evils of men."
Incomparable meekness of spirit may not be
precisely the sort of eulogy a modern wife
would desire in her epitaph, however some
husbands might desire it in her life — but,
again, other times other manners. And if
one is inclined to shudder a little at the
thought of her excellency to reprove sin and
discover the evils of men, one may suspect
that this sharp-edged knowledge was useful
in protecting her bookish and busy husband
from the inroads of fraudulent beggars and
evil mischief-makers. At any rate one may
be certain that the house of Mistress Joanna
Shepard much resembled the Palace Beauti-
ful of Bunyan, where the maidens Piety,
Prudence, and Charity kept watch and ward,
and where there was a large upper chamber
of peace whose window opened toward the
sunrising. Certainly also the peaceful
affections of home, the cool and quiet places
of rest out of the turmoil of the world's
contentions, came to be a marked trait of
New England literature. There are traces of
it in the early poets; in the works of Whittier
and Longfellow it was to blossom into some-
404
PAUL ELMER MORE
thlnp; exceedingly precious, however it may
lack the more dazzling qualities of the
imagination. The other side of this truth
is that you will find no love poetry, as the
word is commonly understood, in those
primitive days — at least I know of none —
and there is a minimum of it in the later age.
That is an extraordinary fact, when you
stop to think of it, and to some may seem a
sad lack. Let such critics turn elsewhere;
heaven knows the erotic Muse has been
vocal enough in other sections of the world.
For my part I still prefer James Russell
Lowell's Under the fFtllozi's to the self-
advertised passion of a certain living poetess
who bears his family name.
[• That was one way in which the influence
of women was felt. In another way they
brought not peace but conflict into colonial
life. The orthodoxy of the New England
church was of a hard Calvinistic hue; it
was eminently logical and intellectual, the
creation and delight of strong men who,
however they may have been possessed by a
"boiling zeal" for saving souls, yet, like
John Cotton, thought twelve hours of con-
tinuous study a "scholar's day" and true
service to God. Against the virility, and
one must add rigidity, of this religious domin-
ion there were inevitably, almost from the
beginning, movements of revolt. And it was
natural that the good women of the colony
should be conspicuous in rebellion as well as
in meekness. Not all the great men of the
land were as fortunate in their helpmates as
were Thomas Shepard and John Eliot. In
Winth top's History of New England from
16^0 to i64g there is an amusing story of one
woman to whom much, and not a little,
learning was a dangerous thing. "Mr.
Hopkins, the governor of Hartford upon
Connecticutt," we there read, "came to
Boston, and brought his wife \\'\t\\ him (a
godly woman, and of special parts), who was
fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her
understanding and reason, which had been
growing upon her divers years, by reason of
her giving herself wholly to reading and
writing, and had written many books. Her
husband, being very lovmg and tender of her,
was loath to grieve her; but he saw his error,
when it was too late. For if she had attended
her household aflfairs, and such things as
belong to women, and not gone out of her
way and calling to meddle in such things as
are proper to men, w^hose minds are stronger,
etc.^ she had kept her wits." I do not know
by what stages this learned lady fell into her
sad infirmity, but I suspect she betook her-
self to her books as a refuge from her spouse,
the worthy governor, of whom it is related
"that he frequently fell a bleeding at the
nose, through the agony of spirit with which
he labored in them [his prayers]." Neither
do I know w^hat was in her many books —
even the all-embracing Tyler does not
mention them — but my guess is that she
wrote verse and tampered with the man-
made mysteries of religion.
At least this second form of audacity was
what brought trouble between another
"godly woman" and the rulers of the State.
The story of the conflict may be read in
Thomas Welde's Heresies of Anne Hutchifi-
son, from which it would appear that this
strong-minded female had the pious, and in
those days obligatory, habit of going regu-
larly to meeting, but added the very bad
habit of collecting a company of critical
folk after service and of expounding to them
the sermon in a spirit of contumely and
contradiction. Now the colonists had a
high sense of the value of liberty, as was
natural in men who had suffered so much in
its cause — so high a sense that, in the words
of Governor Winthrop, they would have it
only "maintained and exercised in a way of
subjection to authority." But this was not
the view of Anne Hutchinson and her
coterie. Liberty to them meant the freedom
of the individual, not to follow the truth, but
to choose the truth; it was the kind described
by Winthrop as making "men grow more
evil, and in time to be worse than brute
beasts: omnes sumus licentia deteriores,'^
and as "that great enemy of truth and peace,
that wild beast, which all the ordinances of
God are bent against, to restrain and subdue
it."
We will not now enter into the question of
truth as it lay between the preachers of the
Commonwealth and Mistress Hutchinson,
but there is no doubt of the fact that her
manner of prophesying did not bring peace.
The result of her lectures among the women
is thus denounced by Thomas Welde:
1 We are all the worse for licenge. (Terence.)
SPIRIT AND POETRY OF EARLY NEW ENGLAND
495
Now, oh their boldness, pride, insolency, ahena-
tions from their old and dearest friends, the dis-
turbances, divisions, contentions they raised
amongst us, both in church and State, and in
families, setting division between husband and
wife! . . .
Now the faithful ministers of Christ must have
dung cast on their faces, and be no better than
legal preachers, Baal's priests, popish factors,
scribes, Pharisees, and opposers of Christ himself.
And it was not only against the persons
of the clergy that Anne Hutchinson lifted her
terrible prophetic voice; she struck at the
very dogmatic center of their authority.
She lays a profane hand on the intellectual
and traditional basis of theology; — as the
horrified author of the JVonder-Working
Provide7ice exclaimed: she is a "woman that
preaches better than any of your black-
coats that have been at the Ninneversity."
Her heresy is analysed at length by Thomas
Welde, but it is really summed up in the
single charge: "This witness of the Spirit is
merely immediate, without any respect to
the word, or any concurrence with it."
That is to say, she was sent into exile for
teaching exactly what two centuries after-
wards was to be the doctrine of Emerson's
essays and Whittier's most exquisite work.
Her proclamation of the witness speaking in
the breast of each man, and requiring no
confirmation from revealed book or ordained
interpreter, was a signal of the course to be
pursued by her people, starting with re-
bellion against institutions and rites and
ending in rejection of all authority and
tradition and the very principle of organiza-
tion. She was the first, and remains the
typical, "come-outer."
Lowell remembered these passages at
arms when, in his Biglozu Papers^ he described
the troubles caused by the townswomen of
the good pastor of Jaalam:
The painful divisions in the First Parish, a.d.
1844, occasioned by the wild notions of (what Mr.
Wilbur, so far as concerned the reasoning faculty,
always called) the unfairer part of creation, put
forth by Miss Parthenia Almira Fitz, are too
well known to need more than a passing allusion.
It was during these heats, long since happily al-
layed, that Mr. Wilbur remarked that "the
Church had more trouble in dealing with one she-
resiarch than with twenty A^resiarchs," and that
the men's conscia recti, or certainty of being right,
was nothing to the women's.
It is a pity, I often think, that Lowell,
who could have translated Cotton Mather
into puns without depriving him of his
Puritan savor, lived too early to try a fling
at New England's latest jA^resiarch — the
feminine counterpart of Emerson's refusal to
face the reality of evil in the world.
It remained for Whittier, who as a
Quaker found it easier to give free expression
to the inner voice which had supplanted the
religion of reason, to do justice, or more than
justice, to those feminine flails of the man-
made church. Often in his ballads Whittier
makes use of the heresies that filled the
early divines with terror, as if in prospect
of the coming dissolution of their iron-
bound creeds. And it is the women of Boston
who are chiefly remembered by him for in-
troducing the leaven of rebellion. Cassandra
Southwick, who was threatened with exile
and slavery for entertaining Quakers and
neglecting divine service, is one of his
heroines. Another is Margaret Brewster,
who suffered worse than threatenings for
coming into the South Church barefoot and
in sackcloth, and crying out against the
rulers and magistrates of the town.
She shook the dust from her naked feet.
And her sackcloth closer drew.
And into the porch of the awe-hushed church,
She passed like a ghost from view.
They whipped her away at the tail o* the cart
Through half the streets of the town,
But the words she uttered that day nor fire
Could burn nor water drown.
And now the aisles of the ancient church
By equal feet are trod.
And the bell that swings in its belfry rings
Freedom to worship God'
So did the spirit and poetry of early New
England become an inheritance; out of the
strong was to come sweetness, out of the
uncouth grace. It will be objected, I fear,
that in my treatment of the subject I have
said much of the spirit and little of the
poetry of the age; but in truth poets in
those days were something like the historian's
snakes in Ireland: there weren't any. As
the first satirist, and not the worst, of the
colony, Nathaniel Ward, the Simple Cobbler
of Agawam, declared:
Poetry's a gift wherein but few excel.
He doth very ill, that dotb not passing well.
i^JO
PAUL ELMER MORE
I'!iiou_i;li lins l>oi'n (jiiotcd from tlic primitive
vcTsc-makcrs to shcnv that none of tlicm did
passirifj well; but enough also has been said,
I trust, to show that some ac(]uaintance with
their spirit is a profitable, almost a neces-
sary, preparation for approaching that fine
and ephemeral thing, the flowering of New
England in the first half of the nineteenth
century.
It is rather the fashion, I am aware, among
a certain coterie of enlightened critics to
condemn the later poetry of New England as
almost equally negligible with that of the
men and women we have been considering.
And indeed no rightly informed person will
rank the outpourings of Concord and
Cambridge with the supreme creations of
the older centers of civilization. We are not
likely to fall into that error of over-praise;
but we may be tempted by the clamor of our
emancipated youth, hailing largely from
strange lands in the dark map of Europe, to
miss the more fragile beauty of what after all
is the fairest thing this country has produced.
At its best the poetry of New England is one
of the very desirable possessions of the world,
and not to appreciate it is to prove one's
self dulled and vulgarized by the strident
conceit of modernity. It is limited no doubt,
and for reasons which I have tried to set
forth. But limitation is not always and
altogether a vice. At least out of the limita-
tions fixed by the origin of New England
grew the peculiar attitude of the later
writers toward nature, the charm of their
portrayal of the less passionate affections of
the home and the family, the absence of
erotic appeal, the depth and sincerity, but
the perilous independence also, of their
religious intuition, the invincible tightness
of their character. We may laugh as we will
at old Wigglesworth and at the asthmatic
Muse of the other Puritan divines; they hav«
been justified of their children.
THEODORE DREISER (1871- )
Mr. Dreiser was born at Terre Haute, Indiana, on 27 August, 1871. His family later removed to
Warsaw, Indiana, and afterwards to Chicago. He received his education in the public schools of War-
saw and at Indiana University. Education, however, apparently did not prevent him from growing
mto a young man entirely innocent both of ideas and of the world. He was stimulated about 1890 by
what he calls the romance of Chicago — by its bigness, variety, energy, and confidence in its future —
to want to write something about it, though what he did not know, nor how he was to do it. He was
then a collector for an easy-payment furniture shop, and a reader of Eugene Field's column. Sharps and
Flats, in the Chicago Daily News. Other reading had left him cold, but Field dealt, in a fragmentary,
haphazard way, mostly with Chicago, and turned in a literary direction the stimulus which the city had
given to Mr. Dreiser's feelings — scarcely, as yet at least, to his imagination. He decided that he wanted
to become a newspaper reporter, and that thus he might learn to write. In the course of time, after
rebuffs which involved the beginnings of disillusionment, he obtained a position on the Chicago Daily
Globe (June, 1892), and thus began his real education and his literary career. His success as a journalist
was not remarkable, but he made his way. In 1892-1893 he was dramatic editor and traveling corres-
pondent of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and in 1893 he became a traveling correspondent of the St.
Louis Republic, From 1895 until 1898 he was the editor of a literary and musical periodical called
Every Month, and thereafter for some years he went from one position to another on the staffs of several
periodicals — Harper's Magazine, McClure's Magazine, The Century, The Cosmopolitan, and Munsey's
Magazine. Meanwhile in 1900 his first novel, Sister Carrie, had been published, but had not brought
him either reputation or money. If it had become well known it would probably, in 1900, have brought
him only abuse, but even this opportunity was denied him; for very few copies were sold, the greater
part of the edition being stored away when some one connected with his publishing house made the
belated discovery that Sister Carrie was an "improper" book. And Mr. Dreiser, remaining practically
unknown, continued for ten years after the publication of this novel to work for periodicals. In 1905
he became editor of Smith's Magazine, in 1906 managing editor of the Broadway Magazine, and from
1907 until 1910 he was editor-in-chief of the Butterick publications — The Delineator, The Designer, The
New Idea, and The English Delineator.
Mr. Dreiser's second novel, Jennie Gerhardt, was published in 191 1, and since then he has devoted
himself entirely to writing. A group of three novels followed Jennie Gerhardt in rapid succession. The
Financier (1912), The Titan (1914), and The Genius (1915), and his sixth and most recent novel, An
American Tragedy (2 vols.) appeared in 1925. In the interval he published a number of books of varied
character. A Traveler at Forty had appeared in 1913. In 1916 appeared some experiments in dramatic
writing. Plays of the Natural and the Supernatural, and also another volume of impressions, A Iloosier
Holiday. Two years later a volume of tales was published. Free and Other Stories, and in 1919 a series
of biographical studies. Twelve Men, and also a tragedy. The Hand of the Potter. A volume of essays
followed in 1920, Hey Rub-a-Dub-Dub; and in 1922 A Book about Myself, and in 1923 The Color of a
Great City.
Mr. Dreiser is now generally regarded not only as the courageous and notable leader of the natural-
istic school of American fiction writers, but also as the greatest of living American novelists, regardless
of so-called schools. Under the influence of the French naturalistic writer, Emile Zola, he has carried
on with complete fearlessness and thoroughness the work which Stephen Crane and a few less important
writers of the 1890's began in America. And, not only because of Crane's early death, but also because
of the relatively sketchy and innocuous character of the work which Crane did in reaction from tht
sentimental and romantic writing then popular and largely unaffected by the polite realism of Howells,
Mr. Dreiser has been regarded as the pioneer of naturalism in American fiction, has been the center oC
bitter and long-continued controversy during which he has endured the hardships of the pioneer, and
has thus made the way far easier for a number of followers. He has, moreover, won his present position
despite great handicaps. He is unconscionably prolix; he has no sense of proportion and no conscious
faculty of selection, but must write down everything in his mind in (as one is made to think) the greatest
possible number of words. His style is heavy, labored, and often inadequate for what he wishes to say.
He can deal confidently only with what is broadly obvious or elementary, and betrays himself when he
497
4.;R
THEODORE DREISER
tries to picture subtle or well-bred people ami xvlu n Ik attempts to reveal inobvious beauty. He is a
slow, confused thinkcr-hc has himself confessed that he is one of those people who can never make
up tiuir minds— and, his confusion heiRhtened by the nightmare of newspaper reporting, he is able to
sec life only as a chaos of warring elements where cruelty, injustice, and blind accident flourish, and is
able to sec life's rewards, bestowed by accident or won by unscrupulous combat, only in terms of material
power or sensual pleasure. "Life itself was not so bad; it was just higgledy-piggledy, catch-as-catch-
can, that was all. If one were clever, like myself, it was all right." (.-/ Book about Myself , 146.) What
balances these grave defects of artistry, intellect, and insight? Some who at present revere Mr. Dreiser
appear to do so chiefly because he has been influential in breaking down barriers against the free treat-
ment in literature of vulgarity, tawdriness, and immorality. He is, they euphemistically say, honest,
sincere, and fearless;— and they are right, and Mr. Dreiser deserves all that may be said in his favor on
this score. But these qualities, while they are a sine qua non of great literature, do not sufiice to pro-
duce it. The same things can equally be said of many bank clerks, for example. Other rebellious
spirits praise him for the very ignorance and confusion which have led him into a largely unconscious
skepticism concerning all of the cohesive forces of society. In this, it need not be said, they scarcely
do him a service; but, too, he has been praised, and justly praised, for a tender comprehension of his
characters which has enabled him to picture them with an altogether remarkable completeness and
truthfulness, and for a quality of deep and sustained feeling which he seldom fails to communicate to
his readers despite all of his difficulties with his medium. And this, his impartially sympathetic, tender
understanding of elementary, vulgar humanity, coupled with his singularly moving delineation of all
the circumstances of his characters' lives, is the real measure of his greatness and power as a writer of
fiction.
THE SECOND CHOICE ^
Shirley dear:
You don't want the letters. There are
only cix of them, anyhow, and think, they're
all I have of you to cheer me on my travels.
What good would they be to you — little bits
of notes telling me you're sure to meet me —
but me — think of me! If I send them to
you, you'll tear them up, whereas if you leave
them with me I can dab them with musk and
ambergris and keep them in a little silver box,
always beside me.
Ah, Shirley dear, you really don't know
how sweet I think you are, how dear! There
isn't a thing we have ever done together
that isn't as clear in my mind as this great
big skyscraper over the way here in Pitts-
burgh, and far more pleasing. In fact, my
thoughts of you are the most precious and
delicious things I have, Shirley.
But I'm too young to marry now. You
know that, Shirley, don't you.f* I haven't
placed myself in any way yet, and I'm so
restless that I don't know w^hether I ever
will, really. Only yesterday, old Roxbaum —
that's my new employer here — came to me
and wanted to know if I would like an
assistant overseership on one of his coffee
plantations in Java, said there would not be
much money in it for a year or two, a bare
' Reprinted from Free and Other Stories (191 8) with
the permission of Messrs. Boni and Liveright, Inc.
living, but later there would be more — and I
jumped at it. Just the thought of Java and
going there did that, although I knew I could
make more staying right here. Can't you
see how it is with me, Shirl? I'm too restless
and too young. I couldn't take care of you
right, and you wouldn't like me after a
while if I didn't.
But ah, Shirley sweet, I think the dearest
things of you! There isn't an hour, it seems,
but some little bit of you comes back — a
dear, sweet bit — the night we sat on the
grass in Tregore Park and counted the stars
through the trees; that first evening at
Sparrows Point when we missed the last
train and had to walk to Langley. Re-
member the tree-toads, Shirl t And then that
warm April Sunday in Atholby woods! Ah,
Shirl, you don't want the six notes! Let me
keep them. But think of me, will you, sweet,
wherever you go and whatever you do.? I'll
always think of you, and wish that you had
met a better, saner man than me, and that I
really could have married you and been all
you wanted me to be. By-by, sweet. I may
start for Java within the month. If so, and
you would want them, I'll send you some
cards from there — if they have any.
Your worthless,
Arthur.
She sat and turned the letter in her hand,
dumb with despair. It was the very last
THE SPXOND CHOICE
499
letter she would ever get from him. Of that
she was certain. He was gone now, once
and for all. She had written him only once,
not making an open plea but asking him to
return her letters, and then there had come
this tender but evasive reply, saying nothing
of a possible return but desiring to keep her
letters for old times' sake — the happy hours
they had spent together.
The happy hours! Oh, yes, yes, yes — the
happy hours!
In her memory now, as she sat here in her
home after the day's work, meditating on
all that had been in the few short months
since he had come and gone, was a world of
color and light — a color and a light so trans-
figuring as to seem celestial, but now, alas,
wholly dissipated. It had contained so
much of all she had desired — love, romance,
amusement, laughter. He had been so gay
and thoughtless, or headstrong, so youthfully
romantic, and with such a love of play and
change and to be saying and doing anything
and everything. Arthur could dance in a
gay way, whistle, sing after a fashion, play.
He could play cards and do tricks, and he
had such a superior air, so genial and brisk,
with a kind of innate courtesy in it and yet an
intolerance for slowness and stodginess or
anything dull or dingy, such as characterized
But here her thoughts fled from him.
She refused to think of any one but Arthur.
Sitting in her little bedroom now, off the
parlor on the ground floor in her home in
Bethune Street, and looking out over the
Kessels' yard, and beyond that — there being
no fences in Bethune Street — over the
"yards" or lawns of the Pollards, Bakers,
Cryders, and others, she thought of how
dull it must all have seemed to him, with his
fine imaginative mind and experiences, his
love of change and gayety, his atmosphere
of something better than she had ever known.
How little she had been fitted, perhaps, by
beauty or temperament to overcome this —
the something — dullness in her work or her
home, which possibly had driven him away.
For, although many had admired her to
date, and she was young and pretty in her
simple way and constantly receiving sugges-
tions that her beauty was disturbing to some,
still, he had not cared for her — he had gone.
And now, as she meditated, it seemed that
this scene, and all that it stood for — her
parents, her work, her daily shuttling to and
fro between the drug company for which she
worked and this street and house — was
typical of her life and what she was destined
to endure always. Some girls were so much
more fortunate. They had fine clothes, fine
homes, a world of pleasure and opportunity
in which to move. They did not have to
scrimp and save and work to pay their own
way. And yet she had always been com-
pelled to do it, but had never complained
until now — or until he came, and after.
Bethune Street, with its commonplace
front yards and houses nearly all alike, and
this house, so like the others, room for room
and porch for porch, and her parents, too,
really like all the others, had seemed good
enough, quite satisfactory, indeed, until then.
But now, now!
Here, in their kitchen, was her mother, a
thin, pale, but kindly woman, peeling
potatoes and washing lettuce, and putting a
bit of steak or a chop or a piece of liver in a
frying-pan day after day, morning and
evening, month after month, year after year.
And next door was Mrs. Kessel doing the
same thing. And next door Mrs. Cryder.
And next door Mrs. Pollard. But, until
now, she had not thought it so bad. But
now — now — oh! And on all the porches or
lawns all along this street were the husbands
and fathers, mostly middle-aged or old men
like her father, reading their papers or cutting
the grass before dinner, or smoking and
meditating afterward. Her father was out in
front now, a stooped, forbearing, meditative
soul, who had rarely anything to say — leaving
it all to his wife, her mother, but who was
fond of her in his dull, quiet way. He was a
pattern-maker by trade, and had come into
possession of this small, ordinary home via
years of toil and saving, her mother helping
him. They had no particular religion, as he
often said, thinking reasonably human con-
duct a suflicient passport to heaven, but they
had gone occasionally to the Methodist
Church over in Nicholas Street, and she
had once joined it. But of late she had not
gone, weaned away by the other common-
place pleasures of her world.
And then in the midst of it, the dull drift of
things, as she now saw them to be, he had
come — Arthur Bristow — young, energetic,
good-looking, ambitious, dreamful, and in-
c;oo
THEODORE DREISER
stanter, and with her never knowing quite
how, the whole thing had been changed.
He had appeared so swiftly — out of nothing,
as it were.
IVevious to him had been Barton Williams,
stout, phlegmatic, good-natured, well-mean-
ing, who was, or had been before Arthur
came, asking her to marry him, and whom
she allowed to half assume that she would.
She had liked him in a feeble, albeit, as she
thought, tender way, thinking him the kind,
according to the logic of her neighborhood,
who would make her a good husband, and,
until Arthur appeared on the scene, had
really intended to marry him. It was not
really a love-match, as she saw now% but she
thought it was, which was much the same
thing, perhaps. But, as she now recalled,
when Arthur came, how the scales fell from
her eyes! In a trice, as it were, nearly, there
was a new heaven and a new earth. Arthur
had arrived, and with him a sense of some-
thing different.
Mabel Gove had asked her to come over
to her house in Westleigh, the adjoining
suburb, for Thanksgiving eve and day, and
without a thought of anything, and because
Barton was busy handling a part of the work
in the dispatcher's office of the Great
Eastern and could not see her, she had gone.
And then, to her surprise and strange, almost
ineffable delight, the moment she had seen
him, he was there — Arthur, with his slim,
straight figure and dark hair and eyes and
clean-cut features, as clean and attractive
as those of a coin. And as he had looked at
her and smiled and narrated humorous bits
of things that had happened to him, some-
thing had come over her — a spell — and after
dinner they had all gone round to Edith
Barringer's to dance, and there as she had
danced with him, somehow, without any
seeming boldness on his part, he had taken
possession of her, as it were, drawn her close,
and told her she had beautiful eyes and hair
and such a delicately rounded chin, and that
he thought she danced gracefully and was
sweet. She had nearly fainted with delight.
• "Do you like me.^" he had asked in one
place in the dance, and, in spite of herself,
she had looked up into his eyes, and from
that moment she w^as almost mad over him,
could think of nothing else but his hair and
eyes and his smile and his graceful figure.
Mabel Ciove had seen it all, in spite of her
determination that no one should, and on
their going to bed later, back at Mabel's
home, she had whispered:
"Ah, Shirley, I saw. You like Arthur,
don't you.f"'
"I think he's very nice," Shirley recalled
replying, for Mabel knew of her affair with
Barton and liked him, "but I'm not crazy
over him." And for this bit of treason she
had sighed in her dreams nearly all night.
And the next day, true to a request and a
promise made by him, Arthur had called
again at Mabel's to take her and Mabel to a
"movie" which was not so far away, and
from there they had gone to an ice-cream
parlor, and during it all, when Mabel was
not looking, he had squeezed her arm and
hand and kissed her neck, and she had held
her breath, and her heart had seemed to stop.
"And now you're going to let me come
out to your place to see you, aren't you.''"
he had whispered.
And she had replied, "Wednesday even-
ing," and then written the address on a little
piece of paper and given it to him.
But now it was all gone, gone!
This house, which now looked so dreary —
how romantic it had seemed that first night
he called — the front room with its common-
place furniture, and later in the spring, the
veranda, with its vines just sprouting, and
the moon in May. Oh, the moon in May,
and June and July, when he was here! How
she had lied to Barton to make evenings for
Arthur, and occasionally to Arthur to keep
him from contact with Barton. She had not
even mentioned Barton to Arthur because —
because — well, because Arthur was so much
better, and somehow (she admitted it to her-
self now) she had not been sure that Arthur
would care for her long, if at all, and then —
well, and then, to be quite frank, Barton
might be good enough. She did not exactly
hate him because she had found Arthur —
not at all. She still liked him in a way — he
was so kind and faithful, so very dull and
straightforward and thoughtful of her,
which Arthur was certainly not. Before
Arthur had appeared, as she well remembered,
Barton had seemed to be plenty good enough
— in fact, all that she desired in a pleasant,
companionable way, calling for her, taking
her places, bringing her flowers and candy,
THE SECOND CHOICE
501
which Arthur rarely did, and for that, if
nothing more, she could not help continuing
to like him and to feel sorry for him, and,
besides, as she had admitted to herself before,
if Arthur left her — . . . Weren't his parents
better off than hers — and hadn't he a good
position for such a man as he — one hundred
and fifty dollars a month and the certainty
of more later on? A little while before
meeting Arthur, she had thought this very
good, enough for two to live on at least, and
she had thought some of trying it at some
time or other — but now — now
And that first night he had called — how
well she remembered it — how it had trans-
figured the parlor next this in which she
was now, filling it with something it had
never had before, and the porch outside, too,
for that matter, with its gaunt, leafless vine,
and this street, too, even — dull, common-
place Bethune Street. There had been a
flurry of snow during the afternoon while
she was working at the store, and the ground
was white with it. All the neighboring homes
seemed to look sweeter and happier and more
inviting than ever they had as she came past
them, with their lights peeping from under
curtains and drawn shades. She had hurried
into hers and lighted the big red-shaded
parlor lamp, her one artistic treasure, as she
thought, and put it near the piano, betw^een
it and the window, and arranged the chairs,
and then bustled to the task of making
herself as pleasing as she might. For him
she had gotten out her one best filmy house
dress and done up her hair in the fashion
she thought most becoming — and that he
had not seen before — and powdered her
cheeks and nose and darkened her eyelashes,
as some of the girls at the store did, and put
on her new gray satin slippers, and then,
being so arrayed, waited nervously, unable to
eat anything or to think of anything but him.
And at last, just when she had begun to
think he might not be coming, he had
appeared with that arch smile and a "Hello!
It's here you live, is it? I was wondering.
George, but you're twice as sweet as I thought
you w^ere, aren't you?" And then, in the
little entryway, behind the closed door, he
had held her and kissed her on the mouth a
dozen times while she pretended to push
against his coat and struggle and say that
her parents might hear.
And, oh, the room afterward, with him in
it in the red glow of the lamp, and with his
pale handsome face made handsomer thereby,
as she thought! He had made her sit near
him and had held her hands and told her
about his work and his dreams — all that he
expected to do in the future — and then she
had found herself wishing intensely to share
just such a life — his life — anything that he
might wish to do; only, she kept wondering,
with a slight pain, whether he would want
her to — he was so young, dreamful, ambi-
tious, much younger and more dreamful
than herself, although, in reality, he was
several years older.
And then followed that glorious period
from December to this late September, in
which everything which was worth happening
in love had happened. Oh, those wondrous
days the following spring, when, with the
first burst of buds and leaves, he had taken
her one Sunday to Atholby, where all the
great woods were, and they had hunted
spring beauties in the grass, and sat on a
slope and looked at the river below and
watched some boys fixing up a sailboat and
setting forth in it quite as she wished she
and Arthur might be doing — going some-
where together — far, far away from all
commonplace things and life! And then he
had slipped his arm about her and kissed her
cheek and neck, and tw^eaked her ear and
smoothed her hair — and oh, there on the
grass, with the spring flowers about her and
a canopy of small green leaves above, the
perfection of love had come — love so w^onder-
ful that the mere thought of it made her eyes
brim now! And then had been days, Satur-
day afternoons and Sundays, at Atholby
and Sparrows Point, where the great beach
was, and in lovely Tregore Park, a mile or
two from her home, where they could go of
an evening and sit in or near the pavilion
and have ice-cream and dance or watch the
dancers. Oh, the stars, the winds, the
summer breath of those days! Ah, me!
Ah, me!
Naturally, her parents had wondered from
the first about her and Arthur, and her and
Barton, since Barton had already assumed
a proprietary interest in her and she had
seemed to like him. But then she was an
only child and a pet, and used to presuming
on that, and they could not think of saying
t;o2
THEODORK DRPJSER
anythinp: to Iut. After all, she was yoiiiiK
and pretty and was entitled to change her
mind; only, only — she had had to indiil.ue in
a career of lyinp and subterfuge in connec-
tion with Barton, since Arthur was head-
strong and wanted every evening that he
chose — to call for her at the store and keep
her down-town to dinner and a show.
Arthur had never been like Barton, shy,
phlegmatic, obedient, waiting long and
patiently for each little favor, but, instead,
masterful and eager, rifling her of kisses and
caresses and every delight of love, and teasmg
and playing with her as a cat would a mouse.
She could never resist him. He demanded of
her her time and her affection without let or
hindrance. He was not exactly selfish or
cruel, as some might have been, but gay and
unthinking at times, unconsciously so, and
yet loving and tender at others — nearly
always so. But always he would talk of
things in the future as if they really did not
include her — and this troubled her greatly —
of places he might go, things he might do,
which, somehow, he seemed to think or
assume that she could not or would not do
with him. He was always going to Australia
sometime, he thought, in a business way, or
to South Africa, or possibly to India. He
never seemed to have any fixed clear future
for himself in mind.
A dreadful sense of helplessness and of
impending disaster came over her at these
times, of being involved in some predicament
over which she had no control, and which
would lead her on to some sad end. Arthur,
although plainly in love, as she thought, and
apparently delighted with her, might not
always love her. She began, timidly at first
(and always, for that matter), to ask him
pretty, seeking questions about himself and
her, whether their future was certain to be
together, whether he really wanted her —
loved her — whether he might not want to
marry some one else or just her, and whether
she wouldn't look nice in a pearl satin wedding
dress with a long creamy veil and satin
slippers and a bouquet of bridal-wreath.
She had been so slowly but surely saving to
that end, even before he came, in connection
with Barton; only, after he came, all thought
of the import of it had been transferred to
him. But now, also, she was beginning to
ask herself sadly, "Would it ever be?" He
was so airy, so inconsequential, so ready to
say: "Yes, yes," and "Sure, sure! That's
right! Yes, indeedy; you bet! Say, kiddie,
but you'll look sweet!" but, somehow, it
had always seemed as if this whole thing were
a glorious interlude and that it could not last.
Arthur was too gay and ethereal and too
little settled in his own mind. His ideas of
travel and living in difl^erent cities, finally
winding up in New York or San Francisco,
but never with her exactly until she asked
him, was too ominous, although he always
reassured hergayly: "Of course! Of course!"
liut somehow she could never believe it
really, and it made her intensely sad at
times, horribly gloomy. So often she wanted
to cry, and she could scarcely tell why.
And then, because of her intense affection
for him, she had finally quarreled with
Barton, or nearly that, if one could say
that one ever really quarreled with him.
It had been because of a certain Thursday
evening a few weeks before about which she
had disappointed him. In a fit of generosity,
knowing that Arthur was coming Wednesday,
and because Barton had stopped in at the
store to see her, she had told him that he
might come, having regretted it afterward,
so enamored was she of Arthur. And then
when Wednesday came, Arthur had changed
his mind, telling her he would come Friday
instead, but on Thursday evening he had
stopped in at the store and asked her to go
to Sparrows Point, with the result that she
had no time to notify Barton. He had gone
to the house and sat with her parents until
ten-thirty, and then, a few days later,
although she had written him offering an
excuse, had called at the store to complain
slightly.
"Do you think you did just right, Shirley.'*
You might have sent word, mightn't you.^
Who was it — the new fellow you won't tell
me about .^"
Shirley flared on the instant.
"Supposing it was-f" What's it to you?
I don't belong to you yet, do I.f* I told you
there wasn't any one, and I wish you'd let
me alone about that. I couldn't help it last
Thursday — that's all — and I don't want
you to be fussing with me — that's all. If you
don't want to, you needn't come any more,
anyhow."
"Don't say that, Shirley," pleaded Barton.
THE SECOND CHOICE
S03
*' You don't mean that. I won't bother you,
thoup;h, if you don't want me any more."
And because Shirley sulked, not knowing
what else to do, he had gone and she had
not seen him since.
And then sometime later when she had
thus broken with Barton, avoiding the
railway station where he worked, Arthur
had failed to come at his appointed time,
sending no word until the next day, when a
note came to the store saying that he had
been out of town for his firm over Sunday
and had not been able to notify her, but that
he would call Tuesday. It was an awful
blow. At the time, Shirley had a vision of
what was to follow. It seemed for the
moment as if the whole world had suddenly
been reduced to ashes, that there was
nothing but black charred cinders anywhere
— she felt that aBout all life. Yet it all came
to her clearly then that this was but the
beginning of just such days and just such
excuses, and that soon, soon, he would come
no more. He was beginning to be tired of
her and soon he would not even make ex-
cuses. She felt it, and it froze and terrified
her.
And then, soon after, the indifference
which she feared did follow — almost created
by her own thoughts, as it were. First, it
was a meeting he had to attend somewhere
one Wednesday night when he was to have
come for her. Then he was going out of
town again, over Sunday. Then he was
going away for a whole week — it was abso-
lutely unavoidable, he said, his commercial
duties were increasing — and once he had
casually remarked that nothing could stand
in the way where she was concerned —
never! She did not think of reproaching
him with this; she was too proud. If he
was going, he must go. She would not be
willing to say to herself that she had ever
attempted to hold any man. But, just the
same, she was agonized by the thought.
When he was with her, he seemed tender
enough; only, at times, his eyes wandered
and he seemed slightly bored. Other girls,
particularly pretty ones, seemed to interest
him as much as she did.
And the agony of the long days when he
did not come any more for a week or two at a
time! The waiting, the brooding, the
wondering, at the store and here in her
home — in the former place making mistakes
at times because she could not get her mind
off him and being reminded of them, and
here at her own home at nights, being so
absent-minded that her parents remarked
on it. She felt sure that her parents must
be noticing that Arthur was not coming
any more, or as much as he had — for she
pretended to be going out with him, going to
Mabel Gove's instead — and that Barton
had deserted her too, he having been driven
off by her indifference, never to come any
more, perhaps, unless she sought him out.
And then it was that the thought of saving
her own face by taking up with Barton once
more occurred to her, of using him and his
aflfections and faithfulness and dullness, if
you will, to cover up her own dilemma.
Only, this ruse was not to be tried until
she had written Arthur this one letter — a
pretext merely to see if there was a single
ray of hope, a letter to be written in a gentle-
enough way and asking for the return of the
few notes she had written him. She had not
seen him now in nearly a month, and the
last time she had, he had said he might soon
be compelled to leave her awhile — to go to
Pittsburgh to work. And it was his reply
to this that she now held in her hand — from
Pittsburgh! It was frightful! The future
without him!
But Barton would never know really what
had transpired, if she went back to him. In
spite of all her delicious hours with Arthur,
she could call him back, she felt sure. She
had never really entirely dropped him, and
he knew it. He had bored her dreadfully on
occasion, arriving on off days when Arthur
was not about, with flowers or candy, or
both, and sitting on the porch steps and
talking of the railroad business and of the
whereabouts and doings of some of their old
friends. It was shameful, she had thought at
times, to see a man so patient, so hopeful, so
good-natured as Barton, deceived in this
way, and by her, who was so miserable over
another. Her parents must see and know,
she had thought at these times, but still,
what else was she to do.^*
"I'm a bad girl," she kept telling herself.
''I'm all wrong. What right have I to oflf'er
Barton what is left.''" But still, somehow,
she realized that Barton, if she chose to
favor him, would only be too grateful for
504
THEODORE DREISER
even the Iravin^s of others where she was
concerned, .iiul that even yet, if she but
ileigned to crook a Hn^er, she could have him.
He was so simple, so good-natured, so stolid
and matter-of-fact, so different to Arthur
whom (she could not help smiling at the
thought of it) she was loving now about as
Barton loved her — slavishly, hopelessly.
And then, as the days passed and Arthur
did not write any more — just this one brief
note — she at first grieved horribly, and then
in a fit of numb despair attempted, bravely
enough from one point of view, to adjust
herself to the new situation. Why should
she despair? Why die of agony where there
were plenty who would still sigh for her —
Barton among others? She was young,
pretty, very — many told her so. She could,
if she chose, achieve a vivacity which she
did not feel. Why should she brook this
unkindness without a thought of retaliation?
Why shouldn't she enter upon a gay and
heartless career, indulging in a dozen flirta-
tions at once — dancing and killing all
thoughts of Arthur in a round of frivolities?
There were many who beckoned to her. She
stood at her counter in the drug store on
many a day and brooded over this, but at
the thought of which one to begin with, she
faltered. After her late love, all were so
tame, for the present anyhow.
And then — and then — always there was
Barton, the humble or faithful, to whom she
had been so unkind and whom she had used
and whom she still really liked. So often
self-reproaching thoughts in connection with
him crept over her. He must have known,
must have seen how badly she was using him
all this while, and yet he had not failed to
come and come, until she had actually
quarreled with him, and any one would
have seen that it was literally hopeless. She
could not help remembenng, especially now
in her pam, that he adored her. He was not
calling on her now at all — by her indifference
she had finally driven him away — but a
word, a word — She waited for days, weeks,
hoping against hope, and then
The office of Barton's superior in the Great
Eastern terminal had always made him an
easy object for her blandishments, coming
and going, as she frequently did, via this
very station. He was in the office of the
assistant train-dispatcher on the ground
floor, where passing to and from the local,
which, at times, was quicker than a street-
car, she could easily see him by peering in;
only, she had carefully avoided him for
nearly a year. If she chose now, and would
call for a message-blank at the adjacent
telegraph-window which was a part of his
room, and raised her voice as she often had
in the past, he could scarcely fail to hear, if he
did not see her. And if he did, he would rise
and come over — of that she was sure, for he
never could resist her. It had been a wile of
hers in the old days to do this or to make her
presence felt by idling outside. After a
month of brooding, she felt that she must
act — her position as a deserted girl was too
much. She could not stand it any longer
really — the eyes of her mother, for one.
It was six-fifteen one evening when, coming
out of the store in which she worked, she
turned her step disconsolately homeward.
Her heart was heavy, her face rather pale
and drawn. She had stopped in the store's
retiring-room before coming out to add to her
charms as much as possible by a little powder
and rouge and to smooth her hair. It v^^ould
not take much to reallure her former sweet-
heart, she felt sure — and yet it might not
be so easy after all. Suppose he had found
another? But she could not believe that.
It had scarcely been long enough since he
had last attempted to see her, and he was
really so very, very fond of her and so faithful.
He was too slow and certain in his choosing —
he had been so with her. Still, who knows?
With this thought, she went forward in the
evening, feeling for the first time the shame
and pain that comes of deception, the agony
of having to relinquish an ideal and the
feeling of despair that comes to those who
find themselves in the position of suppliants,
stooping to something which in better days
and better fortune they would not know.
Arthur was the cause of this.
When she reached the station, the crowd
that usually filled it at this hour was swarm-
ing. There were so many pairs like Arthur
and herself laughing and hurrying away or so
she felt. First glancing in the small mirror
of a weighing scale to see if she were still of
her former charm, she stopped thoughtfully
at a little flower stand which stood outside,
and for a few pennies purchased a tiny bunch
of vioetls. She then went inside and stood
THE SFXOND CHOICE
5^5
near the window, peering; first furtively to
see if he were present. He was. Bent over
his work, a green shade over his eyes, she
could see his stolid, genial figure at a table.
Stepping back a moment to ponder, she
finally went forward and, in a clear voice,
asked,
"May I have a blank, please?"
The infatuation of the discarded Barton
was such that it brought him instantly to his
feet. In his stodgy, stocky way he rose, his
eyes glowing with a friendly hope, his mouth
wreathed in smiles, and came over. At the
sight of her, pale, but pretty — paler and
prettier, really, than he had ever seen her —
he thrilled dumbly.
"How are you, Shirley?'' he asked sweetly,
as he drew near, his eyes searching her face
hopefully. He had not seen her for so long
that he was intensely hungry, and her paler
beauty appealed to him more than ever.
Why wouldn't she have him? he was asking
himself. Why wouldn't his persistent love
yet wnn her? Perhaps it might. "I haven't
seen you in a month of Sundays, it seems.
How are the folks?"
"They're all right, Bart," she smiled
archly, "and so am I. How have you been?
It has been a long time since I've seen you.
I've been wondering how you were. Have
you been all right? I was just going to send
a message.'*
As he had approached, Shirley had pre-
tended at first not to see him, a moment
later to affect surprise, although she was
really suppressing a heavy sigh. The sight
of him, after Arthur, was not reassuring.
Could she really interest herself in him any
more? Could she?
"Sure, sure," he replied genially; "I'm
always all right. You couldn't kill me, you
know. Not going away, are you, Shirl?"
he queried interestedly.
"No; I'm just telegraphing to Mabel.
She promised to meet me to-morrow, and
I want to be sure she will."
"You don't come past here as often as you
did, Shirley," he complained tenderly. "At
least, I don't seem to see you so often," he
added with a smile. "It isn't anything I
have done, is it?" he queried, and then,
when she protested quickly, added: "What's
the trouble, Shirl? Haven't been sick, have
you?"
She affected all her old gaycty and ease,
feeling as though she would like to cry.
"Oh, no," she returned; "I've been all
right. I've been going through the other
door, I suppose, or coming in and going out
on the Langdon Avenue car." (This was
true, because she had been wanting to avoid
him.) "I've been in such a hurry, most
nights, that I haven't had time to stop,
Bart. You know how late the store keeps us
at times."
He remembered, too, that in the old days
she had made time to stop or meet him occa-
sionally.
"Yes, I know," he said tactfully. "But
you haven't been to any of our old card-
parties either of late, have you? At least, I
haven't seen you. I've gone to two or three,
thinking you might be there."
That was another thing Arthur had done —
broken up her interest in these old store and
neighborhood parties and a banjo-and-
mandolin club to which she had once be-
longed. They had all seemed so pleasing
and amusing in the old days — but now — . . .
In those days Bart had been her usual com-
panion when his work permitted.
"No," she replied evasively, but with a
forced air of pleasant remembrance; "I
have often thought of how much fun we had
at those, though. It was a shame to drop
them. You haven't seen Harry Stull or
Trina Task recently, have you ?" she inquired,
more to be saying something than for any
interest she felt.
He shook his head negatively, then added:
"Yes, I did, too; here in the waiting-room
a few nights ago. They were coming down-
town to a theater, I suppose."
His face fell slightly as he recalled how it
had been their custom to do this, and what
their one quarrel had been about. Shirley
noticed it. She felt the least bit sorry for
him, but much more for herself, coming back
so disconsolately to all this.
"Well, you're looking as pretty as ever,
Shirley," he continued, noting that she had
not written the telegram and that there was
something wistful in her glance. " Prettier,
I think," and she smiled sadly. Every word
that she tolerated from him was as so much
gold to him, so much of dead ashes to her.
"You wouldn't like to come down some
evening this week and see The Mouse-Trapy
(;o6
THEODORE DREISER
would you? W c- liavtn't been to a theater
together in I don't know when." His eyes
sought hers in a hopetui, doghke way.
So — she could have him again — that was
tlie pity of it! To have what she really did
not want, did not care for! At the least nod
now he would come, and this very devotion
made it all but worthless, and so sad. She
ought to marry him now for certain, if she
began in this way, and could in a month's
time if she chose, but oh, oh — could she?
Ft)r the moment she decided that she could
not. would not. If he had only repulsed her
— told her to go — ignored her — but no; it
was her fate to be loved by him in this
moving, pleading way, and hers not to love
him as she wished to love — to be loved.
Plainly, he needed some one like her, whereas
she, she , She turned a little sick, a
sense of the sacrilege of gayety at this time
creeping into her voice, and exclaimed:
"No, no!" Then seeing his face change, a
heavy sadness come over it, "Not this week,
anyhow, I mean" ("Not so soon," she had
almost said). "I have several engagements
this week and I'm not feeling well. But" —
seeing his face change, and the thought of her
own state returning — "you might come out
to the house some evening instead, and then
we can go some other time."
His face brightened intensely. It was
wonderful how he longed to be with her,
how the least favor from her comforted and
lifted him up. She could see also now,
howx'ver, how little it meant to her, how little
it could ever mean, even if to him it was
heaven. The old relationship would have to
be resumed in toto, once and for all, but did
she want it that way now that she was feeling
so miserable about this other affair? As she
meditated, these various moods racing to
and fro in her mind. Barton seemed to notice,
and now it occurred to him that perhaps he
had not pursued her enough — was too easily
put off. She probably did like him yet.
This evening, her present visit, seemed to
prove it.
"Sure, sure!" he agreed. "I'd like that.
I'll come out Sunday, if you say. We can
go any time to the play. I'm sorry, Shirley,
if you're not feeling well. I've thought of
you a lot these days. I'll come out Wednes-
day, if you don't mind."
She s.milcd a wan smile. It was all so
much easier than she had expected — her
triumph — and so ashenlike in consequence, a
flavor of dead-sea fruit and defeat about it all,
that it was pathetic. How could she, after
Arthur? How could he, really?
"Make it Sunday," she pleaded, naming
the farthest day off, and then hurried out.
Her faithful lover gazed after her, while
she suffered an intense nausea. To think —
to think — it should all be coming to this! She
had not used her telegraph-blank, and now
had forgotten all about it. It was not the
simple trickery that discouraged her, but
her own future which could find no better
outlet than this, could not rise above it
apparently, or that she had no heart to make
it rise above it. Why couldn't she interest
herself in some one different to Barton?
Why did she have to return to him? Why
not wait and meet some other — ignore him
as before? But no, no; nothing mattered
now — no one — it might as well be Barton
really as any one, and she would at least
make him happy and at the same time solve
her own problem. She went out into the
train-shed and climbed into her train. Slowly,
after the usual pushing and jostling of a
crowd, it drew out toward Latonia, that
suburban region in which her home lay. As
she rode, she thought.
"What have I just done? What am I
doing?" she kept asking herself as the clack-
ing wheels on the rails fell into a rhythmic
dance and the houses of the brown, dry,
endless city fled past in a maze. "Severing
myself decisively from the past — the happy
past — for supposing, once I am married,
Arthur should return and want me again —
suppose! Suppose!"
Below at one place, under a shed, were
some market-gardeners disposing of the last
remnants of their day's wares — a sickly, dull
life, she thought. Here was Rutgers Avenue,
with its line of red street-cars, many wagons
and tracks and counter-streams of automo-
biles— how often had she passed it morning
and evening in a shuttle-like way, and how
often would, unless she got married! And
here, now, was the river flowing smoothly
between its banks lined with coal-pockets
and wharves — away, away to the huge
deep sea which she and Arthur had enjoyed
so much. Oh, to be in a small boat and drift
out, out into the endless, restless, pathless
THE SFXOND CHOICE
507
deep! Somehow the sight of this water,
to-night and every night, brought hack those
evenings in the open with Arthur at Sparrows
Point, the long hne of dancers in Eckert's
Pavihon, the woods at Atholby, the park,
with the dancers in the pavihon — she
choked back a sob. Once Arthur had come
this way with her on just such an evening
as this, pressing her hand and saying how
wonderful she was. Oh, Arthur! Arthur!
And now Barton was to take his old place
again — forever, no doubt. She could not
trifle with her life longer in this foolish way,
or his. What was the use? But think of it!
Yes, it must be — forever now, she told
herself. She must marry. Time would be
slipping by and she would become too old.
It was her only future — marriage. It was
the only future she had ever contemplated
really, a home, children, the love of some
man whom she could love as she loved
Arthur. Ah, what a happy home that would
have been for her! But now, now
But there must be no turning back now,
either. There was no other way. If Arthur
ever came back — but fear not, he wouldn't!
She had risked so much and lost — lost him.
Her little venture into true love had been
such a failure. Before Arthur had come all
had been well enough. Barton, stout and
simple and frank and direct, had in some way
— how, she could scarcely realize now —
oflFered sufficient of a future. But now, now!
He had enough money, she knew, to build a
cottage for the two of them. He had told
her so. He would do his best always to
make her happy, she was sure of that. They
could live in about the state her parents were
living in — or a little better, not much — and
would never want. No doubt there would
be children, because he craved them — several
of them — and that would take up her time,
long years of it — the sad, gray years! But
then Arthur, whose children she would have
thrilled to bear, would be no more, a mere
memory — think of that! — and Barton, the
dull, the commonplace, would have achieved
his finest dream — and why.''
Because love was a failure for her — that
was why — and in her life there could be no
more true love. She would never love any
one again as she had Arthur. It could not be,
she was sure of it. He was too fascinating,
too wonderful. Always, always, wherever
she might be, whoever she might marry, he
would be coming back, intruding between
her and any possible love, receiving any
possible kiss. It would be Arthur she would
be loving or kissing. She dabbed at her eyes
with a tiny handkerchief, turned her face
close to the window and stared out, and
then as the environs of Latonia came into
view, wondered fso deep is romance): What
if Arthur should come back at some time —
or now! Supposing he should be here at the
station now, accidentally or on purpose, to
welcome her, to soothe her weary heart.
He had met her here before. How she would
fly to him, lay her head on his shoulder, forget
forever that Barton ever was, that they had
ever separated for an hour. Oh, Arthur!
Arthur!
But no, no; here was Latonia — here the
viaduct over her train, the long business
street and the cars marked ''Center" and
"Langdon Avenue" running back into the
great city. A few blocks away in tree-
shaded Bethune Street, duller and plainer
than ever, was her parents' cottage and
the routine of that old life which was now,
she felt, more fully fastened upon her than
ever before — the lawn-mowers, the lawns,
the front porches all alike. Now would
come the going to and fro of Barton to
business as her father and she now went to
business, her keeping house, cooking, wash-
ing, ironing, sewing for Barton as her mother
now did these things for her father and herself.
And she would not be in love really, as she
wanted to be. Oh, dreadful! She could
never escape it really, now that she could
endure it less, scarcely for another hour.
And yet she must, must, for the sake of —
for the sake of — she closed her eyes and
dreamed.
She walked up the street under the trees,
past the houses and lawns all alike to her
own, and found her father on their veranda
reading the evening paper. She sighed at
the sight.
"Back, daughter.^" he called pleasantly.
"Yes."
"Your mother is wondering if you would
like steak or liver for dinner. Better tell
her."
"Oh, it doesn't matter.'*
She hurried into her bedroom, threw down
I her hat and gloves^ and herself on the bed
5o8
TIIF.ODORE DREISER
to rest silently, and proanctl in licr soul. I o
tliinlc that it had all come to this! — Never to
see hini any niorel^To see only Barton,
and marry hmi and live in such a street, have
four or five children, for>
IS.
"/ can't think Si ever hurt anyone."
"No, but he hurt my heart the way he lay
And rolled his old head on that sharp-edged
chair-back. •
He wouldn't let me put him on the lounge.
You must go in and see what you can do.
I made the bed up for him there to-night.
You'll be surprised at him — how much he's
broken. 152
His working days are done; I'm sure of it."
"I'd not be in a hurry to say that."
"I haven't been. Go, look, see for yourself.
Hut, Warren, please remember how it is:
He's come to help you ditch the meadow.
He has a plan. You mustn't laugh at him.
He may not speak of it, and then he may.
I'll sit and see if that small sailing cloud
Will hit or miss the moon."
It hit the moon.
Then there were three there, making a dim
row, 162
The moon, the little silver cloud, and she.
Warren returned — too soon, it seemed to her,
Slipped to her side, caught up her hand and
waited.
"Warren," she questioned.
"Dead," was all he answered.
A SERVANT TO SERVANTS
I didn't make you know how glad I was
To have you come and camp here on our
land.
I promised myself to get down some day
And see the way you lived, but I don't
know!
With a houseful of hungry men to feed
I guess you'd find. ... It seems to me
I can't express my feelings any more
Than I can raise my voice or want to lift
My hand (oh, I can lift it when I have to).
Did ever you feel so? I hope you never. 10
It's got so I don't even know for sure
Whether I am glad, sorry, or anything.
There's nothing but a voice-like left inside
That seems to tell me how I ought to feel.
And would feel if I wasn't all gone wrong.
You take the lake. I look and look at it.
I see it's a fair, pretty sheet of water.
I stand and make myself repeat out loud
The advantages it has, so long and narrow,
Like a deep piece of some old running
river 20
Cut short off at both ends. It lies five miles
Straight away through the mountain notch
From the sink window where I wash the
plates.
And all our storms come up toward the
house,
Drawing the slow waves whiter and whiter
and whiter.
526
ROBERT FROST
It took my mind off doughnuts and soda
biscuit
To step outdoors and take the water dazzle
A sunny morninc:, or take the rising wind
About my face and body and through my
wrapper,
When a storm threatened from the Dragon's
Den, 30
And a cold chill shivered across the lake.
I see it's a fair, pretty sheet of water,
Our VVilloughby! How did you hear of it?
I expect, though, everyone's heard of it.
In a book about ferns? Listen to that!
You let things more like feathers regulate
Your going and coming. And you like it
here?
I can see how you might. But I don't
know!
It would be different if more people came,
For then there would be business. A.s it is,
The cottages Len built, sometimes we rent
them, 41
Sometimes we don't. We've a good piece of
shore
That ought to be worth something, and may
yet.
But I don't count on it as much as Len.
He looks on the bright side of everything,
Including me. He thinks I'll be all right
With doctoring. But it's not medicine —
Lowe is the only doctor's dared to say so —
It's rest I want — there, I have said it out —
From cookmg meals for hungry hired men 50
And washing dishes after them — from doing
Things over and over that just won't stay
done.
By good rights I ought not to have so much
Put on me, but there seems no other way.
Len says one steady pull more ought to do it.
He says the best way out is always through.
And I agree to that, or in so far
As that I can see no way out but through —
Leastways for me — and then they'll be
convinced.
It's not that Len don't want the best for
me. 60
It was his plan our moving over in
Beside the lake from where that day I showed
you
We used to live — ten miles from anywhere.
We didn't change without some sacrifice.
But Len went at it to make up the loss.
His work's a man's, of course, from sun to
sun,
But he works when he works as hard as I
do-
Though there's small profit in comparisons.
(Women and men will make them all the
same.)
But work ain't all. Len undertakes toe
much. 7c
He's into everything in town. This year
It's highways, and he's got too many men
Around him to look after that make waste.
They take advantage of him shamefully.
And proud, too, of themselves for doing so.
We have four here to board, great good-for-
nothings.
Sprawling about the kitchen with their talk
While I fry their bacon. Much they care!
No more put out in what they do or say
Than if I wasn't in the room at all. 80
Coming and going all the time, they are:
I don't learn what their names are, let alone
Their characters, or whether they are safe
To have inside the house with doors un-
locked.
I'm not afraid of them, though, if they're
not
Afraid of me. There's two can play at that.
I have my fancies: it runs in the family.
My father's brother wasn't right. They
kept him
Locked up for years back there at the old
farm.
I've been away once — yes, I've been away. 90
The State Asylum. I was prejudiced;
I wouldn't have sent anyone of mine there;
You know the old idea — the only asylum
Was the poorhouse, and those who could
afford.
Rather than send their folks to such a
place,
Kept them at home; and it does seem more
human.
But it's not so: the place is the asylum.
There they have every means proper to do
with,
And you aren't darkening other people's
lives —
Worse than no good to them, and they no
good 100
To you in your condition; you can't know
Affection or the want of it in that state.
I've heard too much of the old-fashioned
way.
My father's brother, he went mad quite
young.
A SERVANT TO SERVANTS
527
Some thought he had been bitten by a dog,
Because his violence took on the form
Of carrying his pillow in his teeth;
But it's more likely he was crossed in love,
Or so the story goes. It was some girl.
Anyway all he talked about was love. 1 10
They soon saw he would do someone a
mischief
If he wa'n't kept strict watch of, and it
ended
In father's building him a sort of cage,
Or room within a room, of hickory poles,
Like stanchions in the barn, from floor to
ceiling, —
A narrow passage all the way around.
Anything they put in for furniture
He'd tear to pieces, even a bed to lie on.
So they made the place comfortable with
straw,
Like a beast's stall, to ease their con-
sciences. 120
Of course they had to feed him without
dishes.
They tried to keep him clothed, but he
paraded fe
With his clothes on his arm — all of his
clothes.
Cruel — it sounds. I 'spose they did the best
They knew. And just when he was at the
height.
Father and mother married, and mother
came,
A bride, to help take care of such a creature,
And accommodate her young life to his.
That was what marrying father meant to
her.
She had to lie and hear love things made
dreadful 130
By his shouts in the night. He'd shout and
shout
Until the strength was shouted out of him,
And his voice died down slowly from
exhaustion.
He'd pull his bars apart like bow and bow-
string.
And let them go and make them twang
until
His hands had worn them smooth as any ox-
bow.
And then he'd crow as if he thought that
child's play —
The only fun he had. I've heard them say,
though.
They found a way to put a stop to it.
He was before my time — I never saw
him; 140
But the pen stayed exactly as it was
There in the upper chamber in the ell,
A sort of catch-all full of attic clutter.
I often think of the smooth hickory bars.
It got so I would say — you know, half
fooling —
"It's time I took my turn upstairs in
jail —
Just as you will till it becomes a habit.
No wonder I was glad to get away.
Mind you, I waited till Len said the word.
I didn't want the blame if things went
wrong. 150
I was glad though, no end, when we moved
out.
And I looked to be happy, and I was.
As I said, for a while — but I don't know!
Somehow the change wore out like a prescrip-
tion.
And there's more to it than just window-
views
And living by a lake. I'm past such help —
Unless Len took the notion, which he
won't.
And I won't ask him — it's not sure enough.
I 'spose I've got to go the road I'm going:
Other folks have to, and why shouldn't I ? 160
I almost think if I could do like you,
Drop everything and live out on the
ground —
But it might be, come night, I shouldn't
like it.
Or a long rain. I should soon get enough,
And be glad of a good roof overhead.
I've Iain awake thinking of you, I'll
warrant.
More than you have yourself, some of these
nights.
The wonder was the tents weren't snatched
away
From over you as you lay in your beds.
I haven't courage for a risk like that. 170
Bless you, of course, you're keeping me from
work.
But the thing of it is, I need to be kept.
There's work enough to do — there's always
that;
But behind's behind. The worst that yDu
can do
Is set me back a little more behind.
I sha'n't catch up in this world, anyway.
I'd rather you'd not go unless you must.
^^s
RORKRT FROST
THE CODE
Tm-Ri- were three in the meadow by tlie
brook
(latherinp: up windrows, piling cocks of hay,
With an eye always lifted toward the west
Where an irregular sun-bordered cloud
Darkly advanced with a perpetual dagger
Flickering across its bosom. Suddenly
One helper, thrusting pitchfork in the
ground,
Marched himself off the field and home.
One stayed.
The town-bred farmer failed to understand.
"What is there wrong?'*
"Something you just now said." lo
"W^iat did I say?"
"About our taking pains."
"To cock the hay.'' — because it's going to
shower?
I said that more than half an hour ago.
I said it to myself as much as you.'*
"You didn't know. But James is one big
fool.
He thought you meant to find fault with his
work.
That's what the average farmer would have
meant.
James would take time, of course, to chew it
over
Before he acted: he's just got round to act."
"He is a fool if that's the way he takes
me. 20
"Don't let it bother you. You've found out
somethmg.
The hand that knows his business won't be
told
To do work better or faster — those two
things.
I'm as particular as anyone:
Most likely I'd have served you just the
same.
But I know you don't understand our ways.
You were just talking what was in your
mind,
What was in all our minds, and you weren't
hinting.
Tell you a story of what happened once:
I was up here in Salem at a man's 30
Named Sanders with a gang of four or five
Doing the haying. No one liked the boss.
He was one of the kind sports call a spider.
All wiry arms and legs that spread out
wavy
From a humped body nigh as big's a biscuit.
But work! that man could work, especially
If by so doing he could get more work
Out of his hired help. I'm not denying
He was hard on himself. I couldn't find
That he kept any hours — not for himself. 40
Daylight and lantern-light were one to him:
I've heard him pounding in the barn all
night.
But what he liked was someone to encourage.
Them that he couldn't lead he'd get behind
And drive, the way you can, you know, in
mowing —
Keep at their heels and threaten to mow their
legs oflF.
I'd seen about enough of his bulling tricks
(We call that bulling). I'd been watching
him.
So when he paired off with me in the hay-
field
To load the load, thinks I, Look out for
trouble. 50
I built the load and topped it off; old Sanders
Combed it down with a rake and says,
'O. K.'
Everything went well till we reached the
barn
With a big catch to empty .n a bay.
You understand that meant the easy job
For the man up on top of throwing down
The hay and rolling it off wholesale,
Where on a mow it would have been slow lift-
ing.
You wouldn't think a fellow'd need much
urging
Under these circumstances, would you
now ? 60
But the old fool seizes his fork in both hands.
And looking up bewhiskered out of the pit.
Shouts like an army captain, 'Let her
come!'
Thinks I, D'ye mean it ? * What was that you
said ? '
I asked out loud, so's there'd be no mistake,
'Did you say. Let her come?* 'Yes, let her
come.*
He said it over, but he said it softer.
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
529
Never you say a thinp; like that to a man,
Not if he values what he is. God, I'd as
soon
Murdered him as left out his middle name. 70
I'd built the load and knew right where to
find it.
Two or three forkfuls I picked lightly round
for ;
Like meditating, and then I just dug in
And dumped the rackful on him in ten lots.
I looked over the side once in the dust
And caught sight of him treading-water-
like.
Keeping his head above. 'Damn ye,* I says,
* That gets ye ! ' He squeaked like a squeezed
rat.
That was the last I saw or heard of him.
I cleaned the rack and drove out to cool
ofF. 80
As I sat mopping hayseed from my neck.
And sort of waiting to be asked about it,
One of the boys sings out, 'Where's the old
man.?'
*I left him in the barn under the hay.
If ye want him, ye can go and dig him
out.*
They realized from the way I swobbed my
neck
More than was needed something must be
up.
They headed for the barn; I stayed where I
was.
They told me afterward. First they forked
hay,
A lot of it, out into the barn floor. 90
Nothing! They listened for him. Not a
rustle.
I guess they thought I'd spiked him in the
temple
Before I buried him, or I couldn't have man-
aged.
They excavated more. *Go keep his wife
Out of the barn.' Someone looked in a win-
dow,
And curse me if he wasn't in the kitchen
Slumped way down in a chair, with both his
feet
Stuck in the oven, the hottest day that
summer.
He looked so clean disgusted from behind
There was no one that dared to stir him
up, 100
Or let him know that he was being looked
at.
Apparently I hadn't buried him
(I may have knocked him down); but my
just trying
To bury him had hurt his dignity.
He had gone to the house so's not to meet
me.
He kept away from us all afternoon.
We tended to his hay. We saw him out
After a while picking peas in his garden:
He couldn't keep away from doing some-
thing."
"Weren't you relieved to find he wasn't
dead?" no
"No! and yet I don't know — it's hard to
say.
I went about to kill him fair enough."
"You took an awkward way. Did he dis-
charge you.?"
"Discharge me? No! He knew I did just
right."
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN i
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth:
Then took the other, as just as fair.
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh '
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by.
And that has made all the difference.
20
1 This anci the following three poems are reprinted
from Mountain Interval (191 6) with the permission of
Messrs. Henry Holt and Company.
5.]o
ROBERT FROST
AN OLD MAN'S WINTER NIGHT
All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate
stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
\yas the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it
was
That brought him to that creaking room
was age.
He stood with barrels round him — at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again lo
In clomping off;— and scared the outer
night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common
things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew
what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case 20
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he
shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man — one man — can't fill a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can.
It's thus he does it of a winter night.
THE HILL WIFE
LONELINESS
{Her Word)
One ought not to have to care
So much as you and I
Care when the birds come round the house
To seem to say good-by;
Or care so much when they come back
With whatever it is they sing;
The truth being we are as much
Too glad for the one thing
10
As we are too sad for the other here—
With birds that fill their breasts
But with each other and themselves
And their built or driven nests.
HOUSE FEAR
Always— I tell you this they learned—
Always at night when they returned
To the lonely house from far away
To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray,
They learned to rattle the lock and key
To give whatever might chance to be
Warning and time to be off in flight:
And preferring the out- to the in-door
night, 20
They learned to leave the house-door wide
Until they had lit the lamp inside.
THE SMILE
{Her Word)
I didn't like the way he went away.
That smile! It never came of being gay.
Still he smiled — did you see him? — I was
sure!
Perhaps because we gave him only bread
And the wretch knew from that that we were
poor.
Perhaps because he let us give instead
Of seizing from us as he might have seized.
Perhaps he mocked at us for being wed, 30
Or being very young (and he was pleased
To have a vision of us old and dead).
I wonder how far down the road he's got.
He's w^atching from the woods as like as not.
THE OFT-REPEATED DREAM
She had no saying dark enough
For the dark pine that kept
Forever trying the window-latch !
Of the room where they slept.
I
The tireless but ineffectual hands
That with every futile pass 40
Made the great tree seem as a little bird
Before the mystery of glass!
It never had been inside the room,
And only one of the two
Was afraid in an oft-repeated dream
Of what the tree might do.
THE RUNAWAY
531
50
60
THE IMPULSE
It was too lonely for her there,
And too wild,
And since there were but two of them,
And no child,
And work was little in the house,
She was free.
And followed where he furrowed field,
Or felled tree.
She rested on a log and tossed
The fresh chips,
With a song only to herself
On her lips
And once she went to break a bough
Of black alder.
She strayed so far she scarcely heard
When he called her —
And didn't answer— didn't speak—
Or return.
She stood, and then she ran and hid
In the fern.
He never found her, though he looked
Everywhere,
And he asked at her mother's house
Was she there. 7°
Sudden and swift and light as that
The ties gave.
And he learned of finalities
Besides the grave.
THE SOUND OF THE TREES
I WONDER about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity In our joys.
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going 10
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older.
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway.
From the window or the door.
I shall set forth for somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice 20
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say.
But I shall be gone.
FIRE AND ICEi
Some say the world will end in fire.
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
THE RUNAWAY
Once when the snow of the year was begin-
ning to fall,
We stopped by a mountain pasture to say,
"Whose colt?"
A little Morgan had one forefoot on the
wall.
The other curled at his breast. He dipped
his head
And snorted at us. And then he had to bolt.
We heard the miniature thunder where he
fled.
And we saw him, or thought we saw him,
dim and gray, _
Like a shadow against the curtain of falling
flakes.
*' I think the little fellow's afraid of the snow.
He isn't winter-broken. It isn't play 10
With the little fellow at all. He's running
away.
I doubt if even his mother could tell him,
* Sakes, ^
It's only weather.' He'd think she didn t
i know!
iThis and the following two poems are reprinted
from New Hampshire (1923) with the permission of
Messrs. Henry Holt and Company.
53 2
ROBERT FROST
Wluie IS his mother? lie can't he out
alone."
AikI now he comes again with clatter of
stone,
And mounts the wall again with whited eyes
And nil his tail that isn't hair up straight.
He shudders his coat as if to throw off flies.
"Whoever it is that leaves him out so late,
When other creatures have gone to stall and
bin, 20
Ought to be told to come and take him in."
THE ONSET
Always the same, when on a fated night
At last the gathered snow lets down as white
As may be in dark woods, and with a song
It shall not make again all winter long
Of hissing on the yet uncovered ground,
I almost stumble looking up and round,
As one who overtaken by the end
Gives up his errand, and lets death descend
Upon him where he is, with nothing done
lo evil, no important triumph won, 10
More than if life had never been begun.
Yet all the precedent is on my side:
I know that winter death has never tried
The earth but it has failed: the snow may
heap
In long storms an undrifted four feet deep
As measured against maple, birch and oak,
It cannot check the peeper's silver croak;
And I shall see the snow all go down hill
In water of a slender April rill
That flashes tail through last year's withered
brake 20
And dead weeds, like a disappearing snake.
Nothing will be left white but here a birch,
And there a clump of houses with a church.
VACHEL LINDSAY (1879- )
Nicholas Vachel Lindsay was born in Springfield, Illinois, on 10 November, 1879. His parents
both came of Kentucky families, and maintained their Southern sympathies (as does their son) even in
Republican Springfield, within a few blocks of the Lincoln home, and in a house where Lincoln had
been given parties by his sister-in-law. Mr. Lindsay's father was a physician, and his mother, before
her marriage, a teacher of literature and painting in a Kentucky college. They both had traveled in
Europe, and after their marriage they spent their summers abroad when they did not camp "like cin-
namon bears" on Mount Clinton, in Colorado; and once they made a journey to China. In the Lindsay
home there were many books, most of them relating to Europe, none of them relating to New England.
One which Mr. Lindsay knew thoroughly when still a very young boy was Rawlinson's History of Egypt.
Another was Chambers's Encyclopedia of English Literature, through which he came to know in par-
ticular Chatterton, Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, and Dryden. These were discoveries as interesting to
him as were certain Egyptian kings, and another discovery valued as highly as an Egyptian king was
E. A. Poe. He has said (Preface to Collected Poems): "There was not even a picture of Poe in the his-
tories of American literature taught in the High School when I entered it. There was nothing to be
found but the full-page portraits of a famous mutual-admiration society. I knew exactly Poe's opinion
of these whiskered worthies. I had read his complete works, criticism and all, through and through,
before I was fourteen, I could use his whip. I could quote his critical headlines, that brought blood.
I was a kind of literary outcast, because I championed Poe and his view."
In 1897 Mr. Lindsay was graduated from the Springfield High School, and he spent the following
three years at Hiram College (Ohio), where all of the students were enthusiastic orators, and where he
practiced verse-writing attuned to the rhythms of oratorical prose. Instead of remaining to take a
degree from Hiram College, however, he went in 1900 to the Art Institute of Chicago, where he remained
three years. His mother had from his infancy intended him to become an artist, and he was now seek-
ing to fulfill her wish. From Chicago he proceeded to the New York School of Art, where he studied
under Chase and Henri in 1904 and 1905. He has said that the one consistent thread in his life is the
fact that he has always been, and still is, an art student, but it would appear that there are two threads.
For he has also consistently been a preacher, a propagandist, a reformer, a prophet of the millennium,
and his pictures (hieroglyphics, as he calls them, meaning that they are symbols of his vision) and
verses have been for him, not ends, but instruments. Moreover, he acutely needs an audience and has
worked hard for one, not hesitating to abandon one means or method for another, if change promised
success. In this, if he has employed methods akin to the vulgar politician's, he has of course been
honest in intention, hoping to lead his public around, once he has it, to his own objectives; — as is shown
in some of his most recent utterances by his naive but discreet annoyance over the fact that his public
obstinately persists in wanting from him only amusing and stirring recitations, and will not listen
patiently to his real message.
Mr. Lindsay obeyed the call to teach in 1905, and for three winters was a Y.M.C.A. lecturer in
New York. But in 1908 he decided that his native town, Springfield, was the proper place for him to
find and create and preach an authentic "United States beauty," and to it he returned. During the
next two years he was employed as a lecturer by the Springfield Y.M.C.A. and by the Anti-Saloon League,
but was repudiated by both when he began to mix his aims with theirs. He was likewise actively dis-
couraged by the citizens of Springfield, who either did not understand or could not seriously regard
his apocalyptic dream of a Springfield regenerated by the love and pursuit of beauty, and thus leading
the rest of the world towards an aesthetic millennium. Some apparently thought that he was insidiously
preaching a political revolution. Only a small circle of Swedenborgians, a devoted teacher of former
days, and a few others remained his friends. From the Swedenborgians he learned much, and was
confirmed in his apocalyptic zeal, though he did not formally join the sect. At the same time he was
unsuccessfully submitting drawings and verses to every art editor and literary editor in New York, so
that both at home and abroad he was told plainly, or by implication, that either he must subdue him-
self to produce what was commercially acceptable in art and poetry, or he must beg. He accepted the
alternative and, as a spectacular act of defiance, calculated to impress Springfield, if not a larger public,
533
534
VACHEL LINDSAY
he made three journeys afoot as a heggar, preaching the gospel of beauty, reciting poems, and giving
away drawings and verses (in particular a pamphlet entitled Rhymes to be Traded for Bread).
It was his first-hand acquaintance with the work of the Salvation Army, gained while he was a
beggar, which inspired him to write the earliest of his better known poems. General fVilliam Booth
EnU-rs into Heaven. This was published with other poems in 191 3, but the volume failed to attract the
public, and his widespread fame dates only from the appearance of his second volume, The Congo and
Other Poems, in 1914. In this volume he achieved a blend of "jazzy" rhythm with rhyme and religion
which at once caught the popular ear and fancy, particularly when chanted by Mr. Lindsay, who has
toured the United States and England and Canada, intoning his poems and fairly acting them out upon
the platform with great effect. In following up this success he has been trying, he has explained, to
create in the public a "higher vaudeville" imagination by writing in emulation of classical Greek poetry
which was half-sung, half-spoken. He has at any rate discovered a completely appropriate medium, of
vast popular appeal, for the expression of his immense vitality and his exuberant, whimsical fancy.
And his serious themes he has occasionally succeeded in transmuting perfectly into powerful and moving
verse. He is, however, a very uneven and uncritical writer, apparently unable to distinguish enthusiasm
from inspiration, and has produced a great quantity of absurd and worthless verse which in his Collected
Poems (1923; revised and illustrated edition, 1925) tends to obscure the slender veins of gold. Other
volumes which have been incorporated in the Collected Poems, besides the two mentioned above, are:
The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems (1917), and The Golden Whales of California and Other Poems
(1920). Three additional volumes of poems are: The Daniel Jazz and Other Poems (1920), Going-to-the-
Sun (1923), and Going to the Stars (1926). Mr. Lindsay has also published two volumes which have
issued out of his experiences as a beggar. Adventures while Preaching the Gospel of Beauty (1914) and
A Handy Guide for Beggars (1916); and also a study entitled The Art of the Moving Picture (1915), and a
"sealed book of prophecy," The Golden Book of Springfield (1920). He still calls Springfield his home,
but spends a part of every year at Gulf Park College (Mississippi), and other time in traveling, when he
is not on one of his "national reciting tours."
I KNOW ALL THIS WHEN
GYPSY FIDDLES CRY ^
Oh, gypsies, proud and stiff-necked and
perverse,
Saying: "We tell the fortunes of the nations,
And revel in the deep palm of the world.
The head-line is the road we choose for trade.
The love-line is the lane wherein we camp.
The life-line is the road we wander on.
Mount Venus, Jupiter, and all the rest
Are finger-tips of ranges clasping round
And holding up the Romany's wide sky."
Oh, gypsies, proud and stiff-necked and per-
verse, 10
Saying: "We will swap horses till the doom.
And mend the pots and kettles of mankind,
And lend our sons to big-time vaudeville.
Or to the race-track, or the learned world.
But India's Brahma waits within their
breasts.
1 The poems here reprinted follow the text of Mr.
Lindsay's Collected Poems, Revised and Illustrated Edi-
tion, and are arranged in the same order as in that vol-
ume. To meet a requirement of the publishers, how-
ever, the volume in which each poem originally ap-
peared is named in the footnotes. The present poem
comes from V. Lindsay's Collected Poems, copyrighted
in 1923 by the Macmillan Company. Reprinted by
permission.
They will return to us with gypsy grins.
And chatter Romany, and shake their curls
And hug the dirtiest babies in the camp.
They will return to the moving pillar of
smoke.
The whitest toothed, the merriest laughers
known, 20
The blackest haired of all the tribes of men.
What trap can hold such cats.^' The Ro-
many
Has crossed such delicate palms with lead or
gold,
Wheedling in sun and rain, through perilous
years.
All coins now look alike. The palm is all.
Our greasy pack of cards is still the book
Most read of men. The heart's librarians,
We tell all lovers what they want to know.
So, out of the famed Chicago Library,
Out of the great Chicago orchestras, 30
Out of the skyscraper, the Fine Arts Build-
ing,
Our sons will come with fiddles and with loot,
Dressed, as of old, like turkey-cocks and
zebras,
Like tiger-lilies and chameleons,
Go west with us to California,
Telling the fortunes of the bleeding world,
And kiss the sunset, ere their day is done."
I KNOW ALL THIS WHEN GYPSY FIDDLES CRY
535
Oh, gypsies, proud and stiff-necked and
perverse,
Picking the brains and pockets of mankind,
You will go westward for one-half hour yet.
You will turn eastward in a little while. 41
You will go back, as men turn to Kentucky,
Land of their fathers, dark and bloody
ground.
When all the Jews go home to Syria,
When Chinese cooks go back to Canton,
China,
When Japanese photographers return
With their black cameras to Tokio,
And Irish patriots to Donegal,
And Scotch accountants back to Edinburgh,
You will go back to India, whence you
came. 50
When you have reached the borders of your
quest,
Homesick at last, by many a devious way.
Winding the wonderlands circuitous,
By foot and horse will trace the long way
back!
Fiddling for ocean liners, while the dance
Sweeps through the decks, your brown
tribes all will go!
Those east-bound ships will hear your long
farewell
On fiddle, piccolo, and flute and timbrel.
I know all this, when gypsy fiddles cry. 59
That hour of their homesickness, I myself
Will turn, will say farewell to Illinois,
To old Kentucky and Virginia,
And go with them to India, whence they
came.
For they have heard a singing from the
Ganges,
And cries of orioles, — from the temple
caves, —
And Bengal's oldest, humblest villages.
They smell the supper smokes of Amritsar.
Green monkeys cry in Sanskrit to their souls
From lofty bamboo trees of hot Madras.
They think of towns to ease their feverish
eyes, 70
And make them stand and meditate forever,
Domes of astonishment, to heal the mind.
I know all this, when gypsy fiddles cry.
What music will be blended with the wind
When gypsy fiddlers, nearing that old land.
Bring tunes from all the world to Brahma's
house.''
Passing the Indus, winding poisonous
forests,
Blowing soft flutes at scandalous temple girls,
Filling the highways with their magpie
loot,
What brass from my Chicago will they
heap, 80
What gems from Walla Walla, Omaha,
Will they pile near the Bodhi Tree, and
laugh.''
They will dance near such temples as best
suit them,
Though they will not quite enter, or adore.
Looking on roofs, as poets look on lilies,
Looking at towers, as boys at forest vines,
That leap to tree-tops through the dizzy air.
I know all this, when gypsy fiddles cry.
And with the gypsies there will be a king
And a thousand desperadoes just his style, 90
With all their rags dyed in the blood of
roses.
Splashed with the blood of angels, and of
demons.
And he will boss them with an awful voice.
And with a red whip he will beat his wife.
He will be wicked on that sacred shore.
And rattle cruel spurs against the rocks.
And shake Calcutta's walls with circus
bugles.
He will kill Brahmins there, in Kali's name,
And please the thugs, and blood-drunk of the
earth.
I know all this, when gypsy fiddles cry. 100
Oh, sweating thieves, and hard-boiled
scalawags,
That still will boast your pride until the
doom.
Smashing every caste rule of the world.
Reaching at last your Hindu goal to smash
The caste rules of old India, and shout:
"Down with the Brahmins, let the Romany
reign."
When gypsy girls look deep within my hand
They always speak so tenderly and say
That I am one of those star-crossed to wed
A princess in a forest fairy-tale. no
So there will be a tender gypsy princess,
My Juliet, shining through this clan.
And I would sing you of her beauty now.
And I will fight with knives the gypsy man
Who tries to steal her wild young heart away.
536
VACHEL LINDSAY
Ami I will kiss her in the waterfalls.
And at the rainbow's end, and in the incense
That curls about the feet of sleeping p;ods,
And sing with her in canebrakes and in rice
fields.
In Romany, eternal Romany. 120
We will sow secret herbs, and plant old roses,
And fumble through dark, snaky palaces,
Stable our ponies in the Taj Mahal,
And sleep outdoors ourselves.
In her strange fairy mill-wheel eyes will wait
All windings and unwindings of the high-
ways,
From India, across America, —
All w indings and unwindings of my fancy,
All windings and unwindings of all souls,
All windings and unwindings of the heav-
ens. 130
I know all this, when gypsy fiddles cry.
We gypsies, proud and stiff-necked and
perverse,
Standing upon the white Himalayas,
Will think of far divine Yosemite.
We will heal Hindu hermits there with oil
Brought from California's tall sequoias.
And we will be like gods that heap the
thunders,
And start young redwood trees on Time's
own mountains,
We will swap horses with the rising moon,
And mend that funny skillet called Orion,
Color the stars like San Francisco's street-
lights, 141
And paint our sign and signature on high
In planets like a bed of crimson pansies;
While a million fiddles shake all listening
hearts,
Crying good fortune to the Universe,
Whispering adventure to the Ganges waves,
And to the spirits, and all winds and gods.
Till mighty Brahma puts his golden palm
Within the gypsy king's great striped tent,
And asks his fortune told by that great love-
line 150
That winds across his palm in splendid
flame.
Only the hearthstone of old India
Will end the endless march of gypsy feet.
I will go back to India with them
When they go back to India whence they
came.
I know all this, when gypsy fiddles cry.
INCENSE 1
Think not that incense-smoke has had its
day.
My friends, the incense-time has but begun.
Creed upon creed, cult upon cult shall bloom.
Shrine after shrine grow gray beneath the
sun.
And mountain-boulders in our aged West
Shall guard the graves of hermits truth-
endowed :
And there the scholar from the Chinese hills
Shall do deep honor, with his wise head
bowed.
And on our old, old plains some muddy
stream.
Dark as the Ganges, shall, like that strange
tide— 10
(Whispering mystery to half the earth) —
Gather the praying millions to its side.
And flow past halls with statues in white
stone
To saints unborn to-day, whose lives of grace
Shall make one shining, universal church
Where all Faiths kneel, as brothers, in one
place.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN WALKS
AT MIDNIGHT 2
(IN SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS)
It is portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little tow^n
A mourning figure w^lks, and will not rest.
Near the old court-house pacing up and
down.
Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards
He lingers where his children used to play.
Or through the market, on the well-worn
stones
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.
1 From V. Lindsay's General William Booth Enters
into Heaven, and Other Poems, copyrighted in 191 3 by
the Macmillan Company. Reprinted by permission.
2 From V. Lindsay's The Con^o and Other PoemSy
copyrighted in 1914 by the Macmillan Company.
Reprinted by permission.
A GOSPEL OF BEAUTY
537
A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient
black,
A famous high top-hat and plain worn
shawl lo
Make him the quaint great figure that men
love.
The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.
He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.
He is among us: — as in times before!
And we who toss and lie awake forTong
Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the
door.
His head is bowed. He thinks on men and
kings.
Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he
sleep?
Too many peasants fight, they know not
why,
Too many homesteads in black terror
weep. 2°
The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.
He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every
main.
He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders
now
The bitterness, the folly and the pain.
He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn
Shall come; — the shining hope of Europe
free:
The league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth,
Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and
Sea.
It breaks his heart that kings must murder
still,
That all his hours of travail here for men 30
Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white
peace
That he may sleep upon his hill again?
SPRINGFIELD MAGICAL ^
In this, the City of my Discontent,
Sometimes there comes a whisper from the
grass,
"Romance, Romance — is here. No Hindu
town
Is quite so strange. No Citadel of Brass
1 From V. Lindsay's General William Booth Enters
into Heaven, and Other Poems, copyrighted in 191 3 by
the Macmillan Company. Reprinted by permission.
By Sinbad found, held half such love and
hate;
No picture-palace in a picture-book
Such webs of Friendship, Beauty, Greed and
Fate!"
In this, the City of my Discontent,
Down from the sky, up from the smoking
deep
Wild legends new and old burn round my
bed 10
While trees and grass and men are wrapped
in sleep.
Angels come down, with Christmas in their
hearts,
Gentle, whimsical, laughing, heaven-sent;
And, for a day, fair Peace have given me
In this, the City of my Discontent!
A GOSPEL OF BEAUTY 2
I. THE PROUD FARMER
(In memory of E. S. Frazee, Rush County,
Indiana)
Into the acres of the newborn state
He poured his strength, and plowed his an-
cient name.
And, when the traders followed him, he stood
Towering above their furtive souls and tame.
That brow without a stain, that fearless eye
Oft left the passing stranger wondering
To find such knighthood in the sprawling
land.
To see a democrat well-nigh a king.
He lived with liberal hand, with guests from
far.
With talk and joke and fellowship to spare, —
Watching the wide world's life from sun to
sun, II
Lining his walls with books from everywhere.
He read by night, he built his world by day.
The farm and house of God to him were one.
For forty years he preached and plowed and
wrought —
A statesman in the fields, who bent to none.
a From V. Lindsay's General IVilliam Booth Enters
into Heaven, and Other Poems, copyrighted in 191 3 by
the Macmillan Company. Reprinted by permission.
Mr. Lindsay states that he recited this group of poems
more than any others in his "mendicant preaching tour
through the West," and he adds: "Taken as a triad,
they hold in solution my theory of American civili-
zation."
538
VACHEL LINDSAY
His plowmen-neighbors were as lords to
him.
His was an ironside, democratic pride.
He served a rigid Christ, but served him
well—
And, for a lifetime, saved the countryside. 20
Here lie the dead, who gave the church
their best
Under his fiery preaching of the word.
Ihey sleep with him beneath the ragged
grass . . .
The village withers, by his voice unstirred.
And though his tribe oe scattered to the
wind
From the Atlantic to the China Sea,
Yet Jo they think of that bright lamp he
burned
Of family worth and proud integrity.
And many a sturdy grandchild hears his
name
In reverence spoken, till he feels akin 30
To all the lion-eyed who build the world —
And lion-dreams begin to burn within.
II. THE ILLINOIS VILLAGE
0 YOU who lose the art of hope.
Whose temples seem to shrine a lie,
Whose sidewalks are but stones of fear,
Who weep that Liberty must die.
Turn to the little prairie towns,
Your higher hope shall yet begin.
On every side awaits you there
Some gate where glory enters in.
Yet when I see the flocks of girls.
Watching the Sunday train go through 10
(As though the whole wide world went by)
With eyes that long to travel too,
1 sigh, despite my soul made glad
By cloudy dresses and brown hair,
Sigh for the sweet life wrenched and torn
By thundering commerce, fierce and bare.
Nymphs of the wheat these girls should be:
Kings of the grove, their lovers, strong.
Why are they not inspired, aflame.?
This beauty calls for valiant song — 20
For men to carve these fairy-forms
And faces in a fountain-frieze;
Dancers that own immortal hours;
Painters that work upon their knees;
Maids, lovers, friends, so deep in life,
So deep in love and poet's deeds,
The railroad is a thing disowned,
The city but a field of weeds.
Who can pass a village church
By night in these clean prairie lands 30
Without a touch of Spirit-power.?
So white and fixed and cool it stands —
A thing from some strange fairy-town,
A pious amaranthine flower,
Unsullied by the winds, as pure
As jade or marble, wrought this hour: —
Rural in form, foursquare and plain,
And yet our sister, the new moon.
Makes it a praying wizard's dream.
The trees that watch at dusty noon 40
Breaking its sharpest lines, veil not
The whiteness it reflects from God,
Flashing like Spring on many an eye,
Making clean flesh, that once was clod.
Who can pass a district school
Without the hope that there may wait
Some baby-heart the books shall flame
With zeal to make his playmates great,
To make the whole wade village gleam
A strangely carved celestial gem, 50
Eternal in its beauty-light,
The Artist's town of Bethlehem!
III. ON THE BUILDING OF
SPRINGFIELD
Let not our town be large, remembering
That little Athens was the Muses' home,
That Oxford rules the heart of London still, J
That Florence gave the Renaissance to "
Rome.
Record it for the grandson of your son —
A city is not builded in a day:
Our little town cannot complete her soul
Till countless generations pass away. 8
Now let each child be joined as to a church
To her perpetual hopes, each man ordained:
Let every street be made a reverent aisle
Where Music grows and Beauty is unchained.
Let Science and Machinery and Trade
Be slaves of her, and make her all in all.
Building against our blatant, restless time
An unseen, skilful, medieval wall.
JOHN L. SULLIVAN, THE STRONG BOY OF BOSTON
539
Let every citizen be rich toward God.
Let Christ the beggar, teach divinity.
Let no man rule who holds his money dear.
Let this, our city, be our luxury. 20
We should build parks that students from
afar
Would choose to starve in, rather than go
home.
Fair little squares, with Phidian ornament.
Food for the spirit, milk and honeycomb.
Songs shall be sung by us in that good day,
Songs we have written, blood within the
rhyme
Beating, as when Old England still was
glad,—
The purple, rich Elizabethan time.
Say, is my prophecy too fair and far.?
I only know, unless her faith be high, 30
The soul of this, our Nineveh, is doomed,
Our little Babylon will surely die.
Some city on the breast of Illinois
No wiser and no better at the start
By faith shall rise redeemed, by faith shall
rise
Bearing the western glory in her heart.
The genius of the Maple, Elm and Oak,
The secret hidden in each grain of corn,
The glory that the prairie angels sing
At night when sons of Life and Love are
born, 40
Born but to struggle, squalid and alone.
Broken and wandering in their early years.
When will they make our dusty streets their
goal.
Within our attics hide their sacred tears.''
When will they start our vulgar blood athrill
With living language, words that set us free-f*
When will they make a path of beauty clear
Between our riches and our liberty.''
We must have many Lincoln-hearted men.
A city is not builded in a day. 50
And they must do their work, and come and
go»
While countless generations pass away.
JOHN L. SULLIVAN, THE
STRONG BOY OF BOSTON 1
(Inscribed to Louis Untermeyer and Robert
Frost)
When I was nine years old, in 1889,
I sent my love a lacy Valentine.
Suffering boys were dressed like Fauntle-
roys.
While Judge and Puck in giant humor vied.
The Gibson Girl came shining like a bride
To spoil the cult of Tennyson's Elaine.
Louisa Alcott was my gentle guide. . . ,
Then . . .
I heard a battle trumpet sound.
Nigh New Orleans 10
Upon an emerald plain
John L. Sullivan
The strong boy
Of Boston
Fought seventy-five red rounds with Jake
Kilrain.
In simple sheltered 1889
Nick Carter I would piously deride.
Over the Elsie Books I moped and sighed.
St. Nicholas Magazine was all my pride.
While coarser boys on cellar doors would
slide. 20
The grown-ups bought refinement by the
pound.
Rogers groups had not been told to hide.
E. P. Roe had just begun to wane.
Howells was rising, surely to attain!
The nation for a jamboree was gowned. —
Her hundredth year of roaring freedom
crowned.
The British Lion ran and hid from Blaine
The razzle-dazzle hip-hurrah from Maine.
The mocking bird was singing in the lane. . . .
Yet ... 30
'^ East sidey west sidey all around To he sung.
r . Let the audi-
trie town ence join in
The tots sang: 'Ring a rosie—' SV^^rS
* London Bridge is falling down^ '* »/ appears.
And . . .
John L. Sullivan
The strong boy
Of Boston
Broke every single rib of Jake Kilrain.
1 From V. Lindsay's T/ie Golden Whales of Calif orniay
copyrighted in 1920 by the Macmillan Company. Re-
printed by permission.
540
VACHEL LINDSAY
In (Itar provincial 1889,
Harnuni's bears and tigers could astound. 40
Ingersoll was called a most vile hound,
And named with Satan, Judas, Thomas
Paine!
Robert Elsmere riled the pious brain.
Phillips Brooks for heresy was fried.
Boston Brahmins patronized Mark Twain.
The baseball rules were changed. That
w'as a gain.
Pop Anson was our darling, pet and pride.
Native sons in Irish votes were drowned.
Tammany once more escaped its chain.
Once more each raw saloon was raising
Cain. 50
The mocking bird was singing in the lane. . . .
Yet . . .
"East side, west side, all around the town
The tots sang: 'Ring a rosie'
'London Bridge is falling down.'"
And . . .
John L. Sullivan
TTie strong boy
Of Boston
Finished the ring career of Jake Kilrain. 60
In mystic, ancient 1889,
Wilson with pure learning was allied.
Roosevelt gave forth a chirping sound.
Stanley found old Emin and his train.
Stout explorers sought the pole in vain.
To dream of flying proved a man insane.
The newly rich were bathing in champagne.
Van Bibber Davis, at a single bound
Displayed himself, and simpering glory
found.
John J. Ingalls, like a lonely crane, 70
Swore and swore, and stalked the Kansas
plain.
The Cronin murder was the ages' stain.
Johnstown was flooded, and the whole
world cried.
We heard not of Louvaln nor of Lorraine,
Or a million heroes for their freedom slain.
Of Armageddon and the world's birth-pain —
The League of Nations, the new world
allied.
With Wilson, crucified, then justified.
We thought the world would loaf and sprawl
and mosey.
The gods of Yap and Swat were sweetly
dozy. 80
We thought the far-off gods of Chow had died.
The mocking bird was singing in the lane. . . .
^'et . . .
"East side, west side, all around the town
The tots sang: 'Ring a rosie'
'London Bridge is Falling Down.'"
And . . .
John L. Sullivan knocked out Jake Kilrain.
SIMON LEGREE — A NEGRO
SERMON 1
(To be read in your own variety of negro
dialect)
Legree's big house was white and green.
His cotton-fields were the best to be seen.
He had strong horses and opulent cattle.
And bloodhounds bold, with chains that
would rattle.
His garret was full of curious things:
Books of magic, bags of gold.
And rabbits' feet on long twine strings.
But he went down to the Devil,
Legree he sported a brass-buttoned coat,
A snake-skin necktie, a blood-red shirt. 10
Legree he had a beard like a goat.
And a thick hairy neck, and eyes like dirt.
His puflf'ed-out cheeks were fish-belly white.
He had great long teeth, and an appetite.
He ate raw meat, 'most every meal.
And rolled his eyes till the cat would squeal.
His fist was an enormous size
To mash poor niggers that told him lies:
He was surely a witch-man in disguise.
But he went down to the Devil. 20
He wore hip-boots, and would wade all day
To capture his slaves that had fled away.
But he went down to the Devil.
He beat poor Uncle Tom to death
Who prayed for Legree with his last breath.
Then Uncle Tom to Eva flew.
To the high sanctoriums bright and new;
And Simon Legree stared up beneath.
And cracked his heels, and ground his teeth:
And went down to the Devil. 30
1 From V. Lindsay's The Chinese Nightingale and J
Other Poems, copyrighted in 191 7 by the Macmillan '
Company. Reprinted by permission. This and the
following poem are the first two of a group of three
collectively entitled The Booker Washington Trilogy.
JOHN BROWN
541
He crossed the yard in the storm and gloom;
He went into his grand front room.
He said, "I killed him, and I don't care."
He kicked a hound, he gave a swear;
He tightened his belt, he took a lamp,
Went down cellar to the webs and damp.
There in the middle of the moldy floor
He heaved up a slab, he found a door —
And went down to the Devil.
His lamp blew out, but his eyes burned
bright. 40
Simon Legree stepped down all night —
Down, down to the Devil.
Simon Legree he reached the place.
He saw one half of the human race.
He saw the Devil on a wide green throne.
Gnawing the meat from a big ham-bone.
And he said to Mister Devil:
"I see that you have much to eat —
A red ham-bone is surely sweet.
I see that you have lion's feet; 50
I see your frame is fat and fine,
I see you drink your poison wine —
Blood and burning turpentine."
And the Devil said to Simon Legree:
"I like your style, so wicked and free.
Come sit and share my throne with me.
And let us bark and revel."
And there they sit and gnash their teeth,
And each one wears a hop-vine wreath.
They are matching pennies and shooting
craps, ^
They are playing poker and taking naps.
And old Legree is fat and fine:
He eats the fire, he drinks the wine —
Blood and burning turpentme —
Down, down with the Devil;
Down, down with the Devil;
Down, down with the Devil,
JOHN BROWN 1
(To be sung by a leader and chorus, the
leader singing the body of the poem, while
the chorus interrupts with the question)
I've been to Palestine.
What did you see in Palestine?
I saw the ark of Noah —
It was made of pitch and pine.
iFrom V, Lindsay's The Chinese Nightingale and
Other Poems, copyrighted in 191 7 by the Macmillan
Company. Reprinted by permission.
I saw old Father Noah
Asleep beneath hi's vine.
I saw Shem, Ham, and Japhet
Standing in a line.
I saw the tower of Babel
In the gorgeous sunrise shine —
By a weeping willow tree
Beside the Dead Sea.
I've been to Palestine.
What did you see in Palestine?
I saw abominations
And Gadarene swine.
I saw the sinful Canaanites
Upon the shewbread dine,
And spoil the temple vessels
And drink the temple wine.
I saw Lot's wife, a pillar of salt
Standing in the brine —
By a weeping willow tree
Beside the Dead Sea.
I've been to Palestine.
What did you see in Palestine?
Cedars on Mount Lebanon,
Gold in Ophir's mine,
And a wicked generation
Seeking for a sign,
And Baal's howling worshipers
Their god with leaves entwine.
And . . .
I saw the war-horse ramping
And shake his forelock fine —
By a weeping willow tree
Beside the Dead Sea.
I've been to Palestine.
What did you see in Palestine?
Old John Brown.
Old John Brown.
I saw his gracious wife
Dressed in a homespun gown.
I saw his seven sons
Before his feet bow down.
And he marched with his seven sons,
His wagons and goods and guns,
To his campfire by the sea.
By the waves of Galilee.
I've been to Palestine.
What did you see in Palestine?
I saw the harp and psalt'ry
Played for Old John Brown.
I heard the ram's horn blow.
Blow for Old John Brown.
10
20
30
40
SO
542
VACHEL LINDSAY
I saw the Bulls of Baslian —
They cheered for Old John Brown.
I saw tiic big Behemoth —
He cheered for Old John Brown.
I saw the big Leviathan — 60
He cheered for Old John Brown.
I saw the Angel Gabriel
Great power to him assign.
I saw him fight the Canaanites
And set God's Israel free.
I saw him when the war was done
In his rustic chair recline —
By his campfire by the sea
By the waves of Galilee.
Tve been to Palestine. 70
What did you see in Palestine?
Old John Brown,
Old John Brown.
And there he sits
To judge the world.
His hunting-dogs
At his feet are curled.
His eyes half-closed,
But John Brown sees
The ends of the earth, 80
The Day of Doom.
And his shot-gun lies
Across his knees —
Old John Brown,
Old John Brown.
HOW SAMSON BORE AWAYi
THE GATES OF GAZA
A NEGRO SERMON
Once, in a night as black as ink,
She drove him out when he would not drink.
Round the house there were men in Wait
Asleep in rows by the Gaza gate.
But the Holy Spirit was in this man.
Like a gentle wind he crept and ran.
(*Tt is midnight," said the big town clock.)
He lifted the gates up, post and lock.
The hole in the wall was high and wide
When he bore away old Gaza's pride 10
Into the deep of the night: —
• From V. Lindsay's The Chinese Nightingale and
Other Poems y copyrighted in 191 7 by the Macmillan
Company. Reprinted by permission.
The bold Jack Johnson Israelite, —
Samson —
The Judge,
The Nazarite.
The air was black, like the smoke of a dragon.
Samson's heart was as big as a wagon.
He sang like a shining golden fountain.
He sweated up to the top of the mountain.
He threw down the gates with a noise like
judgment. 20
And the quails all ran with the big arouse-
ment.
But he wept — "I must not love tough
queens.
And spend on them my hard earned means.
I told that girl I would drink no more.
Therefore she drove me from her door.
Oh sorrow!
Sorrow!
I cannot hide.
Oh Lord look down from your chariot side.
You made me Judge, and I am not wise. 30
I am weak as a sheep for all my size."
Let Samson
Be coming
Into your mind.
The moon shone out, the stars were gay.
He saw the foxes run and play.
He rent his garments, he rolled around
In deep repentance on the ground.
Then he felt a honey in his soul.
Grace abounding made him whole. 40
Then he saw the Lord in a chariot blue.
The gorgeous stallions whinnied and flew.
The iron wheels hummed an old hymn-tune
And crunched in thunder over the moon.
And Samson shouted to the sky:
"My Lord, my Lord is riding high."
Like a steed, he pawed the gates with his
hoof.
He rattled the gates like rocks on the roof.
And danced in the night
On the mountain-top, 50
Danced in the deep of the night:
The Judge, the holy Nazarite,
Whom ropes and chains could never bind.
Let Samson
Be coming
Into your mind.
QUEEN MAB IN THE VILLAGE
543
Whirling his arms, like a top he sped.
His long black hair flew round his head
Like an outstretched net of silky cord,
Like a wheel of the chariot of the Lord. 60
Let Samson
Be coming
Into your mind.
Samson saw the sun anew.
He left the gates in the grass and dew.
He went to a county-seat a-nigh.
Found a harlot proud and high:
Philistine that no man could tame —
Delilah was her lady-name.
Oh sorrow, 7°
Sorrow,
She was too wise.
She cut off his hair,
She put out his eyes.
Let Samson
Be coming
Into your mind-
QUEEN MAB IN THE VILLAGE ^
Once I loved a fairy.
Queen Mab it was. Her voice
Was Hke a little Fountain
That bids the birds rejoice.
Her face was wise and solemn,
Her hair was brown and fine.
Her dress was pansy velvet,
A butterfly design.
10
To see her hover round me
Or walk the hills of air.
Awakened love's deep pulses
And boyhood's first despair;
A passion like a sword-blade
That pierced me through and through:
Her fingers healed the sorrow
Her whisper would renew.
We sighed and reigned and feasted
Within a hollow tree,
We vowed our love was boundless.
Eternal as the sea.
She banished from her kingdom
The mortal boy I grew— -
So tall and crude and noisy,
I killed grasshoppers too.
1 From V. Lindsay's General fVilliam Booth Enters
into Heaven, and Other Poems, copyrighted in 191 3 by
the Macmillan Company. Reprinted by permission.
20
I threw big rocks at pigeons,
I plucked and tore apart
The weeping, wailing daisies,
And broke my lady's heart.
At length I grew to manhood,
I scarcely could believe 3^
I ever loved the lady.
Or caused her court to grieve,
Until a dream came to me.
One bleak first night of Spring,
Ere tides of apple blossoms
Rolled in o'er everything.
While rain and sleet and snowbanks
Were still a-vexing men,
Ere robin and his comrades
Were nesting once again. 4°
I saw Mab's Book of Judgment—
Its clasps were iron and stone.
Its leaves were mammoth ivory,
Its boards were mammoth bone, —
Hid in her seaside mountains,
Forgotten or unkept,
Beneath its mighty covers
Her wrath against me slept.
And deeply I repented
Of brash and boyish crime, 5^
Of murder of things lovely
Now and in olden time.
I cursed my vain ambition,
My would-be worldly days.
And craved the paths of wonder.
Of dewy dawns and fays.
I cried, "Our love was boundless.
Eternal as the sea,
0 Queen, reverse the sentence.
Come back and master me!" 60
The book was by the cliflF-side
Upon its edge upright.
1 laid me by it softly.
And wept throughout the night.
And there at dawn I saw it.
No book now, but a door,
Upon its panels written,
"Judgment is no more."
The bolt flew back with thunder,
I saw within that place 7°
A mermaid wrapped in seaweed
With Mab's immortal face.
Yet grown now to a woman,
A woman to the knee.
She cried, she clasped me fondly.
We soon were in the sea.
544
VACHEL LINDSAY
All, slie was wise and subtle,
And uay nnd strona; and sleek,
We chained the wicked swordHsh,
We played at hide and seek. 80
We floated on the water,
W e heard the dawn-wind sing,
I made from ocean-wonders,
Her bridal wreath and ring.
All mortal girls were shadows.
All earth-life but a mist,
When deep beneath the maelstrom,
The mermaid's heart I kissed.
I woke beside the church-door
Of our small inland town, 90
Bowing to a maiden
In a pansy-velvet gown.
Who had not heard of fairies.
Yet seemed of love to dream.
We planned an earthly cottage
Beside an earthly stream.
Our wedding long is over.
With toil the years fill up,
Yet in the evening silence.
We drink a deep-sea cup. lOO
Nothing the fay remembers,
Yet when she turns to me.
We meet beneath the whirlpool.
We swim the golden sea.
MY FATHERS CAME FROM
KENTUCKY '
I WAS born in Illinois, —
Have lived there many days.
And I have Northern words,
And thoughts,
And ways.
But my great-grandfathers came
To the west with Daniel Boone,
And taught his babes to read,
And heard the redbird's tune;
And heard the turkey's call, 10
And stilled the panther's cry.
And rolled on the blue-grass hills.
And looked God in the eye.
And feud and Hell were theirs;
Love, like the moon's desire,
Love like a burning-mine,
Love like rifle-fire.
I tell tales out of school
Till these Yankees hate my style.
Why should the young cad cry, 20
Shout with joy for a mile.''
Why do I faint with love
Till the prairies dip and reel.?
My heart is a kicking horse
Shod with Kentucky steel.
No drop of my blood from north
Of Mason and Dixon's line.
And this racer in my breast
Tears my ribs for a sign.
But I ran in Kentucky hills 30
Last week. They were hearth and home.
And the church at Grassy Springs,
Under the redbird's wings
Was peace and honeycomb.
' From V. Lindsay's T/ie Golden Whales of California,
copyrighted in 1917 by the Macmillan Company.
Reprinted by permission. This poem is the first in a
group of three collectively entitled Alexander Camp-
bell. Mr. Lindsay has stated that this is the one of
his shorter poems which he himself likes best.
EDGAR LEE MASTERS (1869- )
Mr. Masters was born at Garnett, Kansas, on 23 August, 1869. His father's ancestors had come to
America from England in the seventeenth century, had settled, after a trial of Massachusetts, in Virginia,
bad migrated thence to Tennessee, and from there had gone in the 1820's to Illinois. His mother
came of a New England family. His father was a lawyer, practicing in Garnett at the time of Mr.
Masters's birth. But the boy was brought up in Illinois, for the family returned to that state in the
summer of 1870, in obedience to the desire of Mr. Masters's grandfather, who wished his son to abandon
the law for farming, in which he himself had prospered. Mr. Masters's father, however, though he
remained in Illinois, soon returned to the law, practicing in Petersburg, and later in Lewiston. In
those towns and on his grandfather's farm Mr. Masters was brought up, receiving a somewhat irregular
education, chiefly in public schools, reading extensively in Scott, Dickens, Tennyson, Thomas Moore,
and other nineteenth-century writers, and completing his high-school course when he was seventeen.
He had by the time he was fourteen practically learned the printing trade, and he now entered it, and
at the same time began to write a great deal. He wrote for local papers and sent news to others in Chi-
cago, Peoria, and St. Louis, while he also wrote many poems, tales, and essays. His father, however,
regarded his writing with disfavor, and insisted upon his studying the law. He did so, but the creative
impulse within him was no merely temporary flare of youthfulness, was on the contrary a fundamental
trait which persisted now and later with undimmed, intense force in the face of whatever misunder-
standing, loneliness, and discouragement. Hence, while he studied the law, he continued to write,
to read, he took up the study of Latin, and finally, when he was twenty-one, he persuaded his father to
let him go for one year to Knox College. There he worked at his Latin, and at German, and began
to learn Greek, while he read iEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Homer, Virgil, Goethe, and also some
philosophy and criticism. Altogether the benefits conferred by this year must have been very great,
though probably at the time the chief result was merely to intensify Mr. Masters's inner rebellion
against the fate which chained him to the law in a small, ugly, prosaic town where there was nothing
to relieve his intellectual and spiritual isolation or to help him to understand himself.
What he did, while he again took up the law, was to follow privately desires and tastes which were
largely instinctive and which had no relation to the life around him. He wrote incessantly — wrote
hundreds of poems which were, as he has said, "the products of moods, psychic states, attempts to
reproduce music, or to interpret the moods produced by music. More poems came to me as sounds.
Sometimes as vision, but mostly as sound. The idea was negligible. I was working under the influence
of Poe, Shelley, Keats: sometimes as to nature poems, looking to Theocritus. I wrote many sonnets
and many vague things in the music of Swinburne." In time, Mr. Masters was duly admitted to prac-
tice, and after a year in his father's oflSce he went to Chicago, in the hope of thus escaping the
monotony and spiritual emptiness of a country town.
In Chicago he became a successful attorney, but did not lose his literary interests or ambition. In
1895 he wrote a play in blank verse on Benedict Arnold. In 1898 he published A Book of Verses, in 1902
another play in blank verse, Maximilian, in 1904 a volume of essays {The New Star Chaviber and Other
Essays), in 1905, 1910, and 1912 further volumes of verse. In the mean time, neither his plays nor
his verse attracting the slightest attention, he turned to writing plays in prose, and rapidly completed
eight, of which two were published, Althea (1907) and The Trifler (1908). It was his hope that if he
could get some of these plays produced he might win sufliicient money to devote his time wholly to
literature, but the plays attracted no more attention than did his other work. Nor was his fortune
during these years undeserved. His productions were conventional and flat, without merit of any
kind, the work of a man who did not know either himself or his capacities, and who was simply following
m a blind way an equally blind impulse to create "something or other." It would appear, moreover,
that when finally Mr. Masters did hit upon something which deserved — and received — a warm response,
it was a species of accident, which left him, at the best, only partially enlightened. As early as 1909
his friend William Marion Reedy pressed upon his attention the Greek Anthology, the epitaphs in which
particularly attracted him. But it was not until after he had read a number of brief poems in vers
libre which appeared in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse that, early in 1914, he began to write a series of
epitaphs ia v;iiich people of types he had known told briefly the plain truth about themselves. He
545
54C
KDGAR LEE MASTERS
apparently ilriftcil into tlic iiiidcrrakinf;, and was perhaps led on by its essential irony, once it had
occurred to him to contrast the truth with the eulogistic lies usual in epitaphs. A number of these
monologues spoken from beyond the grave were printed during 1914 in Reedy s Mirror, and were at
once widely commented on; and when they were, with additions, printed as The Spoon River Anthology
in 1915 they created a sensation such as had never before attended the publication of any volume of
poems in the United States.
This was partly because Mr. Masters had set no apparent limits to the frankness which was essen-
tial to his design— but only partly. For it was immediately recognized that the epitaphs went together
to form a profoundly conceived picture of the middle-Western American village, brutal in its realism,
probably exaggerated in its treatment of sexual concerns, bitter in its satire, but, still, genuine, power-
ful, vivid, and unique. The plan gave Mr. Masters an opportunity to express what was central in him,
the fact that his vague love of beauty had been frustrated, smothered, turned to bitterness by the drab
monotony and the hard, stupid conventions of village life, and he made the fullest use of the oppor-
tunity, even though he could not help showing at the same time that he also was unescapably a product
of the community he pictured, sharing its sensuality, its pettiness, its concealed bitterness, and its
blind, inarticulate, frustrated impulses towards a higher and nobler humanity. A part of the book's
strength and truth lay in the fact that the picture it drew was not merely negative, in the fact that those
last-mentioned impulses, though vague and frustrated, were present and living. Thus Mr. Masters
was saved from mere vituperation. His book was not merely a savage blow struck against sentimen-
talism and meanness and cruelty, but its satire served the positive end of exalting personal integrity,
courageous independence, and the spirit of wise toleration.
Mr. Masters, however, apparently could not learn from the phenomenal reception of The Spoon
River Anthology, which at once placed him amongst the best-known men of letters of our time, that his
strength lay in compressed satire. He has since 1915 written some powerful and moving poems, which
deserve a place beside those in The Spoon River Anthology, but he has tended to bury them among a
far larger number which are completely without merit, some of them being unconscionably diffuse and
flat, and others suggesting by their style and content the poems he wrote before 1914, if, indeed, they
are not those poems revived. And the result is, somewhat unfairly, that Mr. Masters is increasingly
looked upon as a man of one book. His later volumes of poems are: Songs and Satires (1916), The Great
Valley (1916), Toward the Gulf (igiS), Starved Rock (1919), Domesday Book (1920), The Open Sea (1921),
and The New Spoon River (1924). He has also in recent years published a boy's story, Mitch Miller
(1920), which has been highly praised, and several novels — Children of the Market Place^ Mirage^ and
The Nuptial Flight.
SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY
THE HILL 1
Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and
Charley,
The weak of will, the strong of arm, the
clown, the boozer, the fighter?
All, all, are sleeping on the hill.
One passed in a fever.
One was burned in a mine,
One was killed in a brawl,
One died in a jail,
One fell from a bridge toiling for children
and wife —
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the
hill.
1 From E. L. Masters's Spoon River Anthology, copy-
righted in 191 5 by the Macmillan Company. Re-
printed by permission.
All of the poems by Mr. Masters here reprinted are
used with his permission as well as with the permission
of his publishers.
Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and
Edith, 10
The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud,
the proud, the happy one.'' —
All, all, are sleeping on the hill.
One died in shameful child-birth,
One of a thwarted love,
One at the hands of a brute in a brothel,
One of a broken pride, in the search for
heart's desire.
One after life in far-away London and Paris
Was brought to her little space by Ella and
Kate and Mag —
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the
hill.
Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily, 20
And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne
Houghton,
And Major Walker who had talked
With venerable men of the revolution.? —
All, all, are sleeping on the hill.
SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY
547
Thcv brouslit them dead sons from the
war,
And daughters whom Hfe had crushed,
And their children fatherless, crying —
AH. all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the
' hill.
Where is Old Fiddler Jones
Who played with life all his ninety 30
years.
Braving the sleet with bared breast,
Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife
nor kin,
INor gold, nor love, nor heaven?
Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long
Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary's
Grove,
Of what Abe Lincoln said
One time at Springfield.
ROBERT FULTON TANNER ^
If a man could bite the giant hand
That catches and destroys him,
As I was bitten by a rat
While demonstrating my patent trap,
In my hardware store that day.
But a man can never avenge himself
On the monstrous ogre Life.
You enter the room — that's being born;
And then you must live — work out your
soul.
Aha! the bait that you crave is in view: 10
A woman with money you want to marry,
Prestige, place, or power in the world.
But there's work to do and things to con-
quer—
Oh, yes! the wires that screen the bait.
At last you get in — but you hear ^ step:
The ogre, Life, comes into the room
(He was waiting and heard the clang of the
spring)
To watch you nibble the wondrous cheese.
And stare with his burning eyes at you.
And scowl and laugh, and mock and curse
you, 20
Running up and down in the trap.
Until your misery bores him.
1 From E. L, Masters's Spoon River Anthology y copy-
righted in 191 5 by the Macmillan Company. Reprinted
by permission.
BENJAMIN PANTIER ^
Together in this grave lie Benjamin Pan-
tier, attorney at law,
And Nig, his dog, constant companion, sol-
ace and friend.
Down the gray road, friends, children, men
and women.
Passing one by one out of life, left me till i
was alone
With Nig for partner, bed-fellow, comrade
in drink.
In the morning of life I knew aspiration and
saw glory.
Then she, who survives me, snared my soul
With a snare which bled me to death,
Till I, once strong of will, lay broken, indif-
ferent,
Living with Nig in a room back of a dingy
office. 10
Under my jaw-bone is snuggled the bony
nose of Nig —
Our story is lost in silence. Go by, mad
world I
MRS. BENJAMIN PANTIER ^
I KNOW that he told that I snared his soul
With a snare which bled him to death.
And all the men loved him.
And most of the women pitied him.
But suppose you are really a lady, and have
delicate tastes.
And loathe the smell of whiskey and onions.
And the rhythm of Wordsworth's "Ode"
runs in your ears,
While he goes about from morning till
night
Repeating bits of that common thing:
*'0h, why should the spirit of mortal be
proud?" 10
And then, suppose:
You are a woman well endowed.
And the only man with whom the law and
morality
Permit you to have the marital relation
Is the very man that fills you with disgust
Every time you think of it — while you think
of it
Every time you see him ?
That's why I drove him away from home
To live with his dog in a dingy room
Back of his office. ^^
548
EDCAR LEE MASTERS
DAISY FRASER ^
Did you ever hear of Editor Whedon
Giving to the pubHc treasury any of the
money ht received
For supporting candidates for office?
Or for writing up the canning factory
To get people to invest?
Or for suppressing the facts about the
bank,
When it was rotten and ready to break?
Did you ever hear of the Circuit Judge
Helping anyone except the "Q" railroad,
Or the bankers? Or did Rev. Peet or Rev.
Sibley lo
Give any part of their salary, earned by
keeping still.
Or speaking out as the leaders wished them
to do,
To the building of the water works?
But I — Daisy Eraser who always passed
Along the streets through rows of nods and
smiles.
And coughs and words such as "there she
goes,"
Never was taken before Justice Arnett
Without contributing ten dollars and costs
To the school fund of Spoon River!
DOCTOR MEYERS ^
No other man, unless it was Doc Hill,
Did more for people in this town than L
And all the weak, the halt, the improvi-
dent
And those who could not pay flocked to
me.
I was good-hearted, easy Doctor Meyers.
I was healthy, happy, in comfortable
fortune.
Blest with a congenial mate, my children
raised.
All wedded, doing well in the world.
And then one night, Minerva, the poetess.
Came to me in her trouble, crying. lo
I tried to help her out — she died —
They indicted me, the newspapers disgraced
me,
My wife perished of a broken heart.
And pneumonia finished me.
J From E. L. Masters's Spoon River Anthology, copy-
righted in 191 5 by the Macmillan Company. Re-
printed by permission.
MRS. MEYERS ^
He protested all his life long
1 he newspapers lied about him villainously;
That he was not at fault for Minerva's fall,
But only tried to help her.
Poor soul so sunk in sin he could not see
'J'hat even trying to help her, as he called it,
He had broken the law human and divine.
Passers by, an ancient admonition to you:
If your ways would be ways of pleasantness,
And all your pathways peace, 10
Love God and keep his commandments.
KNOWLT HOHElMERl
I WAS the first fruits of the battle of Mis-
sionary Ridge.
When I felt the bullet enter my heart
I wished I had stayed at home and gone to
jail
For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,
Instead of running away and joining the
army.
Rather a thousand times the county jail
Than to lie under this marble figure with
wings.
And this granite pedestal
Bearing the words, ''Pro P atria!'
What do they mean, anyway? 10
DOC HILL 1
I WENT up and down the streets
Here and there by day and night.
Through all hourt of the night caring for the
poor who were sick.
Do you know why?
My wife hated me, my son went to the
dogs:
And I turned to the people and poured out
my love to them.
Sweet it was to see the crowds about the
lawns on the day of my funeral,
And hear them murmur their love and sor-
row.
But oh, dear God, my soul trembled, scarcely
able
To hold to the railing of the new life 10
When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree
At the grave.
Hiding herself, and her grief!
SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY
549
FIDDLER JONES ^
The earth keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is you.
And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.
What do you see, a harvest of clover?
Or a meadow to walk through to the river?
The wind's in the corn; you rub your
hands
For beeves hereafter ready for market;
Or else you hear the rustle of skirts
Like the girls when dancing at Little
Grove.
To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust ii
Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;
They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
Stepping it off, to *'Toor-a-Loor."
How could I till my forty acres
Not to speak of getting more,
With a medley of horns, bassoons and pic-
colos
Stirred in my brain by crows and robins
And the creak of a wind-mill — only these?
And I never started to plow in my life 20
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle —
And a broken laugh, and a thousand mem-
ories.
And not a single regret.
petit, the poet 1
Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick.
Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel —
Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens —
But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus.
Ballades by the score with the same old
thought:
The snows and the roses of yesterday are
vanished;
And what is love but a rose that fades?
Life all around me here in the village:
Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth, 10
Courage, constancy, heroism, failure —
All in the loom, and oh what patterns!
Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers —
Blind to all of it all my life long.
1 From E. L. Masters's Spoon River Anthology, copy-
righted in 191 5 by the Macmillan Company. Re-
printed by permission.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick.
Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics.
While Homer and Whitman roared in the
pmesi
WASHINGTON McNEELY
Rich, honored by my fellow citizens,
The father of many children, born of a noble
mother.
All raised there
In the great mansion-house, at the edge of
town.
Note the cedar tree on the lawn!
I sent all the boys to Ann Arbor, all the girls
to Rockford,
The while my life went on, getting more
riches and honors —
Resting under my cedar tree at evening.
The years went on.
I sent the girls to Europe; 10
I dowered them when married.
I gave the boys money to start in business.
They were strong children, promising as
apples
Before the bitten places show.
But John fled the country in disgrace.
Jenny died in child-birth —
I sat under my cedar tree.
Harry killed himself after a debauch,
Susan was divorced —
I sat under my cedar tree.
Paul was invalided from over study,
Mary became a recluse at home for love of
a man —
I sat under my cedar tree.
All were gone, or broken-winged or devoured
by life —
I sat under my cedar tree.
My mate, the mother of them, was taken —
I sat under my cedar tree.
Till ninety years were tolled.
O maternal Earth, which rocks the fallen
leaf to sleep!
THOMAS RHODES *
Very well, you liberals,
And navigators into realms intellectual.
You sailors through heights imaginative.
Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling
into air pockets.
You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits,
And Tennessee Claflin Shopes —
20
550
EDGAR LKK MASTERS
^ oil found with all- your boasted wisdom
How liard at the hist it is
To keep the soul from splitting into cellular
atoms.
While we, seekers of earth's treasures, lo
Getters and hoarders of gold,
Are self-contained, compact, harmonized.
Even to the end.
EDITOR WHEDON ^
1 o be able to see every side of every ques-
tion;
To be on every side, to be everything, to be
nothing long;
To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose.
To use great feelings and passions of the
human family
For base designs, for cunning ends.
To wear a mask like the Greek actors —
Your eight-page paper — behind which you
huddle,
Bawling through the megaphone of big
type:
"This is I, the giant.'*
Thereby also living the life of a sneak-
thief, lO
Poisoned w^th the anonymous words
Of your clandestine soul.
To scratch dirt over scandal for money.
And exhume it to the winds for revenge.
Or to sell papers.
Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be.
To win at any cost, save your own life.
To glory in demoniac power, ditching civili-
zation.
As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track
And derails the express train. 20
To be an editor, as I was.
Then to lie here close by the river over the
place
Where the sewage flows from the village.
And the empty cans and garbage are
dumped,
And abortions are hidden.
SETH COMPTON ^
When I died, the circulating library
Which I built up for Spoon River,
And managed for the good of inquiring
minds,
1 From E. L. Masters *s Spoon River /Anthology, copy-
righted in 191 5 by the Macmillan Company. Re-
printed by permission.
Was sold at auction on the public scjuare.
As if to destroy the last vestige
Of my memory and influence.
Por those of you who could not see the virtue
Of knowing Volney's Ruins as well as But-
ler's Analogy
And Faust as well as Evangeline^
Were really the power in the village, 10
And often you asked me,
"What is the use of knowing the evil in the
world.?"
I am out of your way now, Spoon River,
Choose your own good and call it good.
For I could never make you see
That no one knows what is good
Who knows not what is evil;
And no one knows what is true
Who knows not what is false. '
perry zoll 1
My thanks, friends of the County Scientific
Association,
For this modest boulder,
And its little tablet of bronze.
Twice I tried to join your honored body,
And was rejected.
And when my little brochure
On the intelligence of plants
Began to attract attention
You almost voted me in. ^
After that I grew beyond the need of ycu
And your recognition.
Yet I do not reject your memorial stone.
Seeing that I should, in so doing.
Deprive you of honor to yourselves.
ARCHIBALD HIGBIE ^
I LOATHED you, Spoon River. I tried to
rise above you,
I was ashamed of you. I despised you
As the place of my nativity.
And there in Rome, among the artists.
Speaking Italian, speaking French,
I seemed to myself at times to be free
Of every trace of my origin.
I seemed to be reaching the heights of art
And to breathe the air that the masters
breathed.
And to see the world with their eyes. 10
But still they'd pass my work and say:
"What are you driving at, my friend.?
Sometimes the face looks like Apollo's,
At others it has a trace of Lincoln's."
SPCXJN RIVER ANTHOLOGY
551
There was no culture, you know, in Spoon
River,
And I burned with shame and held my
peace.
And what could I do, all covered over
And weighted down with western soil.
Except aspire, and pray for another
Birth in the world, with all of Spoon River
Rooted out of my soul? 21
FATHER MALLOY ^
You are over there, Father Malloy,
Where holy ground is, and the cross marks
every grave.
Not here with us on the hill —
Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision
And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins.
You were so human, Father Malloy,
Taking a friendly glass sometimes with
us,
Siding with us who would rescue Spoon
River
From the coldness and the dreariness of vil-
lage morality.
You were like a traveler who brings a little
box of sand 10
From the wastes about the pyramids
And makes them real and Egypt real.
You were a part of and related to a great
past.
And yet you were so close to many of us.
You believed in the joy of life.
You did not seem to be ashamed of the
flesh.
You faced life as it is,
And as it changes.
Some of us almost came to you, Father
Malloy,
Seeing how your church had divined the
heart, 20
And provided for it.
Through Peter the Flame,
Peter the Rock.
ANNE RUTLEDGE ^
Out of me unworthy and unknown
The vibrations of deathless music;
"With malice toward none, with charity for
all."
• From E. L. Masters's Spoon River Anthology y copy-
righted in 191 5 by the Macmillan Company. Re-
printed by permission.
Out of mc the forgiveness of millions toward
millions.
And th»i beneficent face of a nation
Shining with justice and truth.
I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these
weeds,
Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,
Wedded to him, not through union.
But through separation. 10
Bloom forever, O Republic,
From the dust of my bosom!
RUTHERFORD McDOWF.LL ^
They brought me ambrotypes \
Of the old pioneers to enlarge.
And sometimes one sat for me —
Some one who was in being
When giant hands from the womb of the
world
Tore the republic.
What was it in their eyes? —
For I could never fathom
That mystical pathos of drooped eyelids,
And the serene sorrow of their eyes. 10
It was like a pool of water.
Amid oak trees at the edge of a forest.
Where the leaves fall,
As you hear the crow of a cock
From a far-ofF farm house, seen near the hills
Where the third generation lives, and the
strong men
And the strong women are gone and for-
gotten.
And these grand-children and great grand-
children
Of the pioneers!
Truly did my camera record their faces,
too, 20
With so much of the old strength gone,
And the old faith gone.
And the old mastery of life gone.
And the old courage gone.
Which labors and loves and suffers and sings
Under the sun!
LUCINDA MATLOCK ^
I WENT to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.
One time we changed partners.
Driving home in the moonlight of middle
June,
And then I found Davis.
5 52
EDGAR LEE MASTERS
We were married and lived together for sev-
enty years,
Enjoying, working, raising the twelve chil-
dren,
Eight of whom we lost
Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed
the sick, lo
I made the garden, and for holiday
Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
And many a flower and medicinal weed —
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the
green valleys.
At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes.''
Degenerate sons and daughters, 20
Life is too strong for you —
It takes life to love Life.
SLIP SHOE LOVEYi
You're the cook's understudy
A gentle idiot body.
You are slender like a broom
Weaving up and down the room,
With your dirt hair in a twist
And your left eye in a mist.
Never thinkin', never hopin'
With your wet mouth open.
So bewildered and so busy
As you scrape the dirty kettles,
O Slip Shoe Lizzie
As you rattle with the pans.
There's a clatter of old metals,
O Slip Shoe Lovey,
As you clean the milk cans.
You're a greasy little dovey,
A laughing scullery daughter.
As you slop the dishwater,
So abstracted and so dizzy,
O Slip Shoe Lizzie!
So mussy, little hussie.
With the china that you break.
And the kitchen in a smear
When the bread is yet to bake.
And the market things are here —
O Slip Shoe Lovey!
1 From E. L, Masters's The Great Valley, copy-
righted in 1 91 6 by the Macmillan Company. Re-
printed by permission.
10
20
\'ou are hurrying and scurrying
From the sink to the oven.
So forgetful and so sloven.
^'ou are bustling and hustling 30
From the pantry to the door.
With )'^our shoe strings on the floor,
And your apron strings a-draggin',
And your spattered skirt a-saggin'.
You're an angel idiot lovey.
One forgives you all this clatter
W^ashing dishes, beating batter.
But there is another matter
As you dream above the sink:
You're in love pitter-patter, 40
With the butcher-boy I think.
And he'll get you, he has got you
If he hasn't got you yet.
For he means to make you his,
O Slip Shoe Liz.
And your open mouth is wet
To a little boyish chatter.
You're an easy thing to flatter
With your hank of hair a-twist.
And your left eye in a mist — 50
O Slip Shoe Lovey!
So hurried and so flurried
And just a little worried
You lean about the room.
Like a mop, like a broom.
O Slip Shoe Love}''!
0 Slip Shoe Lovey!
CHRISTMAS AT INDIAN POINT ^
Who is that calling through the night,
A wail that dies when the wind roars?
We heard it first on Shipley's Hill,
It faded out at Comingoer's.
Along five miles of wintry road
A horseman galloped with a cry,
*"Twas two o'clock," said Herman Pointer,
"When I heard clattering hoofs go by."
"I flung the winder up to listen;
1 heerd him there on Gordon's Ridge; 10
I heerd the loose boards bump and rattle
When he went over Houghton's Bridge."
2 From E. L. Masters's Toward the Gulf, copyrighted
in 191 8 by the Macmillan Company. Reprinted by
permission.
MOURNIN' FOR RELIGION
553
Said Roger Ragsdale: "I was doctorin*
A heifer in the barn, and then
My boy says: 'Pap, that's Billy Paris.'
'There,' says my boy, *it is again.*
"Says I: 'That kain't be B-'ly Paris,
We seed 'im at the Christmas tree.
It's two o'clock,' says I, 'and Billy
I seed go home with Emily.' 20
*"He is too old for galavantin*
Upon a night like this,' says I.
'Well, pap,' says he, 'I know that frosty,
Good-natured huskiness in that cry.'
'"It kain't be Billy,' says I, swabbin*
The heifer's tongue and mouth with brine,
*I never thought — it makes me shiver.
And goose-flesh up and down the spine.'"
Said Doggie Traylor: "When I heard it
I 'lowed 'twas Pin Hook's rowdy new
'uns. 30
Them Cashner boys was at the schoolhouse
Drinkin' there at the Christmas doin's."
Said Pete McCue: "I lit a candle
And held it up to the winder pane.
But when I heerd again the holler
'Twere half-way down the Bowman Lane."
Said Andy Ensley: "First I knowed
I thought he'd thump the door away.
I hopped from bed, and says, 'Who is it?'
'O, Emily,' I heard him say. 40
"And there stood Billy Paris tremblin',
His face so white, he looked so queer.
*0 Andy' — and his voice went broken.
'Come in,' says I, 'and have a cheer.'
"'Sit by the fire,' I kicked the logs up,
'What brings you here? — I would be told.'
Says he: 'My hand just . . . happened
near hers.
It teched her hand . . . and it war cold.
'"We got back from the Christmas doin's
And went to bed, and she was sayin', 50
(The clock struck ten) if it keeps snowin'
To-morrow there'll be splendid sleighin'.'
" 'My hand teched hers, the clock struck two,
And then I thought I heerd her moan.
It war the wind, I guess, for Emily
War lyin' dead. . . . She's thar alone.'
"I left him then to call my woman
To tell her that her mother died.
When we come back his voice was steady,
The big tears in his eyes was dried. 60
"He just sot there and quiet like
Talked 'bout the fishin' times they had,
And said for her to die on Christmas
Was somethin' 'bout it made him glad.
"He grew so cam he almost skeered us.
Says he: 'It's a fine Christmas over there.'
Says he: 'She was the lovingest woman
That ever walked this Vale of Care.'
"Says he: 'She alius laughed and sang,
I never heerd her once complain.'
Says he: 'It's not so bad a Christmas
When she can go and have no pain.'
70
"Says he: *The Christmas's good for her.*
Says he: . . . 'Not very good for me.'
He hid his face then in his muflfler
And sobbed and sobbed, *0 Emily.'"
MOURNIN' FOR RELIGION ^
Brothers and sisters, I'm mournin' for
religion.
But I can't get religion, it's my woman in-
terferin'.
I sing and I pray, and I'm real perseverin*,
But I can't get religion.
That's all I have to say.
I know there is a fountain, a Jesus, a com-
forter,
A heaven, a Jerusalem, a day of Pentecost,
Salvation for the wishin', blood for sin's
remission,
A covenant, a promise for souls that are lost.
But I can't get religion, the salvation
feelin', 10
The vision of the Lamb, forgiveness and
healin'.
I have a sort of numbness
When I see the mourners kneelin'.
» From E. L. Masters's Starved Rock, copyrighted in
1919 by the Macmillan Company. Reprinted by
permission.
554
EDGAR LEE MASTERS
1 have a kind of iliiinhiicss
Wlien the preacher is appeahn'.
I liave a kind of wariness, e\en contrariness,
Even while I'm fearin'
The bottomless pit and the shut gates of
heaven,
It's my woman interferin' — •
For you see when they say: 20
Come to the mercy seat, come, come,
The spirit and the bride
Say come, come,
I think of my woman who bore so many
children;
I think of her a cookin' for harvesters in
summer;
I think of her a lyin' there, a dyin' there,
the neighbors
Who came in to fan her and how she never
murmured;
And then I seem to grow number and
number,
And something in me says:
Why didn't Jesus help her for to die, 30
Why did Jesus always pass her by,
Let her break her health down as I was
growing poorer.
Let her lie and suffer with no medicine to
cure her,
I wouldn't treat a stray dog as Jesus acted
to her.
If these are devil words, I'm a child of the
devil.
And this is why I'm dumb,
As the spirit and the bride say come!
I am old and crippled — sixty in December.
And I wonder if it's God that stretches out
and hands us
Troubles we remember? 40
I'm alone besides, I need the Comforter,
All the children's grown up, livin' out in
Kansas.
My old friend Billy died of lung fever. . . .
But the worse of it is I'm really a believer.
Expect to go to hell if I don't get religion.
And I need this religion to stop this awful
grievin'
About my woman lyin' there in the cemetery.
And you can't stop this grievin' simply by
believin'.
So I mourn for religion,
I mourn for religion, 50
My old heart breaks for religion!
THE NEW SPOON RIVERA
EZRA FINK
Raised in the faitii of Elliott Hawkins of old.
Making my way as a hand on the farm,
1 hen teaching school, then becoming a
lawyer;
Entering politics, cultivating the good
people,
A church member too —
(Observe my lecture on the fall of Athens,
Due to her immoral and un-Christian life.)
I'Jected a judge at last of the City Court.
1 hen lifted up to a law partnership in
Chicago,
1 ighting the eight hour day, 10
And consolidating industries.
On and on, up and up — always busy.
Abstemious, the husband of one wife —
nothing else!
Called at last to the presidency of the Trust.
Master now of tens of thousands of workers.
And hundreds of millions of gold.
Taking over the little canning works or
Spoon River;
Building a church in Spoon River,
Head of Spoon River's library board.
And supervising the selection of its books. 20
Building myself a great tomb in Spoon River,
For which these words are the inscription:
" Blessed are the dead which die in the
Lord."
DICK SAPPER
The ordinance of Spoon River permitted
The preaching of Jesus on the streets.
By Salvationists and Fundamentalists.
So I went to the square one day with the
Bible
And began to read: *'Woe unto you lawyers,
Who build the sepulchers of the prophets."
And being known as a Socialist
They put me in jail for talking socialism
On the public square.
Well, the war came on, and Ezra Fink 10 '
Had written a letter to Spoon River
To buy war bonds until we were broke,
And I opposed it and even opposed
The lawless and hellish draft in the name
Of Jesus of Nazareth, as I thought.
' The five epitaphs here reprinted from this volume
are used with the permission of its publishers, Messrs.
Boni and Liveright, Inc.
ON A DEATH MASK
555
So they put me in prison for twenty years,
Where my body broke, and my spirit broke,
And where in vain I tried to be pardoned.
And I coughed and cursed to that awful
moment
When the blood of my body shot from my
mouth 20
Like a gushing hose, and I was dead.
And some of you call this a republic!
Well, some of you be damned.
And God damned!
THOMAS MacCRACKEN
New commandments I give to you, Spoon
River,
Out of the wisdom of living:
Thou shalt make graven images of all beau-
tiful things;
Thou shalt take the name of God in vain.
For by unanswered prayers shall you be
hfted up;
T*hou shalt labor every day in the week,
Even as thy heart rests not;
Thou shalt give life;
Thou shalt love the woman who gives her
love to thee,
Or else thou shalt not accept her love; lo
Thou shalt help to multiply the goods of the
community;
Thou shalt tell the truth about thy neighbor,
And about thy enemy.
Thou shalt be free, joyous, tolerant, active.
Thou shalt trust death,
Having trusted and rejoiced in birth!
HENRY RABENEAU
To be gay, free, to be a liver;
To see through the cant of service;
To hoot effectively the uplifter;
To know that life is a jest;
And man a germ amid bread and roofs;
To walk like a giant, laughing and roaring.
Kicking off the ropes of the dwarfs,
Breaking the chains of the New Jerusa-
lemites.
To smile at all philosophies and religions,
As the mind wanderings of starving wits. lo
To be a fat and lusty weed,
Flaunting insolent leav^es —
Then to have the dwarfs get you.
And cover you with their ideas of dishonor,
Until infinite disgust rots you,
And you wither and lisp and break,
Frost bitten and dusted over.
That was I, fellow citizens.
Until in the hour of death
One moment of myself, gay and free 20
And insolent, returned in a laugh!
SARAH DEWITT
Because I believed God brought him to me,
And because I believed him gifted of God
With honor, truth and love of the right,
I believed in God and worshiped God.
Then when I found he was just a thief,
And full of treasons and perjuries.
All for money and worldly pride,
The wreck of him was the wreck of God;
And so I fainted amid the ruins 9
Of plaster and sticks, and sat in the stillness
That followed the fallen bust of God.
Friends, it is folly to prison God
In any house that is built with hands,
In man or woman, or passionate hopes.
Or the love of Truth, or the Rock of Ages,
For all will change, deceive or crumble.
As soon as you think you have prisoned God,
For God is Proteus, and flies like magic
From earth to heaven, from hope to hope.
You never can catch Him, and this is the
reason: 20
The game of the soul is never to find.
The game of the soul is to follow!
ON A DEATH MASK ^
(//. W. M. died 14 November, 192s)
I
Life cuts depressions and these make reliefs,
As gnarls make hollows in the final cast
By Life the sculptor. So this mask amassed
In bronze what Life had done: brought clear
beliefs
From the incisions of defeating griefs;
From hate brought love, brought wisdom,
and at last
Brought peace and pardon, as the soul sur-
passed
The clay and rose emancipate from the fiefs
Of Fate and flesh — all sculpturing here is
shown
' Reprinted from The Nation, issue of 3 February,
1926, with the permission of the editors and of the
author.
556
p:dgar lee masters
Of Life whose hands opposed or helped his
soul, lo
Resistini:; or accepting in the role
Of clay and spirit makinp; the Fate his own
For the master mask, whose finish would
control
I'he dignity of bronze, the peace of stone!
II
Whatever Life pressed down and back is
here:
Great music only imagined, never heard;
Great fellowships afar, always deferred;
And life more ample in a richer sphere.
The spirit of genius to his eye was clear
In lovers, livers, in the impassioned word. 20
Beethoven's face, or Shelley's, Byron's
stirred
Fraternal reverence, as the returning year
Denied his longing, and as a deepening glance
Revealed him to himself, his stuff and strain.
Called by Venetian songs, an English lane,
By happy freedoms where men drink and
dance.
So Traviata speaks him, so remain
In bronze the prize denied, the great
romance.
Ill
Scarcely in life did the life that moved within
This brow, these eyelids, these Mercutio
cheeks 30
Break the disguise of flesh — but now all
speaks
Down to the humorous mouth and granite
chin,
And the laughing rays that star the un-
troubled skin
About the eye which smiles, and no more
seeks
The Secret. But the eye long blind still
wTtnks
Its patient wonder, leaving the brow to win.
And solve the secrets blindness sees — this
brow
Likeagreat boulder from the Sangamon. . . .
I never saw him all in all, this son
Of Jackson's day, but Death instructs me
how : 40
1 his Hawthorne face, this prairie Jefferson,
This type American departed now!
IV
As if the Fate which brought paralysis.
And closed his throat to water for his thirst.
Intended his last hours to match his first.
With strength prolonged to ask the benefice
Of water and the tenderness of a kiss —
So did it punish him it had amerced.
And gave not w^ater, neither the lot reversed
Which all his days wTought hard antithesis
Between his longing and his long defeat. 51
An old man, dying in a lonely room
Where no one but a nurse was, had his doom
Of thirst and silence and a winding sheet.
Now the bronze smiles upon the distant
tomb:
Love is and thirst, but Death how great and
sweet!
i
I
SHERWOOD ANDERSON (1876- )
Mr. Anderson was born In Camden, Ohio, on 13 September, 1876. Me has published an auto-
biographical volume, A Story-Teller s Story (1924), from which information concerning his life may be
obtained, though the book is neither a consecutive narrative, nor complete, nor, as he himself says, by
any means free from fiction. His father was "a ruined dandy from the South" who kept a harness-
repair shop until it failed, and who then became "ostensibly a house-and-barn painter. However, he
did not call himself a house-painter. The idea was not flashy enough for him. He called himself a
'sign-writer.' The day of universal advertising had not yet come and there was but little sign-writing
to do, . . . but still he stuck out bravely for the higher life." Mr. Anderson's mother, who died when
he was still a young boy, was a woman of Italian extraction who had been a bound servant in a farmer's
family when his father had met her and married her. The family was poor and led almost a vagabond
existence. The mother was a woman of character, but the father was a ne'er-do-well who lived in a
w^orld of brightly colored dreams. Sometimes, while mother and children were left to shift for them-
selves, this father managed to secure board and lodging for himself from farmers and their wives by the
romantic tales he invented concerning his past. The family had begun to disintegrate when Mr.
Anderson was yet a small boy, and the death of his mother hastened the process. He attended public
schools for a time, but apparently not for long. When other boys were preparing for college he was
already earning his own living — was employed in a nail factory, rolling kegs of nails from a warehouse
to waiting trucks. He did not continue long at any one job, however. He had a passion for reading —
novels and romances at first, then memoirs, and some history — and whenever he managed to get a few
dollars ahead he threw up his job and did nothing save read books from public libraries until he was
again without money. Then he obtained a new job, assembled parts in a bicycle-factory, or helped
to care for race-horses, until he had earned another period of reading. When the Spanish War came he
enlisted. He happened at the time to have a hundred dollars — the result of his rescue of a drunken
man from robbers — and for greater efl^ect he purchased new clothes and a walking-stick and returned to
his native town to enlist, so that the people who knew him could see how well he was doing in life and
could appreciate the sacrifice he was making in fighting for his country. The people "rose," and tried
to make a hero of him, and he liked it. Later he managed to start a small manufacturing business,
but he had no head for buying and selling, the business soon began to go badly, and he suddenly quitted
it in disgust. He then became an advertisement-writer in Chicago,
By this time Mr, Anderson knew that he was a story-teller, and only a story-teller, a man of
words and fancies — fancies so vivid and inevitable that he could scarcely keep them distinct from the
world of fact. And he was writing, writing, trying to get his matter faithfully into words, in whatever
time he could steal from the advertisement-business. Several of his tales, moreover, were published, in
The Little Review, and in The Seven Arts, and this helped him to conquer his fears, born of the notion that
only cultured and educated people could hope to produce literature. He went to New York, became
acquainted with writers and critics, and discovered that the only people who had solved the problems of
the craft of fiction were the factory-hands of the periodicals, the men who produced machine-made
"plot-stories," with the aim, not of exploring reality, but of amusing or distracting their readers. He
also discovered that apparently there was a new and growing interest in problems of the craft of fiction,
and likewise in the effort to create an authentic "United States beauty" by a faithful and untrammcled
handling of the lives of real people — that, indeed, there was a growing naturalistic school of American
writers, in whose ranks he was already enrolled.
Thus encouraged, Mr. Anderson published his first novel, Windy McPhersons Son, in 1916, and since
then other volumes have followed rapidly: Marching Men (1917; novel), Mid-American Chants (1918;
poems), Winesburg, Ohio (1919; tales). Poor White (1920; novel). The Triumph of the Egg (1921; tales),
Many Marriages (1922; novel). Horses and Men (1923; tales), Dark Laughter (1925; novel), and Note-
book, (1926; essays and brief observations). " Tar" The Story of a Mid-American Childhood will be
published in the fall of 1926, and Mr. Anderson has in preparation a novel to be entitled Another Mans
House.
Mr. Anderson is at once a conscious artist and a seeker after truth. He insists that his books are
not transcripts from life, but imaginative creations, yet adds that the imagination can fruitfully be fed
557
558
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
only by naked reality. Thus his novels ami tales have a marked aiitoMojiraphlcal element, while his
autobiography contains, as has been mentioned, many imajiinative details. As a creator he tends to
foUow art for art's sake, and endeavors after complete intlependence of literary, social, and moral con-
ventions, so that he may be wholly faithful to his vision, whatever it may be, and equally free to
express it. He also, however, earnestly seeks to understand life, which has bewildered and baffled him.
He is confident that there is a good way of life which industrial America as he has known it
somehow has lost consciousness of, and he seems to feel that all conventions and standards are
deadening shackles the repudiation of which, throwing open the gates to free individual develop-
ment, would reawaken our dormant intelligence and our dormant sensitiveness to beauty, and so make
life for every one a rich and ennobling experience. This is well illustrated by some sentences from the
initial tale in JVineshurg, Ohio, probably Mr. Anderson's best book: "All of the men and women the writer
had ever known had become grotesques." They were not all horrible. "Some were amusing, some
almost beautiful," but all were grotesques. And the reason was, "That in the beginning when the
world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Man made
the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the
world were the truths and they were all beautiful. . . . There was the truth of virginity and the truth
of passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, and of carelessness and aban-
don. . . . And then the people came along. Each as he appeared snatched up one of the truths.
... It was the truths that made the people grotesques. . . . The moment one of the people took
one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque
and the truth he embraced became a falsehood." It must be felt that the quality of Mr. Anderson's
work would be different were it not for his very one-sided experience of life and for his lack of the ordered
historical understanding which liberal education aims to give. Nevertheless, his novels and tales are
notable not only for their honesty, their vividness, and their limited range of truth to human nature, but
also for their indictment of rigid standardization in art, industry, and life, their exhibition of the empti-
ness of material prosperity, and their fresh and vigorous insistence upon the high value of independence,
courage, and personal integrity.
A MAN OF IDEAS 1
He lived with his mother, a gray, silent
woman with a peculiar ashy complexion.
The house in which they lived stood in a
little grove of trees beyond where the main
street of Winesburg crossed Wine Creek.
His name was Joe Welling, and his father
had been a man of some dignity in the com-
munity, a lawyer and a member of the state
legislature at Columbus. Joe himself was
small of body and in his character unlike
anyone else in town. He was like a tiny
little volcano that lies silent for days and
then suddenly spouts fire. No, he wasn't like
that — he was like a man who is subject to
fits, one who walks among his fellow men
inspiring fear because a fit may come upon
him suddenly and blow him away into a
strange uncanny physical state in which
his eyes roll and his legs and arms jerk.
He was like that, only that the visitation
that descended upon Joe Welling was a
mental and not a physical thing. He was
beset by ideas and in the throes of one of his
1 This and the following two tales are reprinted from
fVinesburg, Ohio with the permission of the publishers,
The Viking Press, Inc., B. W. Huebsch, Inc.
ideas was uncontrollable. Words rolled and
tumbled from his mouth. A peculiar smile
came upon his lips. The edges of his teeth
that were tipped with gold glistened in the
light. Pouncing upon a bystander he began
to talk. For the bystander there was no
escape. The excited man breathed into his
face, peered into his eyes, pounded upon his
chest with a shaking forefinger, demanded,
compelled attention.
In those days the Standard Oil Company
did not deliver oil to the consumer in big
wagons and motor trucks as it does now, but
delivered instead to retail grocers, hardware
stores and the like. Joe was the Standard
Oil agent in Winesburg and in several towns
up and down the railroad that went through
Winesburg. He collected bills, booked
orders, and did other things. His father, the
legislator, had secured the job for him.
In and out of the stores of Winesburg
went Joe Welling — silent, excessively polite,
intent upon his business. Men watched him
with eyes in which lurked amusement
tempered by alarm. They were waiting for
him to break forth, preparing to flee. Al-
though the seizures that came upon him
were harmless enough, they could not be
A MAN OF IDEAS
559
laughed away. They were overwhelming.
Astride an idea, Joe was overmastering.
His personahty became gigantic. It overrode
the man to whom he talked, swept him away,
swept all away, all who stood within sound
of his voice.
In Sylvester West's Drug Store stood four
men who were talking of horse racing.
Wesley Moyer's stallion, Tony Tip, was to
race at the June meeting at Tiffin, Ohio,
and there was a rumor that he would meet
the stifFest competition of his career. It
was said that Pop Geers, the great racing
driver, would himself be there. A doubt of
the success of Tony Tip hung heavy in the
air of Winesburg.
Into the drug store came Joe Welling,
brushing the screen door violently aside.
With a strange absorbed light in his eyes
he pounced upon Ed Thomas, he who knew
Pop Geers and whose opinion of Tony Tip's
chances was worth considering.
"The water is up in Wine Creek," cried
Joe Welling with the air of Pheidippides
bringing news of the victory of the Greeks
in the struggle at Marathon. His finger
beat a tattoo upon Ed Thomas' broad chest.
"By Trunion bridge it is within eleven and a
half inches of the flooring," he went on, the
words coming quickly and with a little
whistling noise from between his teeth. An
expression of helpless annoyance crept over
the faces of the four.
*'I have my facts correct. Depend upon
that. I went to Sinning's Hardware Store
and got a rule. Then I went back and
measured. I could hardly believe my own
eyes. It hasn't rained you see for ten days.
At first I didn't know whattothink . Thoughts
rushed through my head. I thought of sub-
terranean passages and springs. Down under
the ground went my mind, delving about.
I sat on the floor of the bridge and rubbed my
head. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, not
one. Come out into the street and you'll see.
There wasn't a cloud. There isn't a cloud
now. Yes, there was a cloud. I don't want
to keep back any facts. There was a cloud
in the west down near the horizon, a cloud no
bigger than a man's hand.
"Not that I think that has anything to do
with it. There it is you see. You under-
stand how puzzled I was.
"Then an idea came to me. I laughed.
You'll laugh, too. Of course it rained over i*^
Medina County. That's interesting, eh.''
If we had no trains, no mails, no telegraph,
we would know that it rained over in Medina
County. That's where Wine Creek comes
from. Everyone knows that. Little old
Wine Creek brought us the news. That's
interesting. I laughed. I thought I'd tell
you — it's interesting, eh.'"'
Joe Welling turned and went out at the
door. Taking a book from his pocket, he
stopped and ran a finger down one of the
pages. Again he was absorbed in his duties
as agent of the Standard Oil Company.
"Hern's Grocery will be getting low on
coal oil. I'll see them," he muttered,
hurrying along the street, and bowing
politely to the right and left at the people
walking past.
When George Willard went to work for
the Winesburg Eagle he was besieged by
Joe Welling. Joe envied the boy. It seemed
to him that he was meant by Nature to be
a reporter on a newspaper. "It is what I
should be doing, there is no doubt of that,"
he declared, stopping George Willard on th'^
sidewalk before Daugherty's Feed Store.
His eyes began to glisten and his forefinger
to tremble. "Of course I make more money
with the Standard Oil Company and I'm
only telling you," he added. "I've got
nothing against you, but I should have your
place. I could do the work at odd moments.
Here and there I would run finding out
things you'll never see."
Becoming more excited Joe Welling
crowded the young reporter against the front
of the feed store. He appeared to be lost in
thought, rolling his eyes about and running
a thin nervous hand through his hair. A
smile spread over his face and his gold teeth
glittered. "You get out your note book,"
he commanded. "You carry a little pad of
paper in your pocket, don't you.f* I knew
you did. Well, you set this down. I thought
of it the other day. Let's take decay. Now
what is decay.'' It's fire. It burns up wood
and other things. You never thought of
that.'' Of course not. This sidewalk here
and this feed store, the trees down the street
there — they're all on fire. They're burning
up. Decay you see is always going on. It
don't stop. Water and paint can't stop it.
If a thing is iron, then what.? It rusts, you
t;6o
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
see. riiat's fire, too. The world is on Hre.
Start your pieces in the paper that way.
Just say in bit:; letters ' The World Is On Fire'.'
That will make 'em look up. They'll say
you're a smart one. I don't care. I don't
envy you. I just snatched that idea out of
the air. I would make a newspaper hum.
You got to admit that."
Turnrng quickly, Joe Welling walked
rapidly away. When he had taken several
steps he stopped and looked back, "I'm
going to stick to you," he said. "I'm going
to make you a regular hummer. I should
start a newspaper myself, that's what I
should do. I'd be a marvel. Everybody
knows that."
When George Willard had been for a year
on the Winesburg Eagle, four things hap-
pened to Joe Welling. His mother died, he
came to live at the New Willard House,
he became involved in a love affair, and he
organized the Winesburg Baseball Club.
Joe organized the baseball club because he
wanted to be a coach and in that position he
began to win the respect of his townsmen.
"He is a wonder," they declared after Joe's
team had whipped the team from Medina
County. "He gets ever^-^body working
together. You just watch him."
Upon the baseball field Joe Welling stood
by first base, his whole body quivering with
excitement. In spite of themselves all of the
players watched him closely. The opposing
pitcher became confused.
"Now! Now! Now! Now!" shouted the
excited man. "Watch me! Watch me!
Watch my fingers! Watch my hands! Watch
my feet! Watch my eyes! Let's work to-
gether here! Watch me! In me you see all
the movements of the game! Work with me!
Work with me! Watch me! Watch me!
Watch me!"
With runners of the Winesburg team on
bases, Joe Welling became as one inspired.
Before they knew what had come over them,
the base runners were watching the man,
edging off the bases, advancing, retreating,
held as by an invisible cord. The players of
the opposing team also watched Joe. They
were fascinated. For a moment they
watched and then as though to break a
spell that hung over them, they began
hurling the ball wildly about, and amid
a series of fierce animal-like cries from the
coach, the runners of the Winesburg team
scampered home.
Joe Welling's love afl^air set the town of
Winesburg on edge. When it began every-
one whispered and shook his head. When
people tried to laugh, the laughter was
forced and unnatural. Joe fell in love with
Sarah King, a lean, sad-looking woman who
lived with her father and brother in a brick
house that stood opposite the gate leading
to the Winesburg Cemetery.
1 he two Kings, Edward the father, and
Tom the son, were not popular in Winesburg.
They were called proud and dangerous.
They had come to Winesburg from some
place in the South and ran a cider mill on
the Trunion Pike. Tom King was reported
to have killed a man before he came to
Winesburg. He was twenty-seven years old
and rode about town on a gray pony. Also
he had a long yellow mustache that dropped
down over his teeth, and always carried a
heavy, wicked-looking walking stick in his
hand. Once he killed a dog with the stick.
The dog belonged to Win Pawsey, the shoe
merchant, and stood on the sidewalk wag-
ging its tail. Tom King killed it with one
blow. He was arrested and paid a fine of
ten dollars.
Old Edward King was small of stature and
when he passed people in the street laughed a
queer unmirthful laugh. When he laughed
he scratched his left elbow with his right
hand. The sleeve of his coat was almost
worn through from the habit. As he walked
along the street, looking nervously about
and laughing, he seemed more dangerous
than his silent, fierce looking son. J
When Sarah King began walking out in i
the evening with Joe Welling, people shook
their heads in alarm. She was tall and pale
and had dark rings under her eyes. The
couple looked ridiculous together. Under
the trees they walked and Joe talked. His
passionate eager protestations of love, heard
coming out of the darkness by the cemetery
wall, or from the deep shadows of the trees
on the hill that ran up to the Fair Grounds
from Waterworks Pond, were repeated in
the stores. Men stood by the bar in the
New Willard House laughing and talking of
Joe's courtship. After the laughter came
silence. The Winesburg baseball team,
under his uianagement, was winning game
A MAN OF IDEAS
561
after game, and tiie town had begiin to
respect him. Sensing a tragedy, they waited,
laughing nervously-
Late on a Saturday afternoon the meeting
between Joe Welling and the two Kings, the
anticipation of which had set the town on
edge, took place in Joe Welling's room in
the New Willard House. George Willard
was a witness to the meeting. It came about
in this way:
When the young reporter went to his
room after the evening meal he saw Tom
King and his father sitting in the half dark-
ness in Joe's room. The son had the heavy
walking stick in his hand and sat near the
door. Old Edward King walked nervously
about, scratching his left elbow with his
right hand. The hallways were empty and
silent.
George Willard went to his own room and
sat down at his desk. He tried to write but
his hand trembled so that he could not hold
the pen. He also walked nervously up and
down. Like the rest of the town of Wines-
burg he was perplexed and knew not what
to do.
It was seven-thirty and fast growing dark
when Joe Welling came along the station
platform toward the New Willard House.
In his arms he held a bundle of weeds and
grasses. In spite of the terror that made his
body shake, George Willard was amused at
the sight of the small spry figure holding the
grasses and half running along the platform.
Shaking with fright and anxiety, the young
reporter lurked in the hallway outside the
door of the room in which Joe Welling talked
to the two Kings. There had been an oath,
the nervous giggle of old Edward King, and
then silence. Now the voice of Joe Welling,
sharp and clear, broke forth. George Willard
began to laugh. He understood. As he had
swept all men before him, so now Joe Welling
was carrying the two men in the room off
their feet with a tidal wave of words. The
listener in the hall walked up and down,
lost in amazement.
Inside the room Joe Welling had paid no
attention to the grumbled threat of Tom
King. Absorbed in an idea he closed the
door and lighting a lamp, spread the handful
of weeds and grasses upon the floor. "I've
got something here," he announced solemnly.
*'I was going to tell George Willard about it,
let him make a piece out of it for the paper.
I'm glad you're here. I wish Sarah were here
also. I've been going to come to your house
and tell you of some of my ideas. They're
interesting. Sarah wouldn't let me. She
said we'd quarrel. That's foolish."
Running up and down before the two per-
plexed men, Joe Welling began to explain.
" Don't you make a mistake now," he cried.
"This is something big." His voice was
shrill with excitement. "You just follow
me, you'll be interested. I know you will.
Suppose this — suppose all of the wheat, the
corn, the oats, the peas, the potatoes, were
all by some miracle swept away. Now here
we are, you see, in this county. There is a
high fence built all around us. We'll suppose
that. No one can get over the fence and all
the fruits of the earth are destroyed, nothing
left but these wild things, these grasses.
Would we be done for.'* I ask you that.
Would we be done for.^" Again Tom King
growled and for a moment there was silence
in the room. Then again Joe plunged into
the exposition of his idea. "Things would
go hard for a time. I admit that. I've got
to admit that. No getting around it. We'd
be hard put to it. More than one fat stomach
would cave in. But they couldn't down us.
I should say not."
Tom King laughed good naturedly and the
shivery, nervous laugh of Edward King rang
through the house. Joe Welling hurried on.
"We'd begin, you see, to breed up new
vegetables and fruits. Soon we'd regain all
we had lost. Mind, I don't say the new
things would be the same as the old. They
wouldn't. Maybe they'd be better, maybe
not so good. That's interesting, eh.? You
can think about that. It starts your mind
working, now don't it.?"
In the room there was silence and then
again old Edward King laughed nervously.
"Say, I wish Sarah was here," cried Joe
Welling. "Let's go up to your house. I
want to tell her of this."
There was a scraping of chairs in the room.
It was then that George Willard retreated to
his own room. Leaning out at the w^indow
he saw Joe Welling going along the street
with the two Kings. Tom King was forced
to take extraordinary long strides to keep
pace with the little man. As he strode along,
he leaned over, listening — absorbed, fas-
'.62
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
cinated. Joe Wellinp; a2;ain talked excitedly.
"Take milkweed now," he cried. "A lot
might be done with milkweed, eh.? It's
almost unbelievable. I want you to thmk
about it. I w^ant you two to think about it.
There would be a new vegetable kingdom you
see. It's interesting, eh.'' It's an idea.
Wait till you see Sarah, she'll get the idea.
She'll be interested. Sarah is always in-
terested in ideas. You can't be too smart for
Sarah, now can you.** Of course you can't.
You know that."
"QUEER"
From his seat on a box in the rough board
shed that stuck like a bur on the rear of
Cowley & Son's store in Winesburg, Elmer
Cowley, the junior member of the firm,
could see through a dirty window into the
printshop of the IVinesburg Eagle. Elmer
was putting new shoelaces in his shoes. They
did not go in readily and he had to take the
shoes off. With the shoes in his hand he sat
looking at a large hole in the heel of one of his
stockings. Then looking quickly up he
saw George Willard, the only newspaper
reporter in Winesburg, standing at the back
door of the Eagle printshop and staring
absent-mindedly about. "Well, well, what
next!" exclaimed the young man with the
shoes in his hand, jumping to his feet and
creeping away from the window.
A flush crept into Elmer Cowley's face
and his hands began to tremble. In Cowley
& Son's store a Jewish traveling salesman
stood by the counter talking to his father.
He imagined the reporter could hear what
was being said and the thought made him
furious. With one of the shoes still held in
his hand he stood in a corner of the shed
and stamped with a stockinged foot upon the
board floor.
Cowley & Son's store did not face the
main street of Winesburg. The front was
on Maumee Street and beyond it was Voight's
wagon shop and a shed for the sheltering of
farmers' horses. Beside the store an alley-
way ran behind the main street stores and
all day drays and delivery wagons, intent on
bringing in and taking out goods, passed up
and down. The store itself was indescrib-
able. W ill Henderson once said of it that it
sold everything and nothing. In the window
facing Maumee Street stood a chunk of coal
as large as an apple barrel, to indicate that
orders for coal were taken, and beside the
black mass of the coal stood three combs of
honey grown brown and dirty in their wooden
frames.
I he honey had stood in the store window
for six months. It was for sale as were also
the coat hangers, patent suspender buttons,
cans of roof paint, bottles of rheumatism cure
and a substitute for coffee that companioned
the honey in its patient willingness to serve
the public.
Ebenezer Cowley, the man who stood in
the store listening to the eager patter of words
that fell from the lips of the traveling man,
was tall and lean and looked unwashed. On
his scrawny neck was a large wen partially
covered by a gray beard. He wore a long
Prince Albert coat. The coat had been
purchased to serve as a wedding garment.
Before he became a merchant Ebenezer was
a farmer and after his marriage he wore the
Prince Albert coat to church on Sundays and
on Saturday afternoons when he came into
town to trade. When he sold the farm to
become a merchant he wore the coat con-
stantly. It had become brown with age
and was covered with grease spots, but in it
Ebenezer always felt dressed up and ready for
the day in town.
As a merchant Ebenezer was not happily
placed in life and he had not been happily
placed as a farmer. Still he existed. His
family, consisting of a daughter named Mabel
and the son, lived with him in rooms above
the store and it did not cost them much to
live. His troubles were not financial. His
unhappiness as a merchant lay in the fact
that when a traveling man with wares to be
sold came in at the front door he was afraid.
Behind the counter he stood shaking his head.
He was afraid, first that he would stubbornly
refuse to buy and thus lose the opportunity
to sell again; second that he would not be
stubborn enough and would in a moment of
weakness buy what could not be sold.
In the store on the morning v>^hen Elmer
Cowley saw George Willard standing and
apparently listening at the back door of the
Eagle printshop, a situation had arisen that
always stirred the son's wrath. The travel-
ing man talked and Ebenezer listened, his
whole figure expressing uncertainty. "You
'QUEER"
563
see how quickly it is clone," said the trav^eling
man who had for sale a small flat metal
substitute for collar buttons. With one
hand he quiclcly unfastened a collar from
his shirt and then fastened it on again.
He assumed a flattering wheedling tone. "I
tell you what, men have come to the end of
all this fooling with collar buttons and you
are the man to make money out of the change
that is coming. I am offering you the ex-
clusive agency for this town. Take twenty
dozen of these fasteners and I'll not visit
any other store. I'll leave the field to you."
The traveling man leaned ?ver the counter
and tapped with his finger on Ebenezer's
breast. "It's an opportunity and I want
you to take it," he urged. "A friend of
mine told me about you. 'See that man
Cowley,' he said. 'He's a live one.' "
The traveling man paused and waited.
Taking a book from his pocket he began
writing out the order. Still holding the
shoe in his hand Elmer Cowley went through
the store, past the two absorbed men, to a
glass show case near the front door. He
took a cheap revolver from the case and
began to wave it about. **You get out of
here!" he shrieked. "We don't want any
collar fasteners here." An idea came to him,
"Mind, I'm not making any threat," he
added. "I don't say I'll shoot. Maybe I
just took this gun out of the case to look at it.
But you better get out. Yes sir, I'll say
that. You better grab up your things and
get out."
The young storekeeper's voice rose to a
scream and going behind the counter he
began to advance upon the two men. " We're
through being fools here!" he cried. "We
ain't going to buy any more stuff until we
begin to sell. We ain't going to keep on
being queer and have folks staring and
listening. You get out of here!"
The traveling man left. Raking the
samples of collar fasteners off the counter
into a black leather bag, he ran. He was a
small man and very bow-legged and he ran
awkwardly. The black bag caught against
the door and he stumbled and fell. "Crazy,
that's what he is — crazy!" he sputtered as
he arose from the sidewalk and hurried away.
In the store Elmer Cowley and his father
stared at each other. Now that the immediate
object of his wrath had fled, the younger man
was embarrassed. "Well, I meant it. I
think we've been queer long enough," he
declared, going to the showcase and replacing
the revolver. Sitting on a barrel he pulled
on and fastened the shoe he had been holding
in his hand. He was waiting for some word
of understanding from his father but when
Ebenezer spoke his words only served to re-
awaken the wrath in the son and the young
man ran out of the store without replying.
Scratching his gray beard with his long dirty
fingers, the merchant looked at his son
with the same wavering uncertain stare
with which he had confronted the traveling
man. "I'll be starched," he said softly.
"Well, well, I'll be washed and ironed and
starched!"
Elmer Cowley went out of Winesburg
and along a country road that paralleled the
railroad track. He did not know where he
was going or what he was going to do. In
the shelter of a deep cut where the road,
after turning sharply to the right, dipped
under the tracks he stopped and the passion
that had been the cause of his outburst in
the store began to again find expression.
"I will not be queer — one to be looked at
and listened to," he declared aloud. "I'll
be like other people. I'll show that George
Willard. He'll find out. I'll show him!"
The distraught young man stood in the
middle of the road and glared back at the
town. He did not know the reporter George
Willard and had no special feeling concerning
the tall boy who ran about town gathering
the town news. The reporter had merely
come, by his presence in the ofiice and in
the printshop of the Winesburg Eagle^ to
stand for something in the young merchant's
mind. He thought the boy who passed and
repassed Cowley & Son's store and who
stopped to talk to people in the street must
be thinking of him and perhaps laughing at
him. George Willard, he felt, belonged to
the town, typified the town, represented in
his person the spirit of the town. Elmer
Cowley could not have believed that George
Willard had also his days of unhappiness,
that vague hungers and secret unnamable
desires visited also his mind. Did he not
represent public opinion and had not the
public opinion of Winesburg condemned the
Cowleys to queerness? Did he not walk
whistling and laughing through Main Street?
564
SIIKRW'OOI) ANDKRSOX
Mitjht not one by striking:; his person strike
also the greater enemy — the thing that
smiled and went its own way — the judgment
of Winesburg?
Ehiier Cowley was extraordinarily tall
and his arms were long and powerful. His
hair, his eyebrows, and the downy beard
that had begun to grow upon his chin, were
pale almost to whiteness. His teeth pro-
truded from between his lips and his eyes
were blue with the colorless blueness of the
marbles called "aggies" that the boys of
Winesburg carried in their pockets. Elmer
had lived in Winesburg for a year and had
made no friends. He was, he felt, one con-
demned to go through life without friends
and he hated the thought.
Sullenly the tall young man tramped
along the road with his hands stuffed into
his trouser pockets. The day was cold with
a raw wind, but presently the sun began to
shine and the road became soft and muddy.
The tops of the ridges of frozen mud that
formed the road began to melt and the
mud clung to Elmer's shoes. His feet be-
came cold. When he had gone several miles
he turned off the road, crossed a field and
entered a wood. In the wood he gathered
sticks to build a fire by which he sat trjnng
to warm himself, miserable in body and in
mind.
For two hours he sat on the log by the
fire and then, arising and creeping cautiously
through a mass of underbrush, he went to a
fence and looked across fields to a small farm-
house surrounded by low sheds. A smile
came to his lips and he began making mo-
tions w^th his long arms to a man who was
husking corn in one of the fields.
In his hour of misery the young merchant
had returned to the farm where he had
lived through boyhood and where there
was another human being to whom he felt he
could explain himself. The man on the
farm was a half-witted old fellow named
Mook. He had once been employed by
Ebenezer Cowley and had stayed on the
farm when it was sold. The old man lived
in one of the unpainted sheds back of the
farmhouse and puttered about all day in the :
fields.
Mook the half-wit lived happily. With
childlike faith he believed in the intelligence
of the animals that lived in the sheds with
him, and when he was lonely held long con-
versations with the cows, the pigs, and even
with the chickens that ran about the barn-
yard. He it was who had put the expression
regarding being "laundered" into the mouth
of his former employer. When excited or
surprised by anything he smiled vaguely and
muttered: "I'll be washed and ironed.
Well, well, I'll be washed and ironed and
starched."
When the half-witted old man left his
husking of corn and came into the wood to
meet Elmer Cowley, he was neither surprised
nor especially interested in the sudden
appearance of the young man. His feet
also were cold and he sat on the log by the
fire, grateful for the warmth and apparently
indifferent to what Elmer had to say.
Elmer talked earnestly and with great
freedom, walking up and down and waving
his arms about. "You don't understand
what's the matter with me so of course you
don't care," he declared. "With me it's
different. Look how it has always been
with me. Father is queer and mother was
queer, too. Even the clothes mother used
to wear were not like other people's clothes,
and look at that coat in which father goes
about there in town, thinking he's dressed
up, too. Why don't he get a new one.^ It
wouldn't cost much. I'll tell you why. I
Father doesn't know and when mother was
alive she didn't know either. Mabel is dif-
ferent. She knows but she won't say any-
thing. I will, though. I'm not going to be
stared at any longer. Why look here, Mook,
father doesn't know that his store there in
town is just a queer jumble, that he'll never
sell the stuff he buys. He knows nothing
about it. Sometimes he's a little worried
that trade doesn't come and then he goes
and buys something else. In the evenings
he sits by the fire upstairs and says trade
will come after a while. He isn't worried.
He's queer. He doesn't know enough to be
worried."
The excited young man became more
excited. "He don't know but I know," he
shouted, stopping to gaze down into the
dumb, unresponsive face of the half-wit.
"I know too well. I can't stand it. When
we lived out here it was different. I worked
and at night I went to bed and slept. I
wasn't always seeing people and thinking
"QUEER"
56s
as I am now. In the evening, there in town,
I go to the post office or to the depot to see
the train come in, and no one says anything
to me. Everyone stands around and laughs
and they talk but they say nothing to me.
Then I feel so queer that I can't talk either.
I go aw^ay. I don't say anything. I can't."
The fury of the young man became un-
controllable. "I won't stand it," he yelled,
looking up at the bare branches of the trees.
"I'm not made to stand it."
Maddened by the dull face of the man on
the log by the fire, Elmer turned and glared
at him as he had glared back along the
road at the town of Wmesburg. "Go on
back to work," he screamed. "What good
does it do me to talk to you.^" A thought
came to him and his voice dropped. "I'm a
coward too, eh.^" he muttered. "Do you
know why I came clear out here afoot?
I had to tell some one and you were the only
one I could tell. I hunted out another queer
one, you see. I ran away, that's what I did.
I couldn't stand up to some one like that
George Willard. I had to come to you. I
ought to tell him and I will."
Again his voice arose to a shout and his
arms flew about. "1 will tell him. I won't
be queer. I don't care what they think. I
won't stand it."
Elmer Cowley ran out of the woods leaving
the half-wit sitting on the log before the fire.
Presently the old man arose and climbing
over the fence went back to his work in the
corn. "I'll be washed and ironed and
starched," he declared. "Well, well, I'll be
washed and ironed." Mook was interested.
He went along a lane to a field where two
cows stood nibbling at a straw stack. "El-
mer was here," he said to the cows. "Elmer
is crazy. You better get behind the stack
where he don't see you. He'll hurt someone
yet, Elmer will."
At eight o'clock that evening Elmer
Cowley put his head in at the front door of
the office of the JVinesburg Eagle where
George Willard sat writing. His cap was
pulled down over his eyes and a sullen de-
termined look was on his face. "You come
on outside with me." he said, stepping in and
closing the door. He kept his hand on the
knob as though prepared to resist anyone
else coming in. "You just come along
outside. I want to see you."
George Willard and Elmer Cowley walked
through the main street of Winesburg. The
night was cold and George Willard had on a
new overcoat and looked very spruce and
dressed up. He thrust his hands into the
overcoat pockets and looked inquiringly at
his companion. He had long been wanting
to make friends with the young merchant
and find out what was in his mind. Now he
thought he saw a chance and was delighted.
"I wonder what he's up to.? Perhaps he
thinks he has a piece of news for the paper.
It can't be a fire because I haven't heard the
fire bell and there isn't anyone running," he
thought.
In the main street of Winesburg, on the
cold November evening, but few citizens
appeared and these hurried along bent on
getting to the stove at the back of some store.
The windows of the stores were frosted and
the wind rattled the tin sign that hung over
the entrance to the stairway leading to
Doctor Welling's office. Before Hern's
Grocery a basket of apples and a rack filled
with new brooms stood on the sidewalk.
Elmer Cowley stopped and stood facing
George Willard. He tried to talk and his
arms began to pump up and down. His face
worked spasmodically. He seemed about
to shout. "Oh, you go on back," he cried.
"Don't stay out here with me. I ain't got
anything to tell you. I don't want to see you
at all."
For three hours the distracted young
merchant wandered through the resident
streets of Winesburg blind with anger,
brought on by his failure to declare his
determination not to be queer. Bitterly
the sense of defeat settled upon him and he
wanted to v/eep. After the hours of futile
sputtering at nothingness that had occupied
the afternoon and his failure in the presence
of the young reporter, he thought he could
see no hope of a future for himself.
And then a new idea dawned for him. In
the darkness that surrounded him he began
to see a light. Going to the now darkened
store, where Cowley & Son had for over a
year waited vainly for trade to come, he
crept stealthily in and felt about in a barrel
that stood by the stove at the rear. In the
barrel beneath shavings lay a tin box con-
taining Cowley & Son's cash. Every evening
Ebenezer Cowley put the box in the barrel
B66
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
when he closed the store and went upstairs
to bed. " riiey wouldn't never think of a
careless place like that," he told himself,
thmkm^ of robbers.
Elmer took twenty dollars, two ten dollar
bills, from the little roll containing perhaps
four hundred dollars, the cash left from the
sale of the farm. Then replacing the box
beneath the shavings he went quietly out
at the front door and walked again in the
streets.
The idea that he thought might put an
end to all of his unhappiness was very simple.
**I will get out of here, run away from home,"
he told himself. He knew that a local
freight train passed through Winesburg at
midnight and went on to Cleveland where it
arrived at dawrr. He would steal a ride on
the local and when he got to Cleveland would
lose himself in the crowds there. He would
get work in some shop and become friends
with the other workmen. Gradually he
would become like other men and would be
indistmguishable. Then he could talk and
laugh. He would no longer be queer and
would make friends. Life would begin to
have warmth and meaning for him as it had
for others.
The tall awkward young man, striding
through the streets, laughed at himself
because he had been angry and had been
half afraid of George Willard. He decided
he would have his talk with the young
reporter before he left town, that he would
tell him about things, perhaps challenge him,
challenge all of Winesburg through him.
Aglow with new confidence Elmer went
to the office of the New Willard House and
pounded on the door. A sleep-eyed boy slept
on a cot in the office. He received no salary
but was fed at the hotel table and bore with
pride the title of *' night clerk." Before the
boy Elmer was bold, insistent. "You wake
him up," he commanded. "You tell him
to come down by the depot. I got to see
him and I'm going away on the local. Tell
him to dress and come on down. I ain't got
much time."
The midnight local had finished its work in
Winesburg and the trainsmen were coupling
cars, swinging lanterns and preparing to
resume their flight east. George Willard,
rubbing his eyes and again wearing the new
overcoat, ran down to the station platform
afire with curiosity. "Well, here I am.
What do you want? You've got something
to tell me, eh.?" he said.
Elmer tried to explain. He wet his lips
with his tongue and looked at the train that
had begun to groan and get under way.
"Well, you see," he began, and then lost
control of his tongue. "I'll be washed and
ironed. I'll be washed and ironed and
starched," he muttered half incoherently.
Elmer Cowley danced with fury beside the
groaning train in the darkness on the station
platform. Lights leaped into the air and
bobbed up and down before his eyes. Taking
the two ten dollar bills from his pocket he
thrust them into George Willard's hand.
"Take them," he cried. "I don't want
them. Give them to father. I stole them."
With a snarl of rage he turned and his long
arms began to flay the air. Like one strug-
gling for release from hands that held him he
struck out, hitting George Willard blow after
blow on the breast, the neck, the mouth.
The young reporter rolled over on the
platform half unconscious, stunned by the
terrific force of the blows. Springing aboard
the passing train and running over the tops
of cars, Elmer sprang down to a flat car and
lying on his face looked back, trying to see
the fallen man in the darkness. Pride
surged up in him. "I showed him," he
cried. "I guess I showed him. I ain't so
queer. I guess I shpwed him I ain't so
queer."
DRINK
loM Foster came to Winesburg from
Cincinnati when he was still young and
could get many new impressions. His
grandmother had been raised on a farm near
the town and as a young girl had gone to
school there when Winesburg was a village
of twelve or fifteen houses clustered about a
general store on the Trunion Pike.
What a life the old woman had led since
she went away from the frontier settlement
and what a strong, capable little old thing
she was! She had been in Kansas, in Canada,
and in New York City, traveling about with
her husband, a mechanic, before he died.
Later she went to stay with her daughter
who had also married a mechanic and
lived in Covington, Kentucky, across the
river from Cincinnati.
DRINK
^^7
Then be^an the hard years for Tom
Foster's grandmother. First her son-in-law
was killed by a policeman during a strike
and then Tom's mother became an invalid
and died also. The grandmother had
saved a little money, but it was swept away
by the illness of the daughter and by the
cost of the two funerals. She became a half
worn-out old woman worker and lived with
the grandson above a junk shop on a side
street in Cincinnati. For five years she
scrubbed the floors in an office building and
then got a place as dish washer in a res-
taurant. Her hands were all twisted out of
shape. When she took hold of a mop or a
broom handle the hands looked like the
dried stems of an old creeping vine clinging
to a tree.
The old woman came back to Winesburg
as soon as she got the chance. One evening
as she was coming home from work she found
a pocketbook containing thirty-seven dollars,
and that opened the way. The trip was a
great adventure for the boy. It was past
seven o'clock at night when the grand-
mother came home with the pocketbook held
tightly in her old hands and she was so
excited she could scarcely speak. She
insisted on leaving Cincinnati that night,
saying that if they stayed until morning the
owner of the money would be sure to find
them out and make trouble. Tom, who
was then sixteen years old, had to go trudging
off to the station with the old woman bearing
all of their earthly belongings done up in a
worn-out blanket and slung across his back.
By his side walked the grandmother urging
him forward. Her toothless old mouth
twitched nervously, and when Tom grew
weary and wanted to put the pack down at a
street crossing she snatched it up and if he
had not prevented would have slung it across
her own back. When they got into the
train and it had run out of the city she was
as delighted as a girl and talked as the boy
had never heard her talk before.
All through the night as the train rattled
along, the grandmother told Tom tales of
Winesburg and of how he would enjoy his
life working in the fields and shooting wild
things in the wood there. She could not
believe that the tiny village of fifty years
before had grown into a thriving town in her
absence, and in the morning when the train
came to Winesburg did not want to get off.
"It isn't what I thought. It may be hard
for you here," she said, and then the train
went on its way and the two stood confused,
not knowing where to turn, in the presence
of Albert Longworth, the Winesburg baggage
master.
But Tom Foster did get along all right.
He was one to get along anywhere. Mrs.
White, the banker's wife, employed his
grandmother to work in the kitchen and he
got a place as stable boy in the banker's new
brick barn.
In Winesburg servants were hard to get.
The woman who wanted help in her house-
work employed a "hired girl" who insisted
on sitting at the table with the family. Mrs.
White was sick of hired girls and snatched
at the chance to get hold of the old city
woman. She furnished a room for the boy
Tom upstairs in the barn. "He can mow the
lawn and run errands when the horses do
not need attention," she explained to her
husband.
Tom Foster was rather small for his age
and had a large head covered with stiff black
hair that stood straight up. The hair em-
phasized the bigness of his head. His voice
was the softest thing imaginable, and he was
himself so gentle and quiet that he slipped
into the life of the town without attracting
the least bit of attention.
One could not help wondering where Tom
Foster got his gentleness. In Cincinnati he
had lived in a neighborhood where gangs of
tough boys prowled through the streets,
and all through his early formative years
he ran about with tough boys. For a while
he was messenger for a telegraph company
and delivered messages in a neighborhood
sprinkled with houses of prostitution. The
women in the houses knew and loved Tom
Foster and the tough boys in the gangs loved
him also.
He never asserted himself. That was one
thing that helped him escape. In an odd
way he stood in the shadow of the wall of
life, was meant to stand in the shadow. He
saw the men and women in the houses of lust,
sensed their casual and horrible love affairs,
saw boys fighting and listened to their tales
of thieving and drunkenness unmoved and
strangely unaffected.
Once Tom did steal. That was while he
568
SIIF.RWOOD ANDERSON
still lived in the city. The grandmother was
ill at the time and he himself was out of work.
There was nothing to eat in the house, and
so he went into a harness shop on a side street
and stole a dollar and seventy-five cents out
of the cash drawer.
The harness shop was run by an old man
with a long mustache. He saw the boy
lurking about and thought nothing of it.
When he went out into the street to talk
to a teamster Tom opened the cash drawer
and taking the money walked away. Later
he was caught and his grandmother settled
the matter by offering to come twice a week
for a month and scrub the shop. The boy
was ashamed, but he was rather glad, too.
"It is all right to be ashamed and makes me
understand new^ things," he said to the
grandmother, who didn't know what the
boy was talking about but loved him so
much that it didn't matter whether she
understood or not.
For a year Tom Foster lived in the banker's
stable and then lost his place there. He
didn't take very good care of the horses and
he was a constant source of irritation to the
banker's wife. She told him to mow the
lawn and he forgot. Then she sent him to
the store or to the post office and he did not
come back but joined a group of men and
boys and spent the whole afternoon with
them, standing about, listening and occa-
sionally, when addressed, saying a few words.
As in the city in the houses of prostitution
and with the rowdy boys running through
the streets at night, so in Winesburg among
its citizens he had always the power to be a
part of and yet distinctly apart from the
life about him.
After Tom lost his place at Banker White's
he did not live with his grandmother, al-
though often in the evening she came to visit
him. He rented a room at the rear of a little
frame building belonging to old Rufus \\ bit-
ing. The building was on Duane Street,
just off Main Street, and had been used for
years as a law office by the old man who had
become too feeble and forgetful for the
practice of his profession but did not realize
his inefficiency. He liked Tom and let him
have the room for a dollar a month. In the
late afternoon when the lawyer had gone
home the boy had the place to himself and
spent hours lying on the floor by the stove
and thinking of things. In the evening the
grandmother came and sat in the lawyer's
chair to smoke a pipe while Tom remained
silent, as he always did in the presence of
every one.
Often the old woman talked with great
vigor. Sometimes she was angry about some
happening at the banker's house and scolded
away for hours. Out of her own earnings
she bought a mop and regularh' scrubbed the
lawyer's office. Then when the place was
spotlessly clean and smelled clean she
lighted her clay pipe and she and Tom had a
smoke together. "When you get ready to
die then I will die also," she said to the boy
lying on the floor beside her chair.
Tom Foster enjoyed life in Winesburg.
He did odd jobs, such as cutting wood for
kitchen stoves and mowing the grass before
houses. In late May and earh'^ June he
picked strawberries in the fields. He had
time to loaf and he enjoyed loafing. Banker
\\ hite had given him a cast-off* coat which
was too large for him, but his grandmother
cut it down, and he had also an overcoat,
got at the same place, that was lined with fur.
The fur was worn aw^ay in spots, but the
coat was warm and in the winter Tom slept
in it. He thought his method of getting
along good enough and w^as happy and
satisfied with the way life in Winesburg had
turned out for him.
The most absurd little things made Tom
Foster happy. That, I suppose, was why
people loved him. In Hern's grocery they
would be roasting coff"ee on Friday after-
noon, preparatory to the Saturday rush of
trade, and the rich odor invaded lower
Main Street. Tom Foster appeared and
sat on a box at the rear of the store. For
an hour he did not move but sat perfectly
still, filling his being with the spicy odor
that made him half drunk with happiness.
"I like it," he said gently. "It makes me
think of things far away, places and things
like that."
One night Tom Foster got drunk. That
came about in a curious way. He never had
been drunk before, and indeed in all his life
had never taken a drink of anything in-
toxicating, but he felt he needed to be drunk
that one time and so went and did it.
In Cincinnati, when he lived there, Tom
had found out many things, things about
DRINK
569
ugliness and crime and lust. Indeed, he
knew more of these things than any one else
in Winesburg. The matter of sex in parti-
cular had presented itself to him in a quite
horrible way and had made a deep impres-
sion on his mind. He thought, after what he
had seen of the women standing before the
squalid houses on cold nights and the look
he had seen in the eyes of the men who
stopped to talk to them, that he would put
sex altogether out of his own life. One of
the women of the neighborhood tempted
him once and he went into a room with her.
He never forgot the smell of the room nor
the greedy look that came into the eyes of the
woman. It sickened him and in a very
terrible way left a scar on his soul. He had
always before thought of women as quite
innocent things, much like his grandmother,
but after that one experience in the room he
dismissed women from his mind. So gentle
was his nature that he could not hate any-
thing and not being able to understand he
decided to forget.
And Tom did forget until he came to
Winesburg. After he had lived there for
two years something began to stir in him.
On all sides he saw youth making love and
he was himself a youth. Before he knew
what had happened he was in love also.
He fell in love with Helen White, daughter
of the man for whom he had worked, and
found himself thinking of her at night.
That was a problem for Tom and he
settled it in his own way. He let himself
think of Helen White whenever her figure
came into his mind and only concerned him-
self with the manner of his thoughts. He
had a fight, a quiet determined little fight
of his own, to keep his desires in the channel
where he thought they belonged, but on the
whole he was victorious.
And then came the spring night when he
got drunk. Tom was wild on that night.
He was like an innocent young buck of the
forest that has eaten of some maddening
weed. The thing began, ran its course, and
was ended in one night, and you may be
sure that no one in Winesburg was any the
worse for Tom's outbreak.
In the first place, the night v/as one to
make a sensitive nature drunk. Ihe trees
along the residence streets of the town were
all newly clothed in soft green leaves, in the
gardens behind the houses men were putter-
ing about in vegetable gardens, and in the
air there was a hush, a waiting kind of
silence very stirring to the blood.
Tom left his room on Duane Street just
as the young night began to make itself felt.
First he walked through the streets, going
softly and quietly along, thinking thoughts
that he tried to put into words. He said
that Helen White was a flame dancing in
the air and that he was a little tree without
leaves standing out sharply against the sky.
Then he said that she was a wind, a strong
terrible wind, coming out of the darkness
of a stormy sea and that he was a boat left
on the shore of the sea by a fisherman.
That idea pleased the boy and he saun-
tered along playing with it. He went into
Main Street and sat on the curbing before
Wracker's tobacco store. For an hour he
lingered about listening to the talk of men,
but it did not interest him much and he
slipped away. Then he decided to get
drunk and went into Willy's saloon and
bought a bottle of whiskey. Putting the
bottle into his pocket, he walked out of
tovv^n, wanting to be alone to think more
thoughts and to drink the whiskey.
Tom got drunk sitting on a bank of new
grass beside the road about a mile north of
town. Before him was a white road and at
his back an apple orchard in full bloom. He
took a drink out of the bottle and then lay
down on the grass. He thought of mornings
in Winesburg and of how the stones in the
graveled driveway by Banker White's house
were wet with dew and glistened in the
morning light. He thought of the nights in
the barn when it rained and he lay awake
hearing the drumming of the rain drops and
smelling the w^arm smell of horses and of hay.
Then he thought of a storm that had gone
roaring through Winesburg several days
before and, his mind going back, he relived
the night he had spent on the train with his
grandmother when the two were coming
from Cincinnati. Sharply he remembered
how^ strange it had seemed to sit quietly in
the coach and to feel the power of the engine
hurling the train along through the night.
Tom got drunk in a very short time. He
kept taking drinks from the bottle as the
thoughts visited him and when his head
began to reel got up and walked along the
570
SIIKRWOOI) ANDKRSON
road .uoinj; away from Winesbiir^. 1 here
was a bridge on the road that ran out of
Winesburg north to Lake Erie and tlie
drunken boy made his way along the road
to the bridge. 1 here he sat down. He
tried to drink again, but when he had taken
the cork out of the bottle he became ill and
put it quickly back. His head was rocking
back and forth and so he sat on the stone
approach to the bridge and sighed. His
head seemed to be flying about like a pin
wheel and then projecting itself off into space
and his arms and legs flopped helplessly
about.
At eleven o'clock Tom got back into town.
George Willard found him wandering about
and took him into the Eagle printshop. Then
he became afraid that the drunken boy would
make a mess on the floor and helped him into
the alleyway.
The reporter was confused by Tom Foster.
The drunken boy talked of Helen White and
said he had been with her on the shore of a
sea and had made love to her. George had
seen Helen White walking in the street with
her father during the evening and decided
that Tom was out of his head. A sentiment
concerning Helen White that lurked in his
own heart flamed up and he became angry.
"Now you quit that," he said. "I won't
let Helen White's name be dragged into this.
I won't let that happen." He began shaking
Tom's shoulder, trying to make him under-
stand. "You quit it," he said again.
For three hours the two young men, thus
strangely thrown together, stayed in the
printshop. When he had a little recovered
George took Tom for a walk. They went
into the country and sat on a log near the
edge of a wood. Something in the still night
drew them together and when the drunken
boy's head began to clear they talked.
"It was good to be drunk," Tom Foster
said. "It taught me something. I won't
have to do it again. I will think more clearly
after this. You see how it is."
George Willard did not see, but his anger
concerning Helen White passed and he felt
drawn towards the pale, shaken boy as he
had never before been drawn towards any
one. With motherly solicitude, he insisted
that Tom get to his feet and walk about.
Again they went back to the printshop and
sat in silence in the darkness.
The reporter could not get the purpose of
Tom Foster's action straightened out in his
mind. When Tom spoke again of Helen
White he again grew angry and began to
scold. "You quit that," he said sharply.
"You haven't been with her. What makes
you say you have? What makes you keep
saying such things.'' Now you quit it, do you
hear.^"
Tom was hurt. He couldn't quarrel with
George Willard because he was incapable of
quarreling, so he got up to go away. When
George Willard was insistent he put out his
hand, laying it on the older boy's arm, and
tried to explain.
"Well," he said softly, "I don't know how
it was. I was happy. You see how that was.
Helen White made me happy and the night
did too. I wanted to suffer, to be hurt some-
how. I thought that was what I should do.
I wanted to suff'er, you see, because every one
suff"ers and does wrong. I thought of a lot of
things to do, but they wouldn't work. They
all hurt some one else." ■
Tom Foster's voice arose, and for once in
his life he became almost excited. "It was
like making love, that's what I mean," he
explained. "Don't you see how it is? It
hurt me to do what I did and made every-
thing strange. That's why I did it. I'm glad,
too. It taught me something, that's it,
that's what I wanted. Don't you under-
stand? I wanted to learn things, you see.
That's why I did it."
EUGENE O'NEILL (1888- )
Eusene Gladstone O'Neill was born in New York on .6 October, 1888. His father was an actor
and the bov spent the first seven years of his life traveling through the Umted States w.th h,s father
ompany D ring the next six years he attended several Catholic hoarding schools, and then spent
our yea's at the Betts Academy (Connecticut). In the fa 1 of 1906 he entered Pr.nceton Umvers, y
but remained there onlv one year. During the followmg fourteen or fifteen months he worked for a
mail-order firm in New Vork, until it failed. He then went off to Honduras on a prospect.ng expedmon
Tnd afe some months of hardship got only an attack of malanal fever for h,s P-"- , ^h.s necess.tated
h"s return to the United States, where he was given a managerial posu.on w,th J theatnca company
o h s father's which was then on tour. The company's tour ended m Boston. Mr. 0 Ne.ll had been
r ading Jack London, and Joseph Conrad's Niuer of the Namssus, and he now felt .mpelled to go to
ea in a sailing ship. He did so, going on a Norwegian boa. to Buenos ,\,res, where he reniamed for
r^ore than a year, workmg for various American firms and also shipping on board a cattle boat for a
"yage to South Africa and back. After a further period in Buenos Aires, during which he found no
work and had no money, he returned to America as a common seaman on a tramp ship. A time ot
loafing followed, and then again he went to sea, making a couple of voyages as able seaman on vessels
of the American Line. Thereafter he was for a while an actor, and then for some months a newspaper
reporter, until he was attacked by tuberculosis, which necessitated a half-year in a "nitarmm
■^ It was only after he came out of the sanitarium, in the latter half of 19.3. that Mr. O Ned began
,0 write. During the winter of 1913-19.4 he composed a number of plays and he spent the following
winder at Harvard, working under the direction of Professor G. P. Baker. Through the winter of 19.5-
Tme he ived in New York, engaged in writing, and in the summer of 19.6 he jomed the Provmcetown
PI yers, nd began to act in plays of his own writing which they produced. Smce that time he has
b en engaged entirely in the composition and production of plays, living for some years in Province-
town, and more recently in Ridgefield, Connecticut. He has thus far written some fifty P'ay^, on V
abou one-half of which have been short ones. Twenty of these he has not only discarded as worthless
but has destroyed. Of the remainder many have been successfully produced, and they have made
such an impression upon the public that by now Mr. O'Neill is everywhere recognized as a drama 1st
of genius-really the earliest dramatist of unquestioned genius whom the United States "n boast_
Were he to cease writing to-day his place would still be secure and memorable, both in the history of
the American stage and in American literature. He should, however, have many years of work before
him, and those who have studied his plays most closely seem to be agreed that his powers show no sign
of exhaustion and that he is likely in the future to give a great fulfillment to the brilliant promise of
his first decade as a playwright. i • ^ k^.,«. *u«
Mr O'Neill has attained his high position first of all because he has something to say about the
character of life which has elements of profound truth in it; and what he has to say is his own, is the
fruit of his own experience and reflection, and is felt intensely and intimately. And besides building
up in his plays a criticism of life which contains so much of unescapable truth that, whatever our con-
clusion about it may be, we cannot possibly disregard it but must somehow come to terms with it
Mr. O'Neill has expressed his criticism with great imaginative power, a masterly independence, and a
thorough understanding of the nature and limits of theatrical art. He has been a bold ej^Pf"-^^"^;!'^;'
but his experiments have been rigidly controlled by the means at his disposal, furnished by modern
stage technique, so that some of the most novel of his experiments have at once P^^^.^^ ^ff^^^^;,^^^^"^^
successful when tested by public performance. And perhaps nothing is more notable in Mr. U Neill s
artistry than his severe economy in the use of his material. His economical presentation joins hands
with his sense of balance to give to his plays a concentration and directness which, if at times it
seems brutally overpowering, also at times makes them seem as inevitable as destiny.
Mr O'Neill's conviction is that human life is essentially and hopelessly tragic. He appears to
discern elements of worth and of fineness in life, and discovers the springs of beauty and ground tor
sympathy in every honest effort of the understanding to follow the lead of genuine feeling, bu concludes
that so mixed is human nature and so indifferent are the contending elemental forces which surround
man that ultimate defeat in life is inevitable even for the best. He feels that civilization has not irn-
proved, but has debased human nature. Built on shams and falsehood, it has produced ^ the so-
called favored classes only qualities which are worthy of contempt. Yet Mr. O Neill does not hnd a
571
572
EUGENE O'NEILL
cheap escape from tim possibly immature conclusion in any sentimental exaltation of savage races
He does not pour on them his contempt, it is true, save when they ape the rottenness of modern civiliza-
tion, but neither does he cherish any sentimental illusions concerning nature and nature's simple children
He contents himself with an impartial efFort to discover sensitiveness and scrupulousness, the springs
of whatever IS worthy in human nature, as he feels, wherever they may be brought to the surface bv
crucial conflicts. And if these very qualities serve in our world but to hasten tragic defeat for the
persons who possess them, he is also content simply to leave the enigma bared and insistent, as long as
he IS able to see no further. Thus, though his criticism of life is individual and independent its general
outcome pomtmg towards despair and hopelessness either over life itself or, at least, over present con
ditions of life, is m striking accord with a pronounced critical tendency among a number of conteml
porary American writers in various fields. f
Mr. O'Neill's published plays include the following: Thirst, and Other One-Act Plays (iqi±- th
additional plays are The Web, fVarmngs, Fog, and Recklessness), Before Breakfast (1916), The Mool
of the Lanbbees and Six Other Plays of the Sea (1919; the other plays are Bound East for Cardiff Thi
Long Voyage Home In the Zone, He, Where the Cross is Made, and The Rope), Beyond the Horizon (102^
Gold (1921) The Emperor Jones (1921), Diff'rent (1921), The Straw (1921), Anna Christie (1922) ''Tht
Hairy Ape {1922), T lie First Man (1922,) All God's ChUlun Got Wings (1924), Welded (1924), Desire
under the Elms (1924), The Dreamy Kid (1924), The Great God Brown (1926), and The Fountain {ic)26)
"THE HAIRY APE" i
A Comedy of Ancient and Modern Life
in Eight Scenes
CHARACTERS
Robert Smith, "Yank"
Paddy
Long
Mildred Douglas
Her Aunt
Second Engineer
A Guard
A Secretary of an Organization
Stokers, Ladies, Gentlemen, etc.
SCENES
Scene
I;
The firemen's forecastle of an
ocean liner — an hour after
sailing from New York.
Section of promenade deck,
two days out — morning.
The stokehole. A few
minutes later.
Same as Scene I. Half an
hour later.
Fifth Avenue, New York.
Three weeks later.
VI: An island near the city. The
next night.
In the city,
later.
In the city,
next day. tj
1 Reprinted from the revised text in the collective
edition of Mr. O'Neill's plays, with the permission of
the publishers, Messrs. Boni and Liveright, Inc.
Scene
11:
Scene
III:
Scene
IV:
'Scene
V:
Scene
VI:
Scene
VH:
Scene VIII:
About a month
Twilight of the
SCENE ONE
The firemen s forecastle of a transatlantiA
liner an hour after sailing from Nezv York fori
the voyage across. Tiers of narrow, steel bunks,]
three deep, on all sides. An entrance in rear.
Benches on the floor before the bunks. The
room is crowded with men, shouting, cursing,
laughing, singifig — a confused, inchoate up-
roar swelling into a sort of unity, a meaning — ,
the bewildered, furious, baffled defiance of a
beast in a cage. Nearly all the men are drunk.
Many bottles are passed from hand to hand.
All are dressed in dungaree pants, heavy ugly
shoes. Some wear singlets, but the majority
are stripped to the waist.
The treatment of this scene, or of any other
scene in the play, should by no means be
naturalistic. The effect sought after is a
cramped space in the bowels of a ship, im-
prisoned by white steel. The lines of bunks,
the uprights supporting them, cross each other
like the steel framework of a cage. The ceiling
crushes down upon the mens heads. They
cannot stand upright. This accentuates the
natural stooping posture which shoveling coal
and the resultant over-development of back and
shoulder muscles have given them. The men
themselves should resemble those pictures in
which the appearance of Neanderthal Man is
guessed at. All are hairy-chested, with long
arms of tremendous power, and low, receding
brows above their small, fierce, resentful eyes.
All the civilized white races are represented,
but except for the slight differentiation in
color of hair, skin, eyes, all these men are
alike.
THE HAIRY APE"
573
The curtain rises on a tumult of sound.
YANK is seated in the foreground. lie seems
broader, fiercer, more truculent, more powerful,
more sure of himself than the rest. They respect
his superior strength— the grudging respect of
fear. Then, too, he represents to them a self-
expression, the very last word in what they are,
their most highly developed individual.
VOICES.
Gif me trink dere, you!
'Ave a wet!
Salute!
Gesundheit!
Skoal!
Drunk as a lord, God stiffen you!
Here's how!
Luck!
Pass back that bottle, damn you!
Pourin' it down his neck!
Ho, Froggy! Where the devil have you
been?
La Touraine.
I hit him smash in yaw, py Gott!
Jenkins— the First— he's a rotten
swine
And the coppers nabbed him — and I
run
I like peer better. It don't pig head
gif you.
A slut, Fm sayin'!
aslape
To hell with 'em all!
You're a bloody liar!
Say dot again! {Commotion. Two men
about to fight are pulled apart.)
No scrappin' now!
To-night
See who's the best man!
Bloody Dutchman!
To-night on the for'ard square.
I'll bet on Dutchy.
He packa da wallop, I tella you!
Shut up, Wop!
No fightin', maties. We're all chums,
ain't we?
{A voice starts bawling a song.)
"Beer, beer, glorious beer!
Fill yourselves right up to here."
YANK {for the first time seeming to take
notice of the uproar about him, turns around
threateningly — in a tone of contemptuous
authority). Choke off dat noise! Where
d'yuh get dat beer stuff? Beer, hell! Beer's
She robbed me
for goils— and Dutchmen. Me for somep'n
wit a kick to it! Gimme a drink, one of
youse guys. {Several bottles are eagerly
offered. He takes a tremendous gulp at one
of them; then, keeping the bottle in his hand,
glares belligerently at the owner, who hastens to
acquiesce in this robbery by saying) All
righto, Yank. Keep it and have another.
(yank contemptuously turns his back on the
crowd again. For a second there is an em-
barrassed silence. Then )
VOICES.
We must be passing the Hook.
She's beginning to roll to it.
Six d.\ys in hell— and then Southamp-
ton.
Py Yesus, I vish somepody take my
first vatch for me!
Gittin' seasick. Square-head?
Drink up and forget it!
What's in your bottle?
Gin.
Dot's nigger trink.
Absinthe? It's doped. You'll go off
your chump, Froggy!
Cochon!
Whisky, that's the ticket!
Where's Paddy?
Going asleep.
Sing us that whisky song, Paddy.
{They all turn to an old, wizened Irishman
who is dozing, very drunk, on the benches for-
ward. His face is extremely monkey-like ^ with
all the sad, patient pathos of that animal in his
small eyes.)
Singa da song, Caruso Pat!
He's gettin' old. The drink is too much
for him.
He's too drunk.
paddy {blinking about him, starts to his feet
resentfully, swaying, holding on to the edge of
a bunk). I'm never too drunk to sing. 'Tis
only when I'm dead to the world I'd be wish-
ful to sing at all. {With a sort of sad con-
tempt) ''Whisky Johnny," ye want? A
chanty, ye want? Now that's a queer wish
from the ugly like of you, God help you. But
no matther. {He starts to sing in a thin,
nasal, doleful tone:)
Oh, whisky is the Ufe of man!
Whisky! O Johnny! ^They all join in on
this.)
Oh, whisky is the life of man!
Whisky for my Johnny! {Again chorus.)
574
EUGENE O'NEILL
Oil, wliiskv drove my old man mad!
Whisky! O Johnny!
Oh, whisky drove my old man mad!
Whisky for my Johnny!
YANK {again turning around scornfully).
Aw hell! Nix on dat old sailinjT ship stuff!
All dat bull's dead, sec? And you're dead,
too, yuh damned old Harp, on'y yuh don't
know it. Take it easy, see. Give us a rest.
Nix on de loud noise. {JVith a cynical grin)
Can't youse see I'm tryin' to t'ink.''
ALL {repeating the word after him as one
zt'ith the same cynical amused mockery). Think !
{The chorused word has a brazen metallic
quality as if their throats ivere phonograph
horns. It is followed by a general uproar of
hardy barking laughter.)
VOICES.
Don't be cracking your head wit ut,
Yank.
You gat headache, py yingo!
One thing about it — it rhymes with
drink!
Ha, ha, ha!
Drink, don't think!
Drink, don't think!
Drink, don't think! {J zvhole chorus of
voices has taken up this refrain, stamping on
on the floor, pounding on the benches with
fists.)
YANK {taking a gulp from his bottle — good-
naturedly). Aw right. Can de noise. I got
yuh de foist time. {The uproar subsides. A
very drunken sentimental tenor begins to sing:)
**Far away in Canada,
Far across the sea,
There's a lass who fondly waits
Making a home for me "
YANK {fiercely contemptuous). Shut up,
yuh lousy boob! Where d'yuh get dat tripe?
Home? Home, hell! I'll make a home for
yuh! I'll knock yuh dead. Home! T'hell
wit home! Where d'yuh get dat tripe? Dis
is home, see? What d'yuh want wit home?
{Proudly) I runned away from mine when
I was a kid. On'y too glad to beat it, dat
was me. Home was lickings for me, dat's all.
But yuh can bet your shoit no one ain't never
licked me since ! W anter try it, any of youse ?
Huh! I guess not. {In a more placated but
still contemptuous tone) Goils waitin' for
yuh, huh? Aw, hell! Dat's all tripe. Dey
don't wait for no one. Dey'd double-cross
yuh for a nickel. Dey're all tarts, get me?
Treat 'em rough, dat's mc. To hell wit 'em.
Tarts, dat's what, de whole bunch of 'em.
LONG {very drunk, jumps on a bench ex-
citedly, gesticulating with a bottle in his hand).
Listen 'ere, Comrades! Yank 'ere is right.
'E says this 'ere stinkin' ship is our 'ome.
And 'e says as 'ome is 'ell. And 'e's right!
This is 'ell. We lives in 'ell. Comrades —
and right enough we'll die in it. {Raging)
And who's ter blame, I arsks yer? We ain't.
We wasn't born this rotten way. All men is
born free and ekal. That's in the bleedin'
Bible, maties. But what d'they care for the
Bible — them lazy, bloated swine what
travels first cabin? Them's the ones. They
dragged us down 'til we're on'y wage slaves
in the bowels of a bloody ship, sweatin',
burnin' up, eatln' coal dust! Hit's them's
ter blame — the damned Capitalist clarss!
{There had been a gradual murmur of con-
temptuous resentment rising among the men
until now he is interrupted by a storin of
catcalls, hisses, boos, hard laughter.)
VOICES.
Turn it off!
Shut up!
Sit down!
Closa da face!
Tamn fool! {Etc.)
YANK {standing up and glaring at LONG).
Sit down before I knock yuh down! (long
makes haste to efface himself, yank goes on
contemptuously.) De Bible, huh? De
Cap'tlist class, huh? Aw nix on dat Salva-
tion Army-Socialist bull. Git a soapbox!
Hire a hall! Come and be saved, huh? Jerk
us to Jesus, huh? Aw g'wan! I've listened
to lots of guys like you, see. Yuh're all
wrong. Wanter know what I t'ink? Yuh
ain't no good for no one. Yuh're de bunk.
Yuh ain't got no noive, get me? Yuh're
yellow, dat's what. Yellow, dat's you. Say!
What's dem slobs in de foist cabin got to do
wit us? We're better men dan dey are, ain't
we? Sure! One of us guys could clean up
de whole mob wit one mit. Put one of 'em
down here for one watch in de stokehole,
what'd happen? Dey'd carry him off on a
stretcher. Dem boids don't amount to
nothin'. Dey're just baggage. Who makes
dis old tub run? Ain't it us guys? Well den,
we belong, don't we? We belong and dey
don't. Dat's all. {A loud chorus of approval.
YANK goes on.) As for dis bein' hell — aw,
'THE HAIRY APE"
575
nuts! Yuh lost voiir nolve, dat's what. Dls
is a man's job, i^et me? It belongs. It runs
dis tub. No stiflFs need apply. But yuh re
a stiff, see? Yuh're yellow, dat's you.
voicrs.
{JFith a great hard pride in them.)
Righto!
A man's job!
Talk is cheap, Long.
He never could hold up his end.
Divil take him!
Yank's right. We make it go.
Py Gott, Yank say right ting!
We don't need no one cryin' over us.
Makin' speeches.
Throw him out!
Yellow!
Chuck him overboard!
I'll break his jaw for him!
{They crozvd around LONG threateningly.)
YANK (half good-natured again— contemptu-
ously). Aw, take it easy. Leave him alone.
He ain't woith a punch. Drink up. Here s
how, whoever owns dis. {He takes a long
swallozv from his bottle. All drink zvith him.
In a flash all is hilarious amiability again,
back-slapping, loud talk, etc.) ^ _
PADDY {who has been sitting in a blinking,
melancholy daze— suddenly cries out in a
voice full of old sorrow). We belong to this,
you re saying
? We make the ship to go,
day to come— until they're old like me.
{With a sort of religious exaltation) Oh, to
be scudding south again wid the power of
the Trade Wind driving her on steady
through the nights and the days! Full sail
on her! Nights and days! Nights when the
foam of the wake would be flaming wid fire,
when the sky'd be blazing and winking wid
stars. Or the full of the moon maybe. Then
you'd see her driving through the gray night,
her sails stretching aloft all silver and white,
not a sound on the deck, the lot of us dream-
ing dreams, till you'd believe 'twas no real
ship at all you was on but a ghost ship like
the Flying Dutchman they say does be roam-
ing the seas forevermore widout touching a
port. And there was the days, too. A
warm sun on the clean decks. Sun warming
the blood of you, and wind over the miles of
shiny green ocean like strong drink to your
lungs. Work— aye, hard work— but who'd
mind that at all? Sure, you worked under
the sky and 'twas work wid skill and darmg
to it. And wid the day done, in the dog
watch, smoking me pipe at ease, the lookout
would be raising land maybe, and we'd see
the mountains of South Americy wid the
red fire of the setting sun painting their
white tops and the clouds floating by them!
{His tone of exaltation ceases. He goes on
mournfully.) Yerra, what's the use of talk-
you're saying? Yerra then, that Almighty
God have pity on us! {His voice runs into
the wail of a keen, he rocks back and forth on
his bench. The men stare at him, startled and
impressed in spite of themselves.) Oh, to be
back in the fine days of my youth, ochone!
Oh, there was fine beautiful ships them
^lays_clippers wid tall masts touching the
sj,y_fine strong men in them— men that
was sons of the sea as if 'twas the mother
that bore them. Oh, the clean skins of them,
and the clear eyes, the straight backs and
full chests of them! Brave men they was,
and bold men surely! WVd be sailing out,
bound down round the Horn maybe. We'd
be making sail in the dawn, with a fair breeze,
singing a chanty song wid no care to it. And
astern the land would be sinking low and
dying out, but we'd give it no heed but a
laugh, and never a look behind. For the
day that was, was enough, for we was free
men— and I'm thinking 'tis only slaves do be
giving heed to the day that's gone or the
ing? 'Tis a dead man's whisper. {To YANK
resentfully) Twas them days men belonged
to ships, not now. 'Twas them days a ship
was part of the sea, and a man was part of a
ship, and the sea joined all together and
made it one. {Scornfully) Is it one wid
this you'd be, Yank— black smoke from the
funnels smudging the sea, smudging the
jgcks— the bloody engines pounding and
throbbing and shaking— wid divil a sight of
sun or a breath of clean air— choking our
lun^s wid coal dust— breaking our backs and
hearts in the hell of the stokehole— feeding
the bloody furnace— feeding our lives along
wid the coal, I'm thinking— caged in by steel
from a sight of the sky like bloody apes in the
Zoo' {IVith a harsh laugh) Ho-ho, divil
mend you! Is it to belong to that you're
WIS
hingi
Is it a flesh and blood wheel of the
engines you'd be?
YANK {who has been listening with a con-
temptuous sneer, barks out the answer). Sure
ting! Dat's me. What about it?
576
EUGENE O'NEILL
PAUDY (as if to himself— zvjth great sorrozv).
Mf rime is past due. 1 hat a c;reat wave wid
sun \n the heart of it may sweep me over the
side sometime I'd be dreaming of the days
that's gone!
YANK. Aw, yuh crazy Mick! (He springs
to his feet and advances on paddy threaten-
ingly— then stops, fighting some queer struggle
zvithin himself — lets his harids fall to his sides
— contemptuously.) Aw, take it easy. Yuh're
aw right at dat. Yuh're bugs, dat's all —
nutty as a cuckoo. All dat tripe yuh been
pullin' Aw, dat's all right. On'y it's
dead, get me? "Yuh don't belong no more,
see. Yuh don't get de stuff. Yuh're too old.
{Disgustedly) But aw say, come up for air
onct in a while, can't yuh? See what's
happened since yuh croaked. {He suddenly
bursts forth vehemently, grozving more and more
excited.) Say! Sure! Sure I meant it!
What de hell Say, lemme talk! Hey!
Hey, you old Harp! Hey, youse guys! Say,
listen to me — wait a moment — I gotter talk,
see. I belong and he don't. He's dead but
I'm livin'. Listen to me! Sure I'm part of de
engines! Why de hell not! Dey move,
don't dey? Dey're speed, ain't dey! Dey
smash trou, don't dey? Twenty-five knots
a hour! Dat's goin' some! Dat's new stuff!
Dat belongs! But him, he's too old. He gets
dizzy. Say, listen. All dat crazy tripe about
nights and days; all dat crazy tripe
about stars and moons; all dat crazy tripe
about suns and winds, fresh air and de rest
of it Aw hell, dat's all a dope dream!
Hittin' de pipe of de past, dat's what he's
doin'. He's old and don't belong no more.
But me, I'm young! I'm in de pink! I move
wit it! It, get me! I mean de ting dat's
de guts of all dis. It ploughs trou all de tripe
he's been sayin'. It blows dat up! It knocks
dat dead! It slams dat offen de face of de
oith! It, get me! De engines and de coal
and de smoke and all de rest of it! He can't
breathe and swallow coal dust, but I kin,
seer Dat's fresh air for me! Dat's food for
me! I'm new, get me? Hell in de stoke-
hole? Sure! It takes a man to work in hell.
Hell, sure, dat's my fav'rite climate. I eat
it up! I git fat on it! It's me makes it hot!
It's me makes it roar! It's me makes it
move! Sure, on'y for me everyting stops.
It all goes dead, get me? De noise and
smoke and all de engines movln' de woild,
dey stop. Dere ain't nothin' no more! Dat's
what I'm sayin'. Everyting else dat makes
de woild move, somep'n makes it move. It
can't move witout somep'n else, see? Den
yuh get down to me. I'm at de bottom, get
me! Dere ain't nothin' foither. I'm de end!
I'm de start! I start somep'n and de woild
moves! It — dat's me! — de new dat's
moiderin' de old! I'm de ting in coal dat
makes it boin; I'm steam and oil for de
engines; I'm de ting in noise dat makes yuh
hear it; I'm smoke and express trains and
steamers and factory whistles; I'm de ting
in gold dat makes it money! And I'm what
makes iron into steel! Steel, dat stands for
de whole ting! And I'm steel — steel — steel!
I'm de muscles in steel, de punch behind it!
{As he says this he pounds with his fist against
the steel bunks. All the men, roused to a pitch
of frenzied self-glorification by his speech, do
likewise. There is a deafening metallic roar,
through which yank's voice can be heard
bellowing.) Slaves, hell! We run de whole
woiks. All de rich guys dat tink dey're
somep'n, dey ain't nothin'! Dey don't
belong. But us guys, we're in de move, we're
at de bottom, de whole ting is us! (paddy
from the start 0/ yank's speech has been taking
one gulp after another from his bottle, at first
frightenedly, as if he were afraid to listen, then
desperately, as if to drozvn his senses, but
finally has achieved complete indifferent, even
amused, drunkeiiness. yank sees his lips
moving. He quells the uproar with a shout.)
Hey, youse guys, take it easy! Wait a mo-
ment! De nutty Harp is sayin' somep'n.
paddy {is heard now — throws his head back
with a mocking burst of laughter). Ho-ho-
ho-ho-ho
yank {drawing back his fist, with a snarl).
Aw! Look out who yuh're givin' the bark!
PADDY {begins to sing the ^^ Miller of Dee''
with enormous good nature).
"I care for nobody, no, not I,
And nobody cares for me."
YANK {good-natured himself in afiash, inter-
rupts PADDY with a slap on the bare back like a
report). Dat's de stuff! Now yuh're gettin'
wise to somep'n. Care for nobody, dat's
de dope! To hell wit 'em all! And nix on
nobody else carin'. I kin care for myself,
get me! {Eight bells sound, muffled, vibrating
through the steel walls as if some enormous
brazen gong were imbedded in the heart of the
"THE HAIRY APE"
577
ship. All the men jump up mechanicallyy file
through the door silently close upon each other's
heels in zvhat is very like a prisoners' lockstep.
YANK slaps PADDY oti the back.) Our watch,
yuh old Harp! (Mockingly) Come on down
in hell. Eat up de coal dust. Drink in de
heat. It's it, see! Act like yuh liked it, yuh
better — or croak yuhself.
PADDY (zvith jovial defiance). To the divil
wid it! I'll not report this watch. Let thim
log me and be damned. I'm no slave the like
of you. ril be sittin' here at me ease, and
drinking, and thinking, and dreaming
dreams.
YANK {contemptuously). Tinkin' and
dreamin', what'U that get yuh.'' What's
tinkin' got to do wit it.? We move, don't
we.? Speed, ain't it.? Fog, dat's all you
stand for. But we drive trou dat, don't we.?
We split dat up and smash trou — twenty-
five knots a hour! {Turns his back on paddy
scornfully) Aw, yuh make me sick! Yuh
don't belong! {He strides out the door in rear.
PADDY hums to himselfy blinking drozasily.)
(Curtain)
SCENE TWO
Tzvo days out. A section of the promenade
deck. MILDRED DOUGLAS and her aunt are
discovered reclining in deck chairs. The
former is a girl of twenty^ slendery delicate,
zvith a pale, pretty face marred by a self-con-
scious expression of disdaiiiful superiority.
She looks fretful, nervous and discontented,
bored by her own anemia. Her aunt is a
pompous and proud — and fat — old lady. She
is a type even to the point of a double chin and
lorgnettes. She is dressed pretentiously, as if
afraid her face alone would never indicate her
position in life, mildred is dressed all in
white.
The impression to be conveyed by this scene
is one of the beautiful, vivid life of thejea all
about — sunshine on the deck in a great flood,
the fresh sea wind blowi?ig across it. In the
midst of this, these two incongruous, artificial
figures, inert and disharmonious, the elder like
a gray lump of dough touched up with rouge,
the younger looking as if the vitality of her
stock had been sapped before she was con-
ceived, so that she is the expression not of its
life energy but merely of the artificialities that
energy had won for itself in the spending.
MILDRED (looking Up with affected dreami-
ness). How the black smoke swirls back
against the sky! Is it not beautiful?
AUNT (without looking up). I dislike smoke
of any kind.
MILDRED. My great-grandmother smoked
a pipe — a clay pipe.
AUNT {ruffling). Vulgar!
MILDRED. She was too distant a relative
to be vulgar. Time mellows pipes.
AUNT (pretending boredom but irritated).
Did the sociology you took up at college
teach you that — to play the ghoul on every
possible occasion, excavating old bones.?
Why not let your great-grandmother rest in
her grave.?
MILDRED (dreamily). With her pipe be-
side her — puffing in Paradise.
AUNT (with spite). Yes, you are a natural
born ghoul. You are even getting to look
like one, my dear.
MILDRED (in a passionless tone). I detest
you, Aunt. (Looking at her critically) Do
you know what you remind me of.? Of a
cold pork pudding against a background of
linoleum tablecloth in the kitchen of a — but
the possibilities are wearisome. (She closes
her eyes.)
AUNT (with a bitter laugh). Merci for your
candor. But since I am and must be your
chaperon — in appearance, at least — let us
patch up some sort of armed truce. For my
part you are quite free to indulge any pose
of eccentricity that beguiles you — as long as
you observe the amenities
MILDRED (drawling). The inanities.?
AUNT (going on as if she hadn't heard).
After exhausting the morbid thrills of social
service work on New York's East Side —
how they must have hated you, by the way,
the poor that you made so much poorer in
their own eyes! — you are now bent on mak-
ing your slumming international. Well, I
hope Whitechapel will provide the needed
nerve tonic. Do not ask me to chaperon you
there, however. I told your father I would
not. I loathe deformity. We will hire an
army of detectives and you may investigate
everything — they allow you to see.
MILDRED (protesting with a trace of genuine
earnestness). Please do not mock at my
attempts to discover how the other half
lives. Give me credit for some sort of grop-
ing sincerity in that at least. I would like to
57^
El^CKNE O'NEILL
Fielp tluni. I would like to he some use \n
the world. Is it niy fault 1 don't know how?
I would like to he sincere, to touch life some-
where. {With zceary bitterness) But I'm
afraid I have neither the vitality nor in-
tegrity. All that was burnt out in our stock
before I was born. Cirandfather's blast
furnaces, flaming to the sky, melting steel,
making millions — then father keeping those
home Hres burning, making more millions — •
and little me at the tail-end of it all. I'm a
waste product in the Bessemer process —
like the millions. Or rather, I inherit the
acquired trait of the by-product, wealth, but
none of the energy, none of the strength of
the steel that made it. I am sired by gold
and damned by it, as they say at the race
track — damned in more ways than one.
{She laughs mirthlessly.)
AUNT {u7iimpressed — superciliously). You
seem to be going in for sincerity to-day.
It isn't becoming to you, really — except as
an obvious pose. Be as artificial as you are,
I advise. There's a sort of sincerity in that,
you know. And, after all, you must confess
/ou like that better.
MILDRED {again affected and bored). Yes,
I suppose I do. Pardon me for my outburst.
When a leopard complains of its spots, it
must sound rather grotesque. {In a mocking
tone) Pur, little leopard. Pur, scratch,
tear, kill, gorge yourself and be happy —
only stay in the jungle where your spots are
camouflage. In a cage they make you
conspicuous.
AUNT. I don't know what you are talking
about.
MILDRED. It would be rude to talk about
anything to you. Let's just talk. {She looks
at her zvrist watch.) Well, thank goodness,
it's about time for them to come for me.
That ought to give me a new thrill, Aunt.
AUNT {affectedly troubled). You don't
mean to say you're really going .f* 1 he dirt —
the heat must be frightful
MILDRED. Grandfather started as a pud-
dler. I should have inherited an immunity
to heat that would make a salamander shiver.
It will be fun to put it to the test.
AUNT. But don't you have to have the
captain's — or someone's — permission to visit
the stokehole.''
MILDRED {zvith a triumphant smile). I have
it — both his and the chief engineer's. Oh,
they didn't want to at first, in spite of my
social service credentials. 1 hey didn't seem
a bit anxious that I should investigate how
the other half lives and works on a ship. So
I had to tell them that my father, the presi-
dent of Nazareth Steel, chairman of the
board of directors of this line, had told me it
would be all right.
AUNT. He didn't.
MILDRED. How naive age makes one; But
I said he did, Aunt. I even said he had
given me a letter to them — which I had lost.
And they were afraid to take the chance that
I might be lying. {Excitedly) So it's ho!
for the stokehole. The second engineer is to
escort me. {Looking at her zvatch again) It's
time. And here he comes, I think. {The
SECOND ENGINEER enters. lie is a husky,
fine-looking man of thirty-five or so. lie stops
before the two and tips his cap, visibly em-
barrassed and ill-at-ease.)
SECOND ENGINEER. Miss Douglas?
MILDRED. Yes. {Throwing off her rugs
and getting to her feet) Are we all ready to
start.?
SECOND ENGINEER. In just a second,
ma'am. I'm waiting for the Fourth. He's
coming along.
MILDRED {with a scornful smile). You
don't care to shoulder this responsibility
alone, is that \tl
SECOND ENGINEER {forcing a smile). Two
are better than one. {Disturbed by her eyes,
glances out to sea — blurts out) A fine day
we're having.
MILDRED. Is it?
SECOND ENGINEER. A nlcC Watm
breeze
MILDRED. It feels cold to me.
SECOND ENGINEER. But it's hot enough in
the sun
MILDRED. Not hot enough for me. I
don't like Nature. I was never athletic.
SECOND ENGINEER {forcing a smile). Well,
you'll find it hot enough where you're going.
MILDRED. Do you mean hell?
SECOND ENGINEER {flabbergasted, decides to
laugh). Ho-ho! No, I mean the stokehole.
MILDRED. My grandfather was a puddler.
He played with boiling steel.
SECOND ENGINEER {all at sea — uneasily).
Is that so? Hum, you'll excuse me, ma'am,
but are you intending to wear that dress?
MILDRED. Whvnot?
"THE HAIRY APE"
579
SECOND ENGINEER. You'll likely rub
against oil and dirt. It can't be helped.
MILDRED. It doesn't matter. 1 have lots
of white dresses.
SECOND ENGINEER. I havc an old coat
you might throw over
MILDRED. I have fifty dresses like this. I
will throw this one into the sea when I come
back. That ought to wash it clean, don't
you think.''
SECOND ENGINEER {doggedly). There's
ladders to climb down that are none too
clean — and dark alleyways
MILDRED. I will wear this very dress and
none other.
SECOND ENGINEER. No ofFense meant.
It's none of my business. I was only warning
you
MILDRED. Warning.'' That sounds thrill-
ing.
SECOND ENGINEER {looking doum the deck —
zvith a sigh of relief). There's the Fourth
now. He's waiting for us. If you'll come
MILDRED. Go on. I'll follow you. {He
goes. MILDRED tums a knocking smile on her
aunt.) . An oaf — but a handsome, virile oaf.
AUNT {scornfully). Poser!
MILDRED. Take care. He said there were
dark alleyways
AUNT {in the same tone). Poser!
MILDRED {biting her lips angrily). You are
right. But would that my millions were not
so anemically chaste!
AUNT. Yes, for a fresh pose I have no
doubt you would drag the name of Douglas
in the gutter!
MILDRED. From which it sprang. Good-
by. Aunt. Don't pray too hard that I may
fall into the fiery furnace.
AUNT. Poser!
MILDRED {viciously). Old hag! {She slaps
her aunt insultingly across the face and walks
of, laughing gayly.)
AUNT {screams after her). I said poser!
{Curtain)
SCENE THREE
The stokehole. In the rear, the dimly-out-
lined hulks of the furnaces and boilers. High
overhead one hanging electric bulb sheds just
enough light through the murky air laden with
coal dust to pile up masses of shadows every-
where. A line of men, stripped to the waist,
is before the furnace doors. They bend over,
looking neither to right nor left, handling their
shovels as if they were part of their bodies, with
a strange, awkward, swinging rhythm. They
use the shovels to throw open the furnace doors.
Then from these fiery round holes in the black
a flood of terrific light and heat pours full upon
the men who are outlined in silhouette in the
crouching, inhuman attitudes of chained
gorillas. The men shovel with a rhythmic
motion, swinging as on a pivot from the coal
which lies in heaps on the floor behind to hurl
it into the flaming mouths before them. There
is a tumult of noise — the brazen clang of the
furnace doors as they are flung open or slammed
shut, the grating, teeth-gritting grind of steel
against steel, of crunching coal. This clash of
sounds stuns one's ears with its rending dis-
sonance. But there is order in it, rhythm, a
mechanical regulated recurrence, a tempo.
And rising above all, making the air hum with
the quiver of liberated energy, the roar of leap-
ing flames in the furnaces, the monotonous
throbbing beat of the engines.
As the curtain rises, the furnace doors are
shut. The men are taki7ig a breathing spell.
One or two are arranging the coal behind them,
pulling it into more accessible heaps. The
others can be dimly made out leaning on their
shovels in relaxed attitudes of exhaustion.
PADDY {from somewhere in the line — plain-
tively). Yerra, will this divil's own watch
nivirend.'* Me back is broke. I'm destroyed
entirely.
YANK {from the center of the line — with exu-
berant scorn). Aw, yuh make me sick! Lie
down and croak, why don't yuh.^ Always
beefin', dat's you! Say, dis is a cinch! Dis
was made for me! It's my meat, get me! {A
whistle is blown — a thin, shrill note from
somewhere overhead in the darkness, yank
curses without resentment.) Dere's de damn
engineer crackin' de whip. He tinks we're
loafin'.
PADDY {vindictively). God stiffen him!
YANK {in an exultant tone of command).
Come on, youse guys! Git into de game!
She's gittin' hungry! Pile some grub in her.
Trow it into her belly! Come on now, all of
youse! Open her up! {At this last all the
men, who have followed his movements of get-
ting into position, throw open their furnace
58o
EUGENE O'NEILL
doors with a deafening clang. The fiery light
floods over their shoulders as they bend round
for the coal. Rivulets of sooty szveat have traced
maps on their backs. The enlarged muscles
form bunches of high light and shadozv.)
YANK {chantifig a count as he shovels without
seeming effort). One — two — tree {His
voice rising exultantly in the joy of battle)
Dat's de stuff! Let her have it! All togedder
now! Sling it into her! Let her ride! Shoot
de piece now! Call de toin on her! Drive
her into it! Feel her move! Watch her
smoke! Speed, dat's her middle name! Give
her coal, youse guys! Coal, dat's her booze!
Drink it up, baby! Let's see yuh sprint!
Dig in and gain a lap! Dere she go-o-es.
{This last in the chanting formula of the
gallery gods at the six-day bike race. He slams
his furnace door shut. The others do likewise
with as much unison as their wearied bodies
will pennit. The effect is of one fiery eye after
another being blotted out with a series of
accompanying bangs.)
PADDY {groaning). Me back is broke. I'm
bate out — bate {There is a pause. Then
the inexorable whistle sounds again from the
dim regions above the electric light. There is a
growl of cursing rage from all sides.)
YANK {shaking his fist upward — contemptu-
ously). Take it easy dere, you! Who d'yuh
tinks runnin' dis game, me or you? When I
git ready, we move. Not before! When I
git ready, get me!
VOICES {approvingly).
That's the stuff!
Yank tal him, py golly!
Yank ain't afeerd.
Goot poy, Yank!
Give him hell!
Tell 'im 'e's a bloody swine!
Bloody slave-driver!
YANK {contemptuously). He ain't got no
noive. He's yellow, get me.'' All de engi-
neers is yellow. Dey got streaks a mile wide.
Aw, to hell wit him! Let's move, youse
guys. We had a rest. Come on, she needs it!
Give her pep! It ain't for him. Him and his
whistle, dey don't belong. But we belong,
see! We gotter feed de baby! Come on!
{He turns and flings his furnace door open.
They all follow his lead. At this instant the
SECOND and fourth engineers enter from
the darkness on the left with mildred between
them. She starts^ turns paler, her pose is
crumbling, she shivers with fright in spite of the
blazing heat, but forces herself to leave the
ENGINEERS and take a few steps nearer the
men. She is right behind YANK. All this
happens quickly while the men have their backs
turned.)
YANK. Come on, youse guys! {He is turn-
ing to get coal when the whistle sounds again
in a peremptory, irritating note. This drives
YANK into a sudden fury. While the other men
have turned full around and stopped dum-
founded by the spectacle of mildred standing
there in her white dress, yank does not turn
far enough to see her. Besides, his head is
thrown back, he blinks upward through the
?nurk trying to find the owner of the whistle, he
brandishes his shovel murderously over his head
in one hand, pounding on his chest, gorilla-
like, with the other, shouting.) Toin off dat
whistle! Come down outa dere, yuh yellow,
brass-buttoned, Belfast bum, yuh! Come
down and I'll knock yer brains out! Yuh
lousy, stinkin', yellow mut of a Catholic-
moiderin' bastard! Come down and I'll
moider yuh ! Pullin' dat whistle on me, huh .'*
I'll show yuh! I'll crash yer skull in! I'll
drive yer teet' down yer troat! I'll slam yer
nose trou de back of yer head! I'll cut yer
guts out for a nickel, yuh lousy boob, yuh
dirty, crummy, muck-eatin' son of a
{Suddenly he becomes conscious of all the other
men staring at something directly behind his
back. He whirls defensively with a snarling,
murderous growl, crouching to spring, his lips
drawn back over his teeth, his small eyes gleam-
ing ferociously. He sees mildred, like a
white apparition in the full light from the open
furnace doors. He glares into her eyes, turned
to stone. As for her, during his speech she has
listened, paralyzed with horror, terror, her
whole personality crushed, beaten in, collapsed,
by the terrific impact of this unknown, abysmal
brutality, naked and shameless. As she looks
at his gorilla face, as his eyes bore into hers, she
utters a low, choking cry and shrinks away
from him, putting both hands up before her
eyes to shut out the sight of his face, to protect
her own. This startles yank to a reaction. His
mouth falls open, his eyes grow bewildered.)
MILDRED {about to faint — to the engineers,
who now have her one by each arm — whim-
peringly). Take me away! Oh, the filthy
beast! {She faints. They carry her quickly
back, disappearing in the darkness at the left.
"THE HAIRY APE,,
581
rear. An iron door clangs shut. Rage and
bewildered jury rush hack on yank. He feels
himself insulted in some unknown fashion in
the very heart of his pride. lie roars.) God
damn yuh! {And hurls his shovel after them
at the door which has just closed. It hits the
steel bulkhead with a clang and falls clattering
on the steel floor. From overhead the whistle
sounds again in a long, angry, insistent
command.)
(Curtain)
SCENE FOUR
The firemen's forecastle, yank's watch has
just come off duty and had dinner. Their
faces and bodies shine from a soap and water
scrubbing but around their eyes, where a hasty
dousing does not touch, the coal dust sticks like
black make-up, giving them a queer, sinister
expression, yank has not washed either face
or body. He stands out in contrast to them, a
blackened, brooding figure. He is seated for-
ward on a bench in the exact attitude of Rodin s
*' The Thinker.'* The others^ most of them
smoking pipes, are staring at YANK half-
apprehensively, as if fearing an outburst; half^
amusedly, as if they saw a joke somewhere that
tickled them.
VOICES.
He ain't ate nothin'.
Py golly, a fallar gat to gat grub in him.
Divil a lie.
Yank feeda da fire, no feeda da face.
Ha-ha.
He ain't even washed hisself.
He's forgot.
Hey, Yank, you forgot to wash.
YANK {sullenly).
Forgot nothin'! To hell wit washin'.
VOICES.
It'll stick to you.
It'll get under your skin.
Give yer the bleedin* itch, that's wot.
It makes spots on you — like a leopard.
Like a piebald nigger, you mean.
Better wash up, Yank.
You sleep better.
Wash up, Yank.
Wash up! Wash up!
YANK {resentfully). Aw say, youse guys.
Lemme alone. Can't youse see I'm tryin'
to tink?
ALL {repeating the word after him as one
with cynical mockery). Think! {The word
has a brazen, metallic quality as if their throats
were phonograph horns. It is followed by
a chorus of hard, barking laughter.)
YANK {springing to his feet and glaring at
them belligerently). Yes, tink! link, dat's
what I said! What about it? {They are
silent, puzzled by his sudden resentment at
what used to be one of his jokes, yank sits
down again in the same attitude of " The
Thinker. ")
VOICES.
Leave him alone.
He's got a grouch on.
Why wouldn't he.''
PADDY {with a wink at the others). Sure I
know what's the matther. 'Tis aisy to see.
He's fallen in love, I'm telling you.
ALL {repeating the word after him as one with
cynical mockery). Love! {The word has a
brazen, metallic quality as if their throats were
phonograph horns. It is followed by a chorus
of hard, harking laughter.)
YANK {with a contemptuous snort). Love,
hell! Hate, dat's what. I've fallen in hate,
get me.^
PADDY {philosophically). 'Twould take a
wise man to tell one from the other. {IVith
a hitter, ironical scorn, increasing as he goes
on) But I'm telling you it's love that's in
it. Sure what else but love for us poor bastes
in the stokehole would be bringing a fine lady,
dressed like a white quane, down a mile of
ladders and steps to be havin' a look at us?
{A growl of anger goes up from all sides.)
LONG {jumping on a bench — hecticly).
Hinsultin' us! Hinsultin' us, the bloody cow!
And them bloody engineers! What right 'as
they got to be exhibitin' us 's if we was
bleedin' monkeys in a menagerie? Did we
sign for hinsults to our dignity as 'onest
workers? Is that in the ship's articles? You
kin bloody well bet it ain't! But I knows
why they done it. I arsked a deck steward
'o she was and 'e told me. 'Er old man's a
bleedin' millionaire, a bloody Capitalist!
'E's got enuf bloody gold to sink this bleedin'
ship! 'E makes arf the bloody steel in the
world! 'E owns this bloody boat! And you
and me. Comrades, we're 'is slaves! And the
skipper and mates and engineers, they're 'is
slaves! And she's 'is bloody daughter and
we're all 'er slaves, too! And she gives 'er
582
EUGENE O'NEILL
orders as 'ow she wants to see the bloody
animals below decks and down they takes
'er! ( There is a roar of rage from all sides.)
YANK {hli)iking at hifn hezvilderedly). Sa\'!
Wait a moment! Ls all dat straight goods?
LONG. Straight as string! Ihe bleedin'
steward as waits on 'em, 'e told me about 'er.
And what're we goin' tcr do, I arsks yer?
*Ave we got ter swaller 'er hinsults like dogs?
It ain't in the ship's articles. 1 tell yer we
got a case. We kin go to law
YANK {zuith abysmal contempt). Hell! Law!
ALL {repeating the word after him as one
with cynical mockery). Law! {The word has
a brazen metallic quality as if their throats
were phonograph horns. It is followed by a
chorus of hard, barking laughter.)
LONG {feeling the ground slipping from
under his feet — desperately). As voters and
citizens we kin force the bloody govern-
ments
YANK {with abysmal contempt). Hell!
Governments!
ALL {repeating the word after him as one
with cynical mockery). Governments! {The
word has a brazen metallic quality as if their
throats were phonograph horns. It is followed
by a chorus of hard, barking laughter.)
LONG {hysterically). We're free and equal
in the sight of God
YANK {with abysmal contempt). Hell! God!
ALL {repeating the word after him as one
with cynical mockery). God! {The word has
a brazen metallic quality as if their throats
zvere phonograph horns. It is followed by a
chorus of hardy barking laughter.)
YANK {witheringly) . Aw, join de Salvation
Army!
ALL. Sit down! Shut up! Damn fool!
Sea-lawyer! (long slinks back out of sight.)
PADDY {continuing the trend of his thoughts
as if he had never been interrupted — bitterly).
And there she was standing behind us, and
the Second pointing at us like a man you'd
hear in a circus would be saying: In this
cage is a queerer kind of baboon than ever
you'd find in darkest Africy. We roast them
in their own sweat — and be damned if you
won't hear some of thim saying they like it!
{He glances scornfully at yank.)
YANK {with a bewildered uncertain growl).
Aw!
PADDY. And there was Yank roarin'
curses and turning round wid his shovel to
brain her — and she looked at him, and him
at her
YANK {slowly). She was all white. I
tought she was a ghost. Sure.
PADDY {with heavy, biting sarcasm). 'Twas
love at first sight, divil a doubt of it! If
you'd seen the endearin' look on her pale
mug when she shriveled away with her hands
over her eyes to shut out the sight of him!
Sure, 'twas as if she'd seen a great hairy ape
escaped from the Zoo!
YANK {stung — zvith a growl of rage). Aw!
PADDY. And the loving way Yank heaved
his shovel at the skull of her, only she was
out the door! {A grin breaki?ig over his face.)
' iwas touching, I'm telling you! It put the
touch of home, swate home in the stokehole.
{There is a roar of laughter from all.)
YANK {glaring at PADDY menacingly). Aw,
choke dat off, see!
PADDY {not heeding him — to the others). And
her grabbin' at the Second's arm for pro-
tection. {With a grotesque imitation of a
woman s voice) Kiss me. Engineer dear, for
it's dark down here and me old man's in Wall
Street making money! Hug me tight,
darlin', for I'm afeerd in the dark and me
mother's on deck makin' eyes at the skipper!
{Another roar of laughter)
YANK {threateningly). Say! What yuh
tryin' to do, kid me, yuh old Harp?
PADDY. Divil a bit! Ain't I wishin' my-
self you'd brained her?
YANK {fiercely). I'll brain her! I'll brain
her yet, wait 'n' see! {Coming over to paddy
— slowly) Say, is dat what she called me —
a hairy ape?
PADDY. She looked it at you if she didn't
say the word itself.
YANK {grinning horribly). Hairy ape,
huh? Sure! Dat's de way she looked at
me, aw right. Hairy ape! So dat's me, huh?
{Bursting into rage — as if she were still in front
of him) Yuh skinny tart! Yuh white-
faced bum, yuh! I'll show yuh who's a ape!
{Turning to the others, bewilderment seizing
him again) Say, youse guys. I was bawlin'
him out for pullin' de whistle on us. You
heard me. And den I seen youse lookin' at
somep'n and I tought he'd sneaked down to
come up in back of me, and I hopped round
to knock him dead wit de shovel. And dere
she was wit de light on her! Christ, yuh
coulda pushed me over with a finger! I was
"THE HAIRY APE"
583
scared, get me? Sure! I touglit she was a
ghost, see? She was all in white like dey
wrap around stiffs. You seen her. Kin
yuh blame me? She didn't belong, dat's
what. And den when I come to and seen it
was a real skoit and seen de way she was
lookin' at me — like Paddy said — Christ, I
was sore, get me? I don't stand for dat stuff
from nobody. And I flung de shovel — on'y
she'd beat it. {Furiously) I wished it'd
banged her! I wished it'd knocked her
block off!
LONG. And be 'anged for murder or
'lectrocuted? She ain't bleedin' well worth
it.
YANK. I don't give a damn what! I'd be
square wit her, wouldn't I? Tink I wanter
let her put somep'n over on me? Tink I'm
goin' to let her git away wit dat stuff? Yuh
don't know me! No one ain't never put
nothin' over on me and got away wit it,
see! — not dat kind of stuff — no guy and no
skoit neither! I'll fix her! Maybe she'll
come down again
VOICE. No chance, Yank. You scared her
out of a year's growth.
YANK. I scared her? Why de hell should
I scare her? Who de hell is she? Ain't she
de same as me? Hairy ape, huh? {JVith his
old confident bravado) I'll show her I'm
better'n her, if she on'y knew it. I belong
and she don't, see! I move and she's dead!
Twenty-five knots a hour, dat's me! Dat
carries her but I make dat. She's on'y
baggage. Sure! {A gain bewilder edly) But,
Christ, she was funny lookin'! Did yuh
pipe her hands? White and skinny. Yuh
could see de bones through 'em. And her
mush, dat was dead white, too. And her
eyes, dey was like dey'd seen a ghost. Me,
dat was! Sure! Hairy ape! Ghost, huh?
Look at dat arm! {He extends his right arm,
szvelliiig out the great muscles.) I coulda took
her wit dat, wit just my little finger even,
and broke her in two. {Again bezvilderedly)
Say, who is dat skoit, huh? What is she?
What's she come from? Who made her?
Who give her de noive to look at me like dat?
Dis ting's got my goat right. I don't get her.
She's new to me. What does a skoit like her
mean, huh? She don't belong, get me! I
can't see her. {JVith growing anger) But
one ting I'm wise to, aw right, aw right!
Youse all kin bet your shoits I'll git even wit
her. I'll show her if she tinks she-
- She
grinds de organ and I'm on de string, huh?
I'll fix her! Let her come down again and
I'll fling her in de furnace! She'll move den!
She won't shiver at nothin', den! Speed,
dat'll be her! She'll belong den! {He grins
horribly.)
PADDY. She'll never come. She's had
her belly-full, I'm telling you. She'll be in
bed now, I'm thinking, wid ten doctors and
nurses feedin' her salts to clean the fear out
of her.
YANK {enraged). Yuh tink I made her sick,
too, do yuh? Just lookin' at me, huh?
Hairy ape, huh? {In a frenzy of rage) I'll
fix her! I'll tell her where to git off! She'll
git down on her knees and take it back or I'll
bust de face offen her! {Shaking one fist
upward and beating on his chest with the
other) I'll find yuh! I'm comin', d'yuh
hear? I'll fix yuh, God damn yuh! {He
make? a rush for the door.)
VOICES.
Stop him!
He'll get shot!
He'll murder her!
Trip him up!
Hold him!
He's gone crazy!
Gott, he's strong!
Hold him down!
Look out for a kick!
Pin h
IS arms!
{They have all piled 07i him and, after a
fierce struggle, by sheer weight of numbers have
borne him to the floor just inside the door.)
PADDY {who has remained detached). Kape
him down till he's cooled off. {Scornfully)
Yerra, Yank, you're a great fool. Is it payin'
attention at all you are to the like of that
skinny sow widout one drop of rale blood in
lerr
YANK {frenziedly, from the bottom of the
heap). She done me doit! She done me
doit, didn't she? I'll git square wit her!
I'll get her some way! Git offen me, youse
guys! Lemme up! I'll show her who's a
ape!
{Curtain)
SCENE FIVE
Three weeks later. A corner of Fifth
Avenue in the Fifties on a ^ne Sunday morn'
584
EUGENE O'NEILL
i;i/y. A i^t'twral atmosphere of clean, zvell^
tidied y ivide street; a flood of mellozvy tempered
sunshine; gentle, genteel breezes. In the rear,
the show zvindozvs of tzuo shops, a jezvelry
establishment on the corner, a furrier s next to
it. Here the adornments of extreme wealth are
tantalizingly displayed. The jezvelers zvindozv
is gaudy zvith glittering diamonds, emeralds,
rubies, pearls, etc., fashioned in ornate tiaras,
crozvnsy necklaces, collars, etc. from each
piece hangs an enormous tag from zvhich a
dollar sign and numerals in intermittent
electric lights zuink out the incredible prices.
The same in the furrier s. Rich furs of all
varieties hang there bathed in a dozvnpour of
artificial light. The general effect is of a back-
ground of magnificence cheapened and made
grotesque by commercialism, a background in
tawdry disharmony with the clear light and
sunshine on the street itself.
Up the side street yank and LONG come
swaggering. LONG is dressed in shore clothes,
wears a black Windsor tie, cloth cap. YANK
is in his dirty dungarees. A fireman s cap
with black peak is cocked defiantly on the side
of his head. He has not shaved for days and
around his fierce, reseiitful eyes — as around
those of LONG to a lesser degree — the black
smudge of coal dust still sticks like make-up.
They hesitate and stand together at the corner,
swaggering, looking about them with a forced,
defiant contempt.
LONG {indicating it all with an oratorical
gesture). Well, 'ere we are. FiP Avenoo.
This 'ere's their bleedin' private lane, as yer
might say. {Bitterly) We're trespassers
'ere. Proletarians keep orf the grass!
YANK {dully). I don't see no grass, yuh
boob. {Staring at the sidewalk) Clean,
ain't it,'' Yuh could eat a fried egg offen it.
The white wings got some job sweepin' dis
up. {Looking up and down the avenue —
surlily) Where's all de white-collar stiffs
yuh said was here — and de skoits — her kind?
LONG. In church, blarst 'em! Arskin'
Jesus to give 'em more money.
YANK. Choich, huh ? I useter go to choich
onct — sure — when I was a kid. Me old man
and woman, dey made me. Dey never went
demselves, dough. Always got too big a
head on Sunday mornin', dat was dem.
{With a grin) Dey was scrappers for fair,
hot' of dem. On Satiday nights when dey
hot' got a skinful dey could put up a bout
ougliter been staged at dc (iardcn. When
dey got trough dere wasn't a chair or table
wit a leg under it. Or else dey bot' jumped
on me for somep'n. Dat was where 1 loined
to take punishment. {With a grin and a
szvagger) I'm a chip ofFen de old block, get
LONG. Did yer old man follow the sea?
YANK. Naw. Worked along shore. I
runned away when me old lady croaked wit
de tremens. I helped at truckin' and in de
market. Den I shipped in de stokehole.
Sure. Dat belongs. De rest was nothin'.
{Looking around him) I ain't never seen dis
before. De Brooklyn waterfront, dat was
where I was dragged up. {Taking a deep
breath) Dis ain't so bad at dat, huh?
LONG. Not bad ? Well, we pays for it wiv
our bloody sweat, if yer wants to know!
YANK {with sudden angry disgust). Aw,
hell! I don't see no one, see — like her. All
dis gives me a pain. It don't belong. Say,
ain't dere a back room around dis dump?
Let's go shoot a ball. All dis is too clean and
quiet and dolled-up, get me! It gives me a
pain.
LONG. Wait and yer'U bloody well see
YANK. I don't wait for no one. I keep on
de move. Say, what yuh drag me up here for,
anyway? Tryin' to kid me, yuh simp, yuh?
LONG. Yer wants to get back at 'er, don't
yer? That's what yer been sayin' every
bloomin' hour since she hinsulted yer.
YANK {vehemently) . Sure ting I do! Didn't
I try to get even wit her in Southampton?
Didn't I sneak on de dock and wait for her
by de gangplank? I was goin' to spit in her
pale mug, see! Sure, right in her pop-eyes!
Dat woulda made me even, see? But no
chanct. Dere was a whole army of plain-
clothes bulls around. Dey spotted me and
gimme de bum's rush. I never seen her.
But I'll git square wit her yet, you watch!
{Furiously) De lousy tart! She tinks she
kin get away wit moider — but not wit me!
I'll fix her! riltinkofaway!
LONG {as disgusted as he dares to be). Ain't
that why I brought yer up 'ere — to show yer?
Yer been lookin' at this 'ere 'ole affair
wrong. Yer been actin' an' talkin' 's if it
was all a bleedin' personal matter between
yer and that bloody cow. I wants to con-
vince yer she was on'y a representative of 'er
"THE HAIRY APE"
:i°:)
clarss. I wants to awaken yer bloody clarss
consciousness. Then yer'll see it's 'er clarss
yer've got to fight, not 'er alone. There's a
'ole mob of 'em like 'er, Gawd blind 'em!
YANK {spitti?ig on his hands — belligere^itly).
De more de merrier when I gits started.
Bring on de gang!
LONG. Yer'll see 'em in arf a mo', when
that church lets out. {He turns and sees the
window display in the two stores for the first
time.) Blimey! Look at that, will yer.''
( They both walk back and stand looking in the
jezveler's. long fiies into a fury.) Just look
at this 'ere bloomin' mess! Just look at it!
Look at the bleedin' prices on 'em — more'n
our 'ole bloody stokehole makes in ten
voyages sweatin' in 'ell! And they — 'er and
'er bloody clarss — buys 'em for toys to
dangle on 'em! One of these 'ere would buy
scoff for a starvin' family for a year!
YANK. Aw, cut de sob stuff! T' hell wit
de starvin' family! Yuh'U be passin' de hat
to me next. {With naive admiration) Say,
dem tings is pretty, huh.'' Bet yuh dey'd
hock for a piece of change aw right. {Then
turning away, bored) But, aw hell, what
good are dey."* Let her have 'em. Dey don't
belong no more'n she does. {With a gesture
of sweeping the jewelers into oblivion) All
dat don't count, get me.''
LONG {who has moved to the furrier s —
indignantly). And I s'pose this 'ere don't
count neither — skins of poor, 'armless ani-
mals slaughtered so as 'er and 'ers can keep
their bleedin' noses warm!
YANK {who has been staring at something
inside — with queer excitement) . Take a slant
at dat! Give it de once-over! Monkey fur —
two t'ousand bucks! {Bewilderedly) Is dat
straight goods — monkey fur.'' What de
hell .?
LONG {bitterly). It's straight enuf. {With
grim humor) They wouldn't bloody well
pay that for a 'airy ape's skin — no, nor for
the 'ole livin' ape with all 'is 'ead, and body,
and soul thrown in!
YANK {clenching his fists, his face growing
pale with rage as if the skin in the window
were a personal insult). Trowin' it up in my
face! Christ! I'll fix her!
LONG {excitedly). Church is out. 'Ere
they come, the bleedin' swine. {After a
glance at yank's lowering face — uneasily)
Easy goes, Comrade. Keep yer bloomin'
temper. Remember force defeats itself. It
ain't our weapon. We must impress our
demands through peaceful means — the votes
of the on-marching proletarians of the bloody
world !
YANK {with abysmal contempt). Votes,
hell! Votes is a joke, see. Votes for women!
Let dem do it!
LONG {still more uneasily). Calm, now.
Treat 'em wiv the proper contempt. Ob-
serve the bleedin' parasites but 'old yer
'orses.
yank {angrily). Git away from me!
Yuh're yellow, dat's what. Force, dat's me!
De punch, dat's me every time, see! {The
crowd from church enter from the right, saun-
tering slowly and affectedly, their heads held
stiffly up, looking neither to right nor left,
talking in toneless, simpering voices. The
women are rouged, calcimined, dyed, over-
dressed to the nth degree. The men are in
Prince Alberts, high hats, spats, canes, etc. A
procession of gaudy mario7iettes, yet with
something of the relentless horror of Frankcn-
steins in their detached, mechanical unaware-
ness.)
VOICES.
Dear Doctor Caiaphas! He is so sin-
cere!
What was the sermon.'' I dozed off.
About the radicals, my dear — and the
false doctrines that are being
preached.
We must organize a hundred per cent
American bazaar.
And let everyone contribute one one-
hundredth per cent of their income
tax.
What an original idea!
We can devote the proceeds to rehabili-
tating the veil of the temple.
But that has been done so many times.
YANK {glaring from one to the other of
them — with an insulting snort of scorn) . Huh !
Huh! {Without seeming to see him, they inake
wide detours to avoid the spot where he stands
in the middle of the sidewalk.)
LONG {frightenedly). Keep yer bloomin'
mouth shut, I tells yer.
YANK {viciously). G'wan! Tell it to
Sweeney! {He swaggers away and deliber-
ately lurches into a top-hatted gentleman, then
glares at him pugnaciously.) Say, who d'yuh
tink yuh're bumpin' ? Tink yuh own de oith ?
5 86
EUGENK O'NKILL
GENTLEMAN {coIdly and affectedly). I bep;
your pardon. {He has not looked at yank
and passes on without a glance y leaving him
bewildered.)
LONG {rushing up a?id grabbing yank's
arm). 'Ere! Come away! This wasn't
what I meant. Yer'll 'ave the bloody cop-
pers down on us.
YANK {savagely — giving him a push that
sends him sprawling). G'wan!
LONG {picks himself up — hysterically). I'll
pop orf then. This ain't what I meant. And
>vhatever 'appens, yer can't blame me.
{lie slinks off left.)
YANK. T' hell wit youse! {lie approaches
a lady — with a vicious grin a7id a smirking
wink.) Hello, Kiddo, How's every little
ting.? Got anyting on for to-night? I know
an old boiler down to de docks we kin crawl
mto. {The lady stalks by without a looky
without a change of pace, yank turns to
others — iyisultingly.) Holy smokes, what a
mug! Go hide yuhself before de horses shy
at yuh. Gee, pipe de heine on dat one!
Say, youse, yuh look like de stoin of a ferry-
boat. Paint and powder! All dolled up to
kill! Yuh look like stiffs laid out for de
boneyard! Aw, g'wan, de lot of youse! Yuh
give me de eye-ache. Yuh don't belong, get
me! Look at me, why don't youse dare? I
belong, dat's me! {Pointing to a skyscraper
across the street which is in process of con-
struction — with bravado) See dat building
goin' up dere? See de steel work? Steel,
dat's me! Youse guys live on it and tink
yuh're somep'n. But I'm z?i it, see! I'm
de hoistin' engine dat makes it go up! I'm
it — de inside and bottom of it! Sure! I'm
steel and steam and smoke and de rest of it!
It moves — speed — twenty-five stories up —
and me at de top and bottom — movin'!
Youse simps don't move. Yuh're on'y dolls
I winds up to see 'm spin. Yuh're de gar-
bage, get me — de leavins — de ashes we dump
over de side! Now, what 'a' yuh gotta say?
{But as they seem neither to see nor hear Am,
he flies into a fury.) Bums! Pigs! Tarts!
Bitches! {He turns in a rage on the me7i,
bumping viciously into them but not jarring
them the least bit. Rather it is he who recoils
after each collision. He keeps growling.)
Git off de oith! G'wan, yuh bum! Look
where yuh're goin', can't yuh? Git outa
here! Fight, why don't yuh? Put up yer
mitsl Don't be a dog! Fight or I'll knock
yuh dead! {Duty without seeming to see him,
they all answer with mechanical affected
politeness:) I beg your pardon. {Then at a
cry from one of the women, they all scurry to
the furrier s window.)
THF WOMAN {ecstatically, with a gasp of de-
light). Monkey fur! {The whole crowd of
men and zvomen chorus after her in the same
tone of affected delight.) Monkey fur!
YANK {with a jerk of his head back on his
shoulders, as if he had received a punch full
in the face — raging). I see yuh, all in white! «
I see yuh, yuh white-faced tart, yuh! Hairy |
ape, huh? I'll hairy ape yuh! {He bends
dozvn atid grips at the street curbing as if to
pluck it out and hurl it. Foiled in this, snarl-
ing with passion, he leaps to the la?np-post on
the corner and tries to pull it up for a club.
Just at that moment a bus is heard rumbling
up. A fat, high-hatted, spatted gentleman
runs out frojn the side street. He calls out
plaintively:) Bus! Bus! Stop there! {and
runs full tilt into the bending, straining YANK.
who is bowled off his balance.)
YANK {seeing a fight — with a roar of joy as
he springs to his feet). At last! Bus, huh?
I'll bust yuh! {He lets drive a terrific swing,
his fist landing full on the fat gentleman s face.
But the gentleman stands unmoved as if nothing
had happened.)
GENTLEMAN. I beg your pardon. {Then
irritably) You have made me lose m}^ bus.
{He claps his hands and begins to scream:)
Officer! Officer! {Many police whistles shrill
out on the instant and a whole platoon of police-
men rush in on yank from all sides. He tries
to fight but is clubbed to the pavement and
fallen upon. The crowd at the window have
not moved or noticed this disturbance. The
clanging gong of the patrol wagon approaches
with a clamoring din.)
{Curtain)
SCENE SIX
Night of the following day. A row of cells
in the prison on BlackweK s Island. The cells
extend back diagonally from right front to left
rear. They do not stop, but disappear in the
dark background as if they ran on, numberless-
into infinity. One electric bulb from the low
ceiling of the narrow corridor sheds its light
"THE HAIRY APE"
587
through the heavy steel bars of the cell at the
extreme front and reveals part of the interior.
YANK can be seen withiuy crouched on the edge
of his cot in the attitude of Rodin s " The
Thinker.'^ Ilis face is spotted with black and
blue bruises. A blood-stained bandage is
wrapped around his head.
YANK {suddenly starting as if awakening
from a dream, reaches, out and shakes the
bars — aloud to himself, wonderingly). Steel.
Dis is de Zoo, huh? {A burst of hard, barking
laughter comes from the unseen occupants of
the cells, runs back down the tier, and abruptly
ceases.)
VOICES {mockingly).
The Zoo? That's a new name for this
coop — a damn good name!
Steel, eh? You said a mouthful. This
is the old iron house.
Who is that boob talkin'?
He's the bloke they brung in out of his
head. The bulls had beat him up
fierce.
YANK {dully). I musta been dreamin'. I
tought I was in a cage at de Zoo — but de
apes don't talk, do dey?
VOICES {with mocking laughter) ,
You're in a cage aw right.
A coop!
A pen!
A sty!
A kennel! {Hard laughter — a pause.)
Say, guy! Who are you? No, never
mind lying. What are you?
Yes, tell us your sad story. What's your
game
What did they jug yuh for?
YANK {dully). I was a fireman — stokin'
on de liners. {Then with sudden rage, rattling
his cell bars) I'm a hairy ape, get me? And
I'll bust youse all in de jaw if yuh don't lay
oflp kiddin' me.
VOICES.
Huh! You're a hard boiled duck, ain't
you!
When you spit, it bounces! {Laughter.)
Aw, can it. He's a regular guy. Ain't
you?
What did he say he was — a ape?
YANK {defiantly). Sure ting! Ain't dat
what youse all are — apes? {A silence. Then
a furious rattling of bars from down the
corridor.)
A VOICE {thick with rage). I'll show yuh
who's a ape, yuh bum!
VOICES.
Ssshh! Nix!
Can de noise!
Piano!
You'll have the guard down on us!
YAKK {scornfully). De guard? Yuh mean
de keeper, don't yuh? {Angry exclamations
from all the cells.)
VOICE {placatingly). Aw, don't pay no
attention to him. He's off his nut from the
beatin'-up he got. Say, you guy! We're
waitin' to hear what they landed you for —
or ain't yuh tellin'?
YANK. Sure, I'll tell youse. Sure! Why
de hell not? On'y — youse won't get me.
Nobody gets me but me, see? I started to
tell de Judge and all he says was: "Toity
days to tink it over." Tink it over! Christ,
dat's all I been doin' for weeks! {After a
pause) I was tryin' to git even wit someone,
seei* — someone dat done me doit.
VOICES {cynically).
De old stuff, I bet. Your goil, huh?
Give yuh the double-cross, huh?
That's them every time!
Did yuh beat up de odder guy?
YANK {disgustedly). Aw, yuh're all wrong!
Sure dere was a skoit in it — but not what
youse mean, not dat old tripe. Dis was a
new kind of skoit. She was dolled up all in
white — in de stokehole. I tought she was
a ghost. Sure. {A pause.)
VOICES {whispering).
Gee, he's still nutty.
Let him rave. It's fun listenin*.
YANK {unheeding — groping in his thoughts).
Her hands — dey was skinny and white like
dey wasn't real but painted on somep'n.
Dere was a million miles from me to her —
twenty-five knots a hour. She was like some
dead ting de cat brung in. Sure, dat's what.
She didn't belong. She belonged in de win-
dow of a toy store, or on de top of a garbage
can, see! Sure! {He breaks out angrily.)
But would yuh believe it, she had de noive to
do me doit. She lamped me like she was
seein' somep'n broke loose from de me-
nagerie. Christ, yuh'd oughter oeen her
eyes ! {He rattles the bars of his cell furiously.)
But I'll get back at her yet, you watch!
And if I can't find her I'll take it out on de
gang she runs wit. I'm wise to where dey
588
EUGENE O'NEILL
hangs out now. I'll show her who belongs!
ril show her who's in de move and who ain't.
^ ou watch my smoke!
VOICES {serious and joking).
Dat's de talkin'!
Take her for all she's got!
What was this dame, anyway? Who
was she, eh.''
YANK. I dunno. First cabin stiff. Her
old man's a millionaire, dey says — name of
Douglas.
VOICES.
Douglas.^ That's the president of the
Steel Trust, I bet.
Sure. I seen his mug in de papers.
He's filthy with dough.
VOICE. Hey, feller, take a tip from me. If
you want to get back at that dame, you
better join the Wobblies. You'll get some
action then.
YANK. Wobblies.'' What de hell's dat?
VOICE. Ain't you ever heard of the I. W.
W..?
YANK. Naw. What is it.''
VOICE. A gang of blokes — a tough gang.
I been readin' about 'em to-day in the paper.
The guard give me the Sunday Times.
There's a long spiel about 'em. It's from a
speech made in the Senate by a guy named
Senator Queen. {He is in the cell next to
yank's. There is a rustling of paper.)
Wait'll I see if I got light enough and I'll
read you. Listen. {He reads:) "There is a
menace existing in this country to-day which
threatens the vitals of our fair Republic — ■
as foul a menace against the very life-blood
of the American Eagle as was the foul con-
spiracy of Catiline against the eagles of
ancient Rome!"
VOICE {disgustedly). Aw, hell! Tell him
to salt de tail of dat eagle!
VOICE {reading): "I refer to that devil's
brew of rascals, jailbirds, murderers and cut-
throats who libel all honest workingmen by
calling themselves the Industrial Workers
of the World; but in the light of their
nefarious plots, I call them the Industrious
Wreckers of the World ! "
YA'SK{zi'ith vengeful satisfaction). Wreckers,
dat's de right dope! Dat belongs! Me for
dem!
VOICE. Ssshh! (reading). "This fiendish
organization is a foul ulcer on the fair body
of our Democracy "
VOICE. Democracy, hell! Give him the
bold, fellers — the raspberry! {They do.)
VOICE. Ssshh! {reading:) "Like Cato I
say to this Senate, the I. W. W. must be
destroyed! For they represent an ever-
present dagger pointed at the heart of the
greatest nation the world has ever known,
where all men are born free and equal, with
equal opportunities to all, where the Found-
ing Fathers have guaranteed to each one
happiness, where Truth, Honor, Liberty,
Justice, and the Brotherhood of Man are a
religion absorbed with one's mother milk,
taught at our father's knee, sealed, signed,
and stamped upon in the glorious Constitu-
tion of these United States!" {J perfect
storm of hisseSy catcalls^ booSy and hard
laughter.)
VOICES {scornfully).
Hurrah for de Fort' of July!
Pass de hat!
Liberty!
Justice!
Honor!
Opportunity!
Brotherhood!
ALL {zuith abysmal scorn). Aw, hell!
VOICE. Give that Queen Senator guy the
bark! All togedder now — one — two —
tree {A terrific chorus of barking and
yapping.)
GUARD {from a distance). Quiet there,
youse — or I'll git the hose. {The noise sub-
sides.)
YANK {zuith growling rage). I'd like to
catch dat senator guy alone for a second.
I'd loin him some trute!
VOICE. Ssshh! Here's where he gits down
to cases on the Wobblies. {Reads:) "They
plot with fire in one hand and dynamite in
the other. They stop not before murder to
gain their ends, nor at the outraging of
defenseless womanhood. They would tear
down society, put the lowest scum in the
seats of the mighty, turn Almighty God's
revealed plan for the world topsy-turvy, and
make of our sweet and lovely civilization a
shambles, a desolation where man, God's
masterpiece, would soon degenerate back to
the ape!"
VOICE {to yank). Hey, you guy. There's
your ape stuff again.
YANK {zuith a grozvl of fury). I got him.
So dey blow up tings, do dey.'' Dey turn
THE HAIRY APE"
589
tings round, do dey? Hey, lend me dat
paper, will yuh?
VOICE. Sure. Give it to him. On'y keep
it to yourself, see. We don't wanter listen
to no more of that slop.
VOICE. Here you are. Hide it under your
mattress.
YANK {reaching out). Tanks. I can't
read much but I kin manage. {He sits, the
-paper in the hand at his side, in the attitude of
Rodin s *' The Thinker.** A pause. Several
snores from down the corridor. Suddenly
YANK ju7nps to his feet with a furious groan as
if some appalling thought had crashed on him —
bewilder edly.) Sure — her old man — president
of de Steel Trust — makes half de steel in de
world — steel — where I tought I belonged —
drivin' trou — movin' — in dat — to make her — ■
and cage me in for her to spit on! Christ!
{He shakes the bars of his cell door till the
whole tier trembles. Irritated, protesting ex-
clamations from those awakened or trying to
get to sleep.) He made dis — dis cage! Steel!
It don't belong, dat's what! Cages, cells,
locks, bolts, bars — dat's what it means! —
holdin' me down wit him at de top! But
I'll drive trou! Fire, dat melts it! I'll be
fire — under de heap — fire dat never goes
out — hot as hell — breakin' out in de night
{While he has been saying this last he has
shaken his cell door to a clanging accompani-
ment. As he comes to the ^^ breakin out'' he
seizes one bar with both hands and, putting his
two feet up against the others so that his
position is parallel to the floor like a monkey* Sy
he gives a great wrench backwards. The bar
bends like a licorice stick under his tremendous
strength. Just at this moment the prison
GUARD rushes in^ dragging a hose behind
him.)
GUARD {angrily). I'll loin youse bums to
wake me up! {Sees yank) Hello, it's you,
huh.? Got the D. Ts., hey.? Well, I'll cure
*em. I'll drown your snakes for yuh!
{Noticing the bar) Hell, look at dat bar
bended! On'y a bug is strong enough for
dat!
yank {glaring at him). Or a hairy ape,
yuh big yellow bum! Look out! Here I
come! {He grabs another bar.)
guard {scared now — yelling off left). Toin
de hose on, Ben! — full pressure! And call
de others — and a straitjacket! {The curtain
is falling. As it hides yank from view, there
is a splattering smash as the stream of water
hits the steel of yank's cell.)
{Curtain)
SCZNE SEVEN
Nearly a month later. An I. W. W. local
near the waterfront, showing the interior of a
front room on the ground floor, and the street
outside. Moonlight on the narrow street, build-
ings massed in black shadow. The interior of
the room, which is general assembly roomy
office, and reading room, resembles some dingy
settlement boys* club. A desk and high stool
are in one corner. A table with papers, stacks
of pamphlets, chairs about it, is at center. The
whole is decidedly cheap, banal, commonplace
and unmysterious as a room could well be.
The secretary is perched on the stool making
entries in a large ledger. An eye shade casts
his face into shadows. Eight or ten men,
longshoremen, iron workers, and the like, are
grouped about the table. __ Two are playing
checkers. One is writing a letter. Most of
them are smoking pipes. A big signboard is on
the wall at the rear, ''Industrial Workers of the
World—Local No. 57."
(yank comes down the street outside. He is
dressed as in Scene Five. He moves cautiously y
mysteriously. He comes to a point opposite
the door; tiptoes softly up to it, listens, is im-
pressed by the silence within, knocks carefully,
as if he were guessing at the password to some
secret rite. Listens. No answer. Knocks
again a bit louder. No answer. Knocks im-
patiently, much louder.)
SECRETARY {turning around on his stool).
What the hell is that — someone knocking.?
{Shouts:) Come in, why don't you.? {All
the men in the room look up. yank opens the
door slowly, gingerly, as if afraid of an am-*
bush. . He looks around for secret doors, mys-*
tery, is taken aback by the commonplaceness
of the room and the men in it, thinks he may
have gotten in the wrong place, then sees the
signboard on the wall and is reassured.)
YANK {blurts out). Hello.
MEN {reservedly). Hello.
YANK {more easily). I tought I'd bumped
into de wrong dump.
SECRETARY {scrutinizing him carefully).
Maybe you have. Are you a member.?
590
EUGENE O'NEILL
YANK. Naw, not yet. Dat's what I come
for — to join.
SKCRETARY. Iliat's easy. What's your
job — longshore .''
YANK. Naw. Fireman — stoker on de
liners.
SECRETARY (zvtth Satisfaction). Welcome
to our city. Glad to know you people are
wakinc; up at last. We 'haven't got many
members in your line.
YANK. Naw. Dey're all dead to de
woild.
SECRETARY. Well, you Can help to wake
'em. What's yourname.f' I'll make out your
card.
YANK (confused) . Name.^ Lemme tink.
SECRETARY (sharply). Don't you know
your own name.'*
YANK. Sure; but I been just Yank for so
long — Bob, dat's it — Bob Smith.
SECRETARY (writing). Robert Smith.
(Fills out the rest of card.) Here you are.
Cost you half a dollar.
YANK. Is dat all — four bits.? Dat's easy.
(Gives the Secretary the money.)
SECRETARY (throwing it in drawer).
Thanks. Well, make yourself at home. No
introductions needed. There's literature on
the table. Take some of those pamphlets
with you to distribute aboard ship. They
may bring results. Sow the seed, only go
about it right. Don't get caught and fired.
We got plenty out of work. What we need
is men who can hold their jobs — and work
for us at the same time.
YANK. Sure. (But he still stands^ em-
barrassed and uneasy.)
SECRETARY (looking at him — curiously).
What did you knock for? Think we had a
coon in uniform to open doors.?
YANK. Naw. I tought it was locked —
and dat yuh'd wanter give me the once-over
trou a peep-hole or somep'n to see if I was
right.
SECRETARY (alert and suspicious but with
an easy laugh). Think we were running a
crap game.? That door is never locked.
What put that in your nut.?
YANK (with a knowing grin, convinced that
this is all camoitflage, a part of the secrecy).
Dis burg is full of bulls, ain't it.?
SECRETARY (sharply). What have the
cops got to do with us.? We're breaking no
laws.
YANK (with a knowing wink). Sure, ^^'ouse
wouldn't for woilds. Sure. I'm wise to
dat.
SECRETARY. You sccm to be wise to a lot
of stuff none of us knows about.
YANK (with another wink). Aw, dat's aw
right, see. (Then made a hit resentful by the
suspicious glances froin all sides.) Aw, can
it? Youse needn't put me trou de toid
degree. Can't youse see I belong.? Sure!
I'm reg'lar. I'll stick, get me.? I'll shoot de
woiks for youse. Dat's why I wanted to
join in.
SECRETARY (breezily, feeling him out).
That's the right spirit. Only are you sure
you understand what you've joined.? It's
all plain and above board; still, some guys
get a wrong slant on us. (Sharply) What's
your notion of the purpose of the I. W. W. ?
YANK. Aw, I know all about it.
SEv'RETARY (sarcastically). Well, give us
some of your valuable information.
YANK (cunningly) . I know enough not tc
speak outa my toin. (Then resentfully
again) Aw, say! I'm reg'lar. I'm wise to
de game. I know yuh got to watch your
step wit a stranger. For all youse know, I
might be a plain-clothes dick, or somep'n,
dat's what yuh're tinkin', huh.? Aw, forget
it! I belong, see.? Ask any guy down to de
docks if I don't.
SECRETARY. Who Said you didn't ?
YANK. After I'm 'nitiated, I'll show yuh.
SECRETARY (astounded). Initiated.? There's
no initiation.
YANK (disappointed). Ain't there no pass-
word— no grip nor nothin'.?
SECRETARY. What'd you think this is —
the Elks — or the Black Hand.?
YANK. De Elks, hell! De Black Hand,
dey're a lot of yellow backstickin' Ginees.
Naw. Dis is a man's gang, ain't it.?
SECRETARY. You said it! That's why we
stand on our two feet in the open. We got
no secrets.
YANK (surprised but admiringly). Yuh
mean to say yuh always run wide open —
like dis.?
SECRETARY. Exactly.
YANK. Den yuh sure got your noive wit
youse!
SECRETARY (sharply). Just what was it
made you want to join us,? Come out with
that straight.
"THE HAIRY APE"
591
YANK. Yuh call me? Well, I got noive,
too! Here's my hand. Yuh vvanter blow
tings up, don't yuh.? Well, dat's me! I
belong!
SECRETARY {zvith pretended carelessriess).
^'ou mean change the unequal conditions of
society by legitimate direct action — or with
dynamite.''
YANK. Dynamite! Blow it ofFen de
oith — steel — all de cages — all de factories,
steamers, buildings, jails — de Steel Trust
and all dat makes it go.
SECRETARY. So — that's your idea, eh.?
And did you have any special job in that
line you wanted to propose to us.? (He
makes a sign to the men, who get up cautiously
one by one and group behind YANK.)
YANK (boldly). Sure, I'll come out wit it.
I'll show youse I'm one of de gang. Dere's
dat millionaire guy, Douglas
SECRETARY. President of the Steel Trust,
you mean.? Do you want to assassinate
him .?
YANK. Naw, dat don't get you nothin'.
I mean blow up de factory, de woiks, where
he makes de steel. Dat's what I'm after —
to blow up de steel, knock all de steel in de
woild up to de moon. Dat'll fix tings!
(Eagerly, zvith a touch of bravado) I'll do it
by me lonesome! I'll show yuh! Tell me
where his woiks is, how to git there, all de
dope. Gimme de stuff, de old butter —
and watch me do de rest! Watch de smoke
and see it move! I don't give a damn if
dey nab me — long as it's done! I'll solve
life for it — and give 'em de laugh! (Half
to himself) And I'll write her a letter and
tell her de hairy ape done it. Dat'll square
tings.
SECRETARY (stepping away from yank).
Very interesting. (He gives a signal. The
men, huskies all, throw themselves on yank
and before he knows it they have his legs and
arms pinioned. But he is too flabbergasted to
make a struggle, anyway. They feel him over
for weapons.)
MAN. No gat, no knife. Shall we give
him what's what and put the boots to him.?
SECRETARY. No. He isn't worth the
trouble we'd get into. He's too stupid. (He
comes closer and laughs mockingly i^i yank's
face.) Ho-ho! By God, this is the biggest
joke they've put up on us yet. Hey, you
Joke! Who sent you — Burns or Pinkerton.?
No, by God, you're such a bonehead I'll bet
you're in the Secret Service! Well, you dirty
spy, you rotten agent provocator, you can
go back and tell whatever skunk is paying
you blood-money for betraying your brothers
that he's wasting his coin. You couldn't
catch a cold. And tell him that all he'll ever
get on us, or ever has got, is just his own
sneaking plots that he's framed up to put
us in jail. We are what our manifesto says
we are, neither more nor less — and we'll give
him a copy of that any time he calls. And
as for you (He glares scornfully at YANK,
who is sunk in an oblivious stupor.) Oh, hell,
what's the use of talking.? You're a brainless
ape.
YANK (aroused by the word to fierce but futile
struggles). What's dat, yuh Sheeny bum,
yuh!
SECRETARY. Throw him out, boys. (In
spite of his struggles, this is done with gusto
and eclat. _ Propelled by several parting kicks,
YANK lands sprawling in the middle of the
narrow cobbled street. With a growl he starts
to get up and storm the closed door, but stops
bewildered by the confusion in his brain, pathet-
ically impotent. He sits there, brooding, in as
near to the attitude of Rodin s " Thinker*' as
he can get in his position.)
YANK (bitterly). So dem boids don't tlnk
I belong, neider. Aw, to hell wit 'em!
Dey' re in de wrong pew — de same old bull —
soapboxes and Salvation Army — no guts!
Cut out an hour offen de job a day and make
me happy! Gimme a dollar more a day and
make me happy! Tree square a day, and
cauliflowers in de front yard — ekal rights —
a woman and kids — a lousy vote — and I'm
all fixed for Jesus, huh.? Aw, hell! What
does dat get yuh.? Dis ting's in your inside,
but it ain't your belly. Feedin' your face —
sinkers and coffee — dat don't touch it. It's
way down — at de bottom. Yuh can't grab
it, and yuh can't stop it. It moves, and
everything moves. It stops and de whole
woild stops. Dat's me now — I don't tick,
see.? — I'm a busted Ingersoll, dat's what.
Steel was me, and I owned de woild. Now
I ain't steel, and de woild owns me. Aw,
hell! I can't see — it's all dark, get me.? It's
all wrong! (He turns a bitter mocking face
up like an ape gibbering at the moon.) Say,
youse up dere, Man in de Moon, yuh look so
wise, gimme de answer, huh."* Slip me de
592
EUGENE O'NEILL
inside dope, de information ri^ht from de
stable— where do I get off at, huh?
A roLiCKMAN {zi'ko has come up the street
in time to hear this last — zvith ^rim humor).
^ ou'll cet off at the station, you boob, if you
don't get up out of that and keep movin'.
YANK {looking up at him — zvith a hardy
bitter laugh). Sure! Lock me up! Put me
in a cage! Dat's de on'y answer yuh know.
G'wan, lock me up!
POLICEMAN. VV hat you been doin' ?
YANK. Enuf to gimme hfe for! I was
born, see.^ Sure, dat's de charge. Write it
in de blotter. I was born, get me!
POLICEMAN {jocosely). God pity your old
woman! {Then matter-of-fact) But I've no
time for kidding. You're soused. I'd run
you in but it's too long a walk to the station.
Come on now, get up, or I'll fan your ears
with this club. Beat it now! {He hauls
YANK to his feet.)
YANK {in a vague mocking to?ie). Say,
where do I go from here?
POLICEMAN {giving him a push — with a grin^
indifferently). Go to hell.
{Curtain)
SCENE EIGHT
Twilight of the next day. The monkey house
at the Zoo. One spot of clear gray light falls on
the front of one cage so that the interior can be
seen. The other cages are vague, shrouded in
shadow from which chatterings pitched in a
conversational tone can be heard. On the one
cage a sign from which the word "Gorilla"
stands out. The gigantic animal himself is
seen squatting on his haunches on a bench in
much the same attitude as Rodin s " Thinker.''
YANK enters from the left. Immediately a
chorus of angry chattering and screeching
breaks out. The gorilla turns his eyes but
makes no son?id or move.
YANK {with a hard, bitter laugh). Welcome
to your city, huh? Hail, hail, de gang's all
here! {At the sou7id of his voice the chattering
dies away into an attentive silence, yank
walks up to the gorilla's cage and, leaning over
the railing, stares in at its occupant, who
stares back at him, silent and motionless. There
is a pause of dead stillness. Then YANK
begins to talk in a friendly confidential tone.
half-mockingly, but zvith a deep undercurrent
of sympathy.) Say, yuh're some hard-lookin*
guy, ain't yuh? I seen lots of tough nuts dat
de gang called gorillas, but yuh're de foist
real one I ever seen. Some chest yuh got,
and shoulders, and dem arms and mits! I
bet yuh got a punch in eider fist dat'd knock
'em all silly! {This with genuine admiration.
The gorilla, as if he understood, stands upright,
swelling out his chest and pounding on it with
his fist. YANK grins sympathetically.) Sure,
I get yuh. Yuh challenge de whole woild,
huh? Yuh got what I was sayin' even if yuh
muffed de woids. {Then bitterness creeping
tn) And why wouldn't yuh get me? Ain't
we both members of de same club — de Hairy
Apes.f^ {They stare <2v each other — a pause — •
then YANK goes on slowly and bitterly.) So
yuh're what she seen when she looked at me,
de wnite-faced tart! I was you to her, get
me? On'y outa de cage — broke out — free]
to moider her, see? Sure! Dat's what she
tought. She wasn't wise dat I was in a cage,
too — worser'n yours — sure — a damn sight —
'cause you got some chanct to bust loose —
but me {He grows confused.) Aw, hell!
It's all WTong, ain't it? (y/ pause) I s'pose
yuh wanter know what I'm doin' here, huh?
I been warmin' a bench down to de Battery —
ever since last night. Sure. I seen de sun
come up. Dat was pretty, too — all red and
pink and green. I was lookin' at de sky-
scrapers— steel — and all de ships comin' in,
sailin' out, all over de oith — and dey was
steel, too. De sun was warm, dey wasn't
no clouds, and dere was a breeze blowin'.
Sure, it was great stuff. I got it aw right —
what Paddy said about dat bein' de right
dope — on'y I couldn't get in it, see? I
couldn't belong in dat. It was over my head.
And I kept tinkin' — and den I beat it up here
to see what youse w^as like. And I waited
till dey was all gone to git yuh alone. Say,
how d'yuh feel sittin' in dat pen all de time,
havin' to stand for 'em comin' and starin'
at yuh — de white-faced, skinny tarts and de
boobs what marry 'em — makin' fun of yuh,
laughin' at yuh, gittin' scared of yuh —
damn 'em! {He poutids on the rail with his
fist. The gorilla rattles the bars of his cage and
snarls. All the other monkeys set up an angry
chattering in the darkness, yank goes on
excitedly.) Sure! Dat's de way it hits me,
too. On'y yuh're lucky, see? Yuh don't
"THE HAIRY APE"
593
belong wit 'em and yuh know it. But me, I
belong wit 'em — but I don't, see? Dey
don't belong wit me, dat's what. Get me?
Tinkin' is hard {lie passes one hand
across his forehead with a painful gesture. The
gorilla grozvls impatiently. yank goes on
gropingly.) It's dis way, what I'm drivin'
at. Youse can sit and dope dream in de past,
green woods, de jungle and de rest of it.
Den yuh belong and dey don't. Den yuh
kin laugh at 'em, see? Yuh're de champ of
de woild. But me — I ain't got no past to
tink in, nor nothin' dat's comin', on'y what's
now — and dat don't belong. Sure, you're
de best off! Yuh can't tink, can yuh? Yuh
can't talk neider. But I kin make a bluff at
talkin' and tinkin' — a'most git away wit
it — a'most! — and dat's where de joker comes
in. {He laughs.) I ain't on oith and I ain't
in heaven, get me? I'm in de middle tryin'
to separate 'em, takin' all de woist punches
from bot' of 'em. Maybe dat's what dey
call hell, huh ? But you, yuh're at de bottom.
You belong! Sure! Yuh're de on'y one in
de woild dat does, yuh lucky stiff! {The
gorilla grozvls proudly.) And dat's why dey
gotter put yuh in a cage, see? {The gorilla
roars angrily.) Sure! Yuh get me. It
beats it when you try to tink it or talk it — •
it's way down — deep — behind — you 'n' me
we feel it. Sure! Bot' members of dis club!
{He laughs — then in a savage tone:) What de
hell! T' hell wit it! A little action, dat's our
meat! Dat belongs! Knock 'em down and
keep bustin' 'em till dey croaks yuh wit a
gat — wit steel! Sure! Are yuh game?
Dey've looked at youse, ain't dey — in a
cage? Wanter git even? Wanter wind up
like a sport 'stead of croakin' slow in dere?
{The gorilla roars an emphatic affirmative.
YANK goes on with a sort of furious exaltation.)
Sure! Yuh're reg'lar! Yuh'll stick to de
finish! Me 'n' you, huh.^ — bot' members of
this club! We'll put up one last star bout
dat'll knock 'em offen deir seats! Dey'll
have to make de cages stronger after we're
trou! {The gorilla is straining at his barSf
growling, hopping from one foot to the other.
YANK takes a jimmy from under his coat and
forces the lock on the cage door. He throws
this open.) Pardon from de governor! Step
out and shake hands! I'll take yuh for a
walk down Fif Avenoo. We'll knock 'em
offen de oith and croak wit de band playin'.
Come on. Brother. {The gorilla scrambles
gingerly out of his cage. Goes to YANK and
stands looking at him. yank keeps his mock'
ing tone — holds out his hand.) Shake — de
secret grip of our order. {Something, the tone
of mockery, perhaps, suddenly enrages the
animal. With a spring he wraps his huge
arms around YANK in a murderous hug.
There is a crackling snap of crushed ribs — a
gasping cry, still mocking, from yank.) Hey,
I didn't say kiss me! {The gorilla lets the
crushed body slip to the floor; stands over it
uncertainly, considering; then picks it up,
throws it in the cage, shuts the door, and
shuffles off menacingly into the darkness at
left. A great uproar of frightened chattering
and whimpering comes from^ the other cages.
Then YANK moves, groaning, opening his eyes,
and there is silence. He mutters painfully.)
Say — dey oughter match him — wit Zybszko.
He got me, aw right. I'm trou. Even him
didn't tink I belonged. {Then, with sudden
passionate despair:) Christ, where do I get
off at? Where do I fit in ? {Checking himself
as suddenly) Aw, what de hell! No
squawkin', see! No quittin', get me! Croak
wit your boots on ! {He grabs hold of the bars
of the cage and hauls himself painfully to his
feet — looks around him bewilderedly — forces
a mocking laugh.) In de cage, huh? {In the
strident tones of a circus barker) Ladies and
gents, step forward and take a slant at de
one and only — {His voice weakening) — one
and original — Hairy Ape from de wilds
of {He slips in a heap on the floor and
dies. The monkeys set up a chattering,
whimpering wail. And, perhaps, the Hairy
Ape at last belongs.)
{Curtain)
INDEX OF AUTHORS, TITLES, AND FIRST LINES OF POEMS
INDEX OF AUTHORS, TITLES, AND FIRST LINES OF POEMS
Names of authors are printed in Capitals, and titles are printed in italics. Titles beginning with
"A," "An," or "The" are indexed under their second words. In cases where the title of a poem is
identical with its first line, or with the initial portion of it, the title only is indexed.
PART
A boat unmoored, wherein a dreamer lies
A learned man came to me once .
A little ink more or less!
A man said to the universe ....
A mist was driving down the British
Channel
A newspaper is a collection of half-
injustices II
A Prologue? Well, of course the ladies
know
A slant of sun on dull brown walls .
A subtle chain of countless rings
Abraham Lincoln JValks at Midnight .
Adams, Henry II
Adrift II
Estivation I
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the
open road II
Ah, should they come revisiting the spot II
Album Verses
Alhambra, The .......
All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Along a river-side, I know not where .
Although I saw before me there the face
Always the same, when on a fated night
American Scholar, The
And now gentlemen II
Anderson, Sherwood II
Angels of Paiyi II
Annabel Lee I
Anne Rutledge II
Announced by all the trumpets of the
sky I
Anticipation II
Apology, The I
Archibald Ilighie II
Are we, then, wholly fallen.? Can it be . I
Arsenal at Springfield, The .... I
As I Lay with my Head in your Lap
Camerado II
As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of
green
As if the Fate which brought paralysis .
As Jove the Olympian (whom both I and
you know
As when the scepter dangles from the
hand
page
276
350
351
352
I 593
351
640
352
303
536
243
277
647
86
275
629
216
530
676
420
532
322
84
557
275
533
551
297
276
293
550
652
591
104
I
II
638
556
I
191
II
453
PART
Assignation, The I
At dawn they came to the stream
Hiddekel I
At Eutaw Springs the valiant died .
At Last I
At midnight, in the month of June .
Author's Account of Himself, The
Autobiography (Franklin) ....
Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, The .
Autumn Song I
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
PAGE
533
Baby
Backward Glance o'er Traveled Roads, A
Bacon s Epitaph
Balladofthe Oysterman,The . . . .
Barefoot Boy, The
Barlow, Joel
Base of All Metaphysics, The . . .
Bean-Field, The
Because I believed God brought him to
me
Because I was content with these poor
fields
Belles Demoiselles Plantatio7i
Bells, The
Benjamin Pantier ....
Beside the ungathered rice he lay
Between me and the sunset, like a dome
Biglow Papers, The, First Series .
Biglow Papers, The, Second Series
Black Riders and Other Lines, The
Black riders came from the sea .
Blessings on thee, little man .
Bone that Has no Marrow, The .
Brahma
Bridge of Sighs, The ....
Brothers and sisters, I'm mournin
religion
Brownell, William Crary
Brute Neighbors
Bryant, William Cullen .
Bunch of Roses, A ....
Burly, dozing humble-bee
Burns
Bustle in a House, The
By the rude bridge that arched the flood
for
597
598
INDKX OK AUTHORS, TITLKS, AM) FIRST LINKS OK I'OKMS
PART
Caulk, (Jkorgk Washington .
Calhoun, John Caldwell . . . .
Cask of Jmonti/lado, The ....
Cassandra
Cast the bantling on the rocks .
Catauha Wine
Chambrrrd Nautilus, The ....
Chapman, John Jay
Character of IFashington
Childrefi
Christian Pilgrim, The
Christmas at Indian Point ....
City in the Sea, The
Code, The
Columbus-like, I sailed into the night .
Come! fill a fresh bumper, for why
should we go
Come my tan-faced children
Come, rest in this bosom, my own
stricken deer
Come to me, O ye children! ....
Come up from the Fields Father .
Common Sense
Compensation
Concord Hymn
Conduct of Life, The
Conjufiction of Jupiter and Fetius, The .
Conqueror Worm, The
Considerations by the Way ....
Contentment
Cooper
Cooper Union Speech
Court of Lions, The
Courtin, The , ^
Crane, Stephen
Crevecceur, St. John de . . . .
Criticism and Fiction
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Daisy Fraser J
Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Daj^s
Day is Done, The
Days
Deacon s Masterpiece, The ....
Death of Eve, The I
Death of the Hired Man, The ... I
Death of the Lion, The I
Death, why so crewill.? What, no other
way
Declaration of Independence, The
Demiurge's Laugh, The I
Destiny
Deus Absconditus J
Dick Sapper J
Dickinson, Emily I
Dickinson, John
Did you ever hear o{ Editor Whedon .
Disquisition on Government, A . . .
Divina Commedia .
PAGE
278
274
569
409
594
622
422
164
593
53
552
525
528
276
641
95
583
593
103
142
275
293
368
250
542
368
649
360
721
225
678
349
127
201
92
54S
301
5S0
301
643
382
523
214
I
159
522
298
276
554
152
119
548
275
596
Do nf)t weep, maiden, for war is kind
Doc Hill
Doctor Meyers
Doubt Me, my Dim Companion .
Dream within a Dream, A . . .
Drkisfr, Theodore .
Drink ....
PART PAGJ-
Each and All
Editor Whedon
Edwards, Jonathan
Eldorado
Ember Picture, An
Emerson
Emerson, Ralph Waldo ....
Emperors and kings! in vain you strive
English Writers on America ....
Essays (Emerson)
Essays, Second Series (Emerson)
Excellency
Executive Department Further Considered,
The
Ezra Fink
Fable
Fable for Critics, A
Fair flower, that dost so comely grow
Fair Ines
Fall of the House of Usher, The . .
Fancy
Father Malloy
Federalist, The
Few Bits of Roman Mosaic, A . . .
Fiddler Jones
Fire and Ice
Firelight \
First Inaugural Address (Jefferson)
First-Day Thoughts
Fitch, Clyde ]
Flammonde ]
Flood-tide below me! I see you face to
face! ]
Footsteps of Angels
For Annie
Forbearance
Forest Hymn, A
Forgiveness
P^ranklin, Benja.min
Freedom
Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins ... I
Freneau, Philip
From the Flats \
Frost, Robert I
Fuji-no-Yama I
Furnished Room, The J
Gayly bedight
Gettysburg Address, The
Giotto's Tower . •
Girl with the Green Eyes, Tlu
INDEX OF AUTHORS, TITLES, AND FIRST LINES OF POEMS 599
Part
Give All to Love
Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braid-
ed and woven I
God makes secli nights, all white an'
still
God save the Rights of Man!
Gold and iron are good
Gospel of Beauty, A I
Gray Sleeve, A (Passage from) ... I
Great Truths are portions of the soul of
man
Growth of ''Lorraine,'' The .... I
Guns as Keys: And the Great Gate Swings I
Guvener B. is a sensible man ...
Hairy Ape, The I
Ilall of Ambassadors, The ....
Hamilton, Alexander
Harte, Bret I
Hast thou named all the birds without a
gum
Hasty Pudding, The
Haunted Palace, The
Have you heard of the wonderful one-
hoss-shay
Hawthorne, Nathaniel ....
Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales .
He Preached I
He protested all his life long ... I
Healthy A
Hear the sledges with the bells .
Hear what British Merlin sung .
Hearn, Lafcadio I
Height of the Ridiculous, The
Helen, thy beauty is to me ....
Henry, O I
Henry Rabeneau I
Here is the place; right over the hill
Higher Laws
Hill, The
Hill Wife, The
History of the Conquest of Peru .
History of the United States of America .
Holmes, Oliver Wendeli
How full of phantoms are the days
How many an acorn falls to die
How many lives, made beautiful and
sweet
How Samson Bore away the Gates of Gaza
How strange are the freaks of memory!
How strange the sculptures that adorn
these towers!
Howells, William Dean ....
Humble-Bee, The
Hymn of Trust
Hymn to the night
I am a parcel of vain strivings tied
/ Am the Woman
I arise from dreams of thee ....
Page
299
zGj
678
198
352
537
357
651
419
510
656
572
223
167
156
297
182
552
643
431
572
154
548
582
530
368
288
617
524
386
555
606
409
546
530
256
244
616
276
275
597
542
689
596
200
294
623
589
380
381
578
Part
I ask not now for gold to gild
/ Broke the Spell
/ Cannot Forget
I celebrate myself, and sing myself . I
I did not half believe her when she said I
I didn't make you know how glad I was I
I do not count the hours I spend
I du believe in Freedom's cause
I enter, and I see thee in the gloom
I fill this cup to one made up
I grieve not that ripe knowledge takes
away
/ Hear it was Charged against Me . . I
I heard one who said: "Verily ... I
I heard the trailing garments of the
Night
I heed not that my earthly lot .
/ Know All This When Gypsy Fiddles Cry I
I know that he told that I snared his soul I
I lift mine eyes, and all the windows
blaze . . .
I like a church; I like a cowl
/ Like a Look of Agony I
/ Like to See it Lap the Miles ... I
I loathed you. Spoon River. I tried to
rise above you I
I love the old melodious lays
/ Meant to Have but Modest Needs . . I
I sat with chill December .... I
I saw a man pursuing the horizon , . I
I saw a Sower walking slow ....
I saw him once before
I stood upon a high place .... I
I was born in Illinois I
I was in the darkness I
I was the first fruits of the battle of Mis-
sionary Ridge I
I went to the dances at Chandlerville . I
I went up and down the streets I
I wonder about the trees .... I
I would not always reason. The straight
path
I would not have this perfect love of ours
I wrote some lines once on a time .
Ichabod
If a man could bite the giant hand . I
If the red slayer think he slays .
// You were Coming in the Fall ... I
Hlinois Village, The I
Vm Nobody I
Important Negotiations. — The Author Suc-
ceeds to the Throne of Boabdil .
In a branch of willow hid ....
In a lonely place I
In calm and cool and silence, once again
In candent ire the solar splendor flames
In heaven a spirit doth dwell
In May, when sea-winds pierced our soli-
tudes I
Page
600
249
249
48
419
525
302
658
596
582
651
85
409
589
524
534
547
597
294
155
153
550
599
153
276
350
652
619
350
544
351
548
551
548
531
250
651
617
600
547
301
154
538
153
222
200
350
601
647
525
6oo INDEX OF AUTHORS, TITLES, AND FIRST LINES OF POEMS
Pari' Pack
In Neglect II 522
In spite of all the learn 'd have said I 198
In the desert II 350
In the greenest of our valleys ... I 552
In the valley of the Pegnitz, where across
broad meadow-lands .... I 591
In this, the City of my Discontent . . II 537
In Tilbury Town did Old King Cole . II 410
Incense II 536
hidependence I 380
Indian Burying Ground, The ... I 198
India7i Serenade, The I 578
Inferential II 420
Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood . I 246
Insufficiency of the Present Confederation
to Preserve the Union, The ... I 168
Interview, An II 276
Into the acres of the newborn state . II 537
Irving, Washington I 201
Isaac and Archibald II 414
Israfel I 5^5
// Dropped so Low in my Regard . . II 154
It is done! I 607
It is portentous, and a thing of state . II 536
It was a tall young oysterman lived by
the river-side I 617
It was far in the sameness of the wood. II 522
It was many and many a year ago'. . I 533
I've been to Palestine II 541
I've Seen a Dying Eye II 15S
James, Henry II 212
Jefferson, Thomas I 158
Jesuits in North America in the Seven-
teenth Century, The II 130
John Brown II 541
John Bull I 2 II
John L.Sullivan, the Strong Boy of Boston II 539
Knowlt Hoheimer
II 548
Lafcadio II earn II 471
Lanier, Sidney II 266
Last Leaf, The I 619
Lately, alas, I knew a gentle boy . . I 379
Latter-Day Warnings I 6^2
Laus Deo! I 607
Leaves from my Journal in Italy and
Elsewhere I 690
Legend of the Arabian Astrologer . . I 227
Legend of the Two Discreet Statues . . I 235
Legree's big house was white and green II 540
Let not our town be large, remembering II 538
Letter from Mr. Ezekiel Biglow, A . . I 653
Letter to Mrs. Bixby I 73 6
Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania . I 119
Letters from an American Farmer . . I 1 28
Lickpenny Lover, A II 387
Part Page
Life cuts depressions and these make
reliefs \\
Life of John Winthrop I
Life on the Mississippi II
Life without Priyiciple I
Ligeia I
Lincoln, Abraham I
Lindsay, Vachel II
Little I ask; my wants are few ... I
Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked
clown I
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne I
Lo! 'tis a gala night I
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth . I
Louisa II
Lowell, Amy II
Lowell, James Russell .... I
Lucinda Matlock II
Magnalia Christi Americana ... I
Man against the Sky, The . , . .II
Man of Ideas, A II
Marshes of Glynn, The II
Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at
the table II
Mask of the Red Death, The ... . I
Masters, Edgar Lee II
Mather, Cotton I
Maud Muller I
May the maiden II
Melville, Herman II
Mending Wall II
Message to Congress in Special Session
(Lincoln) I
Mind, The I
Miniver Cheevy II
Mr. Flood's Party II
Mrs. Benjamin Pantier II
Mrs. Meyers II
Mliss II
Moby Dick; or. The White Whale . .II
Moody, William Vaughn .... II
Moral Warfare, The I
More, Paul Elmer II
Motley, John Lothrop .... I
Mountains of California, The ... II
Mournin for Religion II
MuiR, John II
Musketaquid I
My Aunt I
My Fathers Came from Kentucky . . II
My God has hid Himself from me . .II
My heart rebels against my generation II
My heart was heavy, for its trust had
been I
My life is but a leaf upon the tree . . II
My life more civil is and free ... I
My Lost Youth I
My Secret II
555
4
172
420
539
720
533
649
292
525
542
587
303
509
650
551
4
411
558
267
523
557
545
3
603
274
I
522
728
37
419
420
547
548
157
3
380
599
470
739
186
553
185
300
618
544
276
454
599
275
380
595
277
INDEX OF AUTHORS, TITLES, AND FIRST LINES OF POEMS 6oi
Part Page
My soul is like the oar that momently . II 274
My thanks, friends of the County Sci-
entific Association II 550
Mystery of Heroism, A II 352
Mystic shadow, bending near me , . II 350
Napoleon; or. The Man of the World . I 358
Nature (1836) I 302
Necessity of a Government as Energetic as
the One Proposed to the Preservation
of the Union, The I 175
Never was there a man much uglier . II 421
New commandments I give to you.
Spoon River II 555
New Morality, The II 479
New Spoon River, The II 554
No Labor-Saving Machine .... II 86
No more these simple flowers belong . I 601
No other man, unless it was Doc Hill II 548
Notes on Natural Science I 41
Nuremberg I 591
0 Captain! My Captain! II no
O little feet! that such long years . . I 596
O Love Divine, that stooped to share . I 623
O saw ye not fair Ines? I 583
O star of morning and of liberty! . . I 597
O tenderly the haughty day ... I 301
"O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert
dead! II 270
O World, thou choosest not the better
part! II 453
O you who lose the art of hope ... II 538
Ode (God save the Rights of Man!) . I 198
Ode for a Social Meeting I 641
Ode, Inscribed to W. H. Channing . . I 298
Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemora-
tion I 684
Ode Sung in the Town Hall, Concord . I 301
Ode II (My heart rebels) .... II 454
O'er the rough main with flowing sheet I 189
O'er the waste of waters cruising . . I 196
Of all the rides since the birth of time . I 605
Of All the Souls that Stand Create . . II 155
Of Being I 42
Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession I 145
Of Moon-Desire II 300
Of obedience, faith, adhesiveness . . II 103
Of the Prejudices of the Imagination . I 41
Of the Terrible Doubt of Appear aiices . II 84
Oft have I seen at some cathedral door I 596
Often I think of the beautiful town I 595
Oh, gypsies, proud and stifle-necked and
perverse II 534
Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one
night II 420
Old Ironsides I 617
Old King Cole II 410
Part
Old Man's Winter Night, An . . . .
On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners
On a Death Mask ]
On a Honey Bee
On Captain Barney's Victory over the Ship
General Monk
On Lending a Punch-Bowl ....
On the Anniversary of the Storming of the
Bastille
On the Beach at Night ]
On the Building of Springfield . . . ]
On the Memorable Victory of Paul Jones
On the Origin and Design of Government
in General
Once git a smell o' musk into a draw .
Once I loved a fairy 1
Once, in a night as black as ink . . 1
Once there was a man 1
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I
pondered, weak and weary .
Once when the snow of the year was be-
ginning to fall
One Hour to Madness and Joy
One more Unfortunate
One ought not to have to care ... I
O'Neill, Eugene I
Onset, The I
Out of me unworthy and unknown . I
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking . . I
Out of the hills of Habersham ... I
Over- Soul, The
Paine, Thomas
Palace of the Alhambra
Parkman, Francis I
Parting Health, A (To J. L. Motley) .
Pelican, The I
Perry Zoll I
Personal Narrative
Petit, the Poet I
Phoebus, sitting one day in a laurel-tree's
shade
Pilgrim, The I
Pioneers! 0 Pioneers! I
Pious Editor s Creed, The ....
PoE, Edgar Allan
Poet, The
Poetic Principle, The
Poetry of Barbarism, The .... I
Poet's Lot, The
Poets to Come I
Political Balance, The
Politics
Prairies, The
Preface to Leaves of Grass, 185^ . . I
Prescott, William Hickling .
Problem, The
Proem
Prologue {This is It)
Page
530
707
555
199
196
620
199
102
538
189
142
680
543
542
351
527-
531
82
584
530
571
532
551
98
269
344
141
216
129
632
396
550
45
549
661
276
95
658
522
253
576
454
619
41
191
352
251
113
255
294
599
640
6o2 INDEX OF AUTHORS, TITLES, AND FIRSr LINES OF POEMS
Part Page
Proud Farmer, The
Psalm of Life, A
Purloined Letter, The
Queen Mab in the I'illage ....
\)ueer
Question in th£ Zen Texts, A ...
Raised in the faith of Elliott Hawkins
of old
Raven, The
Reading
Recorders Ages Hence I
Representative Men
Republican Genius of Europe, The .
Revelation I
Rhodora, The
Rich, honored by my fellow citizens
Richard Cory
Rise of the Dutch Republic, The .
Road Not Taken, The ....
Roads fVe Take, The
Robert Fulton Tanner
Robinson, Edwin Arlington .
Romance
Runaway, The
Rural Life in England ....
Rutherford McDowell
Santayana, George
Sarah Dewitt
Sarah Pierrepont
Scarcely in life did the life that moved
within
Scarlet Letter, The
Second Choice, The
Second Inaugural Address (Lincoln)
Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick .
Self- Reliance
Servant to Servants, A
Set not thy foot on graves ....
Seth Compton
Shadows
She Rose to his Requirement ....
Shut Not Your Doors
Sic Vita
Simon Legree — A Negro Sermon
Sinners in The Hands of an Angry God .
Sketch Book, The
Skipper Iresons Ride
Slave's Dream, The
Sleeper, The
Slip Shoe Lovey
Snozv-Bound
Snow-Storm, The
So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn .
Solitude
Some say the world will end in fire .
Something there is that doesn't love a
wall
537
5S9
560
543
562
298
554
527
388
S5
358
200
522
292
549
414
740
529
390
547
407
524
531
208
551
452
555
45
556
433
498
737
549
331
525
297
550
276
155
41
380
540
60
202
605
590
526
552
608
297
600
400
531
II 522
Part Page
So?;^' /or The Jacquerie
Song of Myself
Song of the Cavalier, The
Song of the Chattahoochee, The ... I
Song of the Open Road I
Sonnet XLI I (As when the scepter dan-
gles) I
Sonnet III (O World, thou choosest not) I
Sonnet — To Science
Sound of the Trees, The I
Sounds
Sower, The
Space is ample, cast and west
Special Type, The I
Sphinx, The
Spirit and Poetry of Early New England,
The I
Spirit of Poetry, The
Spoon River Anthology I
Springfield Magical I
Starting from fish-shape Paumanok
where I was born I
Starting frojn Paumanok I
Stethoscope Song, The
Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth
which needs
Struggle
Sun and Shadozv
Sunthin in the Pastoral Line
Supposing that I should have the courage
Sympathy
Symphony, The
Tabb, John Banister I
Take this kiss upon the brow! .
Tears I
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they
mean
Tell me not, in mournful numbers .
Telling the Bees
Ten years together without yet a cloud ]
Thanatopsis
Thank Heaven! the crisis ....
That you are fair or wise is vain
Thaumatographia Pneumatica
The bone that has no marrow ... I
The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see .
1 he bustle in a house I
The calm horizon circles only me . . I
The chiefs that bow to Capet's reign .
The day is done, and the darkness .
The earth keeps some vibration going . I
The groves were God's first temples.
Ere man learned
The man Flammonde, from God knows
where I
The master scans the woven score . . I
The mountain and the squirrel .
The ordinance of Spoon River permitted I
INDEX OF AUTHORS, TITLES, AND FIRST LINES OF POEMS 603
Part
The rosy mouth and rosy toe ... II
The same old baffling questions! 0 my
friend I
The shadows lay along Broadway . . I
The skies they were ashen and sober . I
The Sphinx is drowsy I
The sun that brief December day . . I
The wayfarer II
Then mounte! then mounte, brave gal-
lants, all I
There is a quiet spirit in these woods . I
There is no Frigate like a Book . . .II
There was a Child IVent Forth . , .II
There was a young man in Boston town I
There were many who went in huddled
procession II
There were three in the meadow by the
brook II
These are the gardens of the Desert,
these I
They brought me ambrotypes ... II
They leave us so to the way we took . II
Things to be Considered, or Written Fully
About I
Think me not unkind and rude ... I
Think not that incense-smoke has had
its day II
This ancient silver bowl of mine, it tells
of good old times I
This is my Letter II
This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling I
This is the ship of pearl, which, poets
feign I
This song of mine I
Thomas MacCracken II
Thomas Rhodes II
Thoreau I
Thoreau, Henry David .... I
Thou blossom bright with autumn dew I
Thou, born to sip the lake or spring . I
Thou wast that all to me, love ... I
Thou, who wouldst wear the name . I
Though loath to grieve I
Thought (Of obedience, faith, adhesive-
ness) II
Thoughts on the Present State of American
Affairs I
Thrash away, you'll hev to rattle . . I
Thy summer voice, Musketaquit , . I
'Tis not what I am fain to hide . II
To (I heed not that my earthly lot) I
To (The bowers whereat) ... I
To a Caty-Did I
To a Waterfowl I
To an Author I
To an Old Wassail-Cup II
To be able to see every side of every
question II
To be gay, free, to be a liver ... II
Page
276
. 601
578
529
29s
608
352
586
588
154
no
621
350
528
251
551
522
45
293
536
620
153
S9I
622
594
555
549
700
378
251
199
538
253
298
103
149
653
301
277
524
524
200
247
197
275
550
555
Part
To Helen
To him who in the love of Nature holds
To J.W.
To One in Paradise
To the Fringed Gentian
To the Memory of the Brave Americans
Together in this grave lie Benjamin
Pantier, attorney at law ... I
Tradition, thou art for suckling children ]
Trust
Twain, Mark I
Two Rivers
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood . 1
Ulalume
Unseen Spirits
Page
Vain Gratuities
Very well, you liberals
Vindication of the Government of New
England Churches, A . . , .
Voiceless, The
Voyager, The
Waldeinsamkeit
Walden
War is Kind
Warden of the Cinque Ports, The
Washers of the Shroud, The ....
Washington McNeely
Way to Wealth, The
We count the broken lyres that rest
We make ourselves a place apart
Weak-winged is song
Weariness
Wharton, Edith
What heartache — ne'er a hill!
What is a poet's love.f*
What is an American?
What Mr. Robinson Thinks ....
Whatever Life pressed down and back
is here
When beechen buds begin to swell .
When, but a child, I wandered hence
When Eve had led her lord away
When Freedom, on her natal day .
When I died, the circulating library
When I Heard the Learn d Astronomer
When I Peruse the Conquered Fame
When I was nine years old, in 1889
When legislators keep the law .
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed
When the hours of Day are numbered.
Whenever Richard Cory went down town
Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom
and Charley
Where I Lived, and What I Lived For .
Where Youth and Laughter lingered
long
II 275
6o4 indf:x of authors, titles, and first lines of poems
Part I\\ge
While I stood listening, discreetly
dumb II 419
jy his per s of Heavenly Death . . . . II 112
Whither, midst falling dew .... I 247
Whitman, Walt II 39
Whittier, John Greenleaf ... I 598
Who is that calling through the night . II 552
IFho Learns my Lesson Complete? . . II 11 1
fVhoever You are Holding Me Now in
Hand II 83
Wild Honey Suckle, The I I97
Wise, John I 21
IVish of To-day, The I 600
Part Page
With snow-white veil and garments as
of flame I 597
Ye Alps audacious, through the heavens
that rise I 182
Ye shrink not wholly from us when the
morn II 276
Yellow J'iolet, The I 246
Yes, we knew we must lose him — though
friendship may claim .... I 632
You are over there, Father Malloy . II 551
Your leaves bound up compact and fair I 197
You're the cook's understudy ... II 552